Take Back Your Life

Hey friends!

It seems like we’re constantly being told to fix this or fix that about our relationships, our personalities, and our businesses. E-newsletters ask me if I’m procrastinating, if I’m afraid to sell, if I playing small, if I’m holding back, etc.

Maybe it makes more sense to concentrate on what’s really working in our lives and continue to do more of whatever that is. Expanding our greatest strengths forms the core of the burgeoning strengths movement. To keep this movement going, we’ll need to wean ourselves off of measuring everything in our lives to “see how we’re doing” or “how we compare to others.”

The problem with most metrics is that they keep you focused on the negative. Based on the results (often seemingly arbitrary), your boss, your teacher, your doctor or some other person of supposed authority in your life directs you to shore up your alleged weaknesses.

I say alleged because our society tends to fixate on weaknesses. I don’t believe in trying to fix weaknesses. Instead, I prefer to encourage and grow a person’s natural interests and inclinations. It’s pretty futile to force someone to get “good” at something they don’t care for.

Take math. I never liked math. It didn’t interest me. I wasn’t “good” at it. Yet, I spent a lot of time taking all kinds of math classes thinking I needed to be good in math. I even got a job that required me to do quite a bit of math. It started to eat me up alive because I didn’t want to do it.

Looking in life’s rear view mirror I can see now that the time I spent taking math classes kept me from taking more English classes and writing classes or just plain writing.

I loved writing and ended up doing math. Now that I’ve been back writing for about ten years, I feel like I’m where I want to be, where I was meant to be, where I got detoured from.

Our visits to Earth seem increasingly short to me, why not spend most of your precious time on this beautiful planet doing what you enjoy.

I’d love to hear what’s working in your life. What do you want more of in your life?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hi fellow wishcasters and other adventurous folks!

I wish for you to see your life not as a chore or something to get through, but rather as an Alice In Wonderland type of adventure.

Will you wake up and feel like you fell down a rabbit hole? Yes. Will strange things happen to you? Yes. Will you meet strange people? Yes. Will you be strange? Yes. Will any of it make sense? Probably not.

Yet, that’s the real beauty of our precious lives. They are not meant to be controlled, to be figured out, to be made 100% safe. They are meant to be wild and crazy journeys where anything can happen because it’s all unscripted.

Forget following other people’s scripts. They have no right to tell you how to live your journey at the bottom of the rabbit hole because there is no right, there is only what is. Remember these folks don’t know any more than you do. It’s all posturing. You know more about you and your life than anyone. Please don’t forget that when they bust into your life screaming and madly waiving their script, accusing you of not following it!

I can almost guarantee that if you start to look at your life as an adventure that you own, you will wake up every morning feeling braver and more powerful!

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hey rebels!

I work with a lot of people who want to start a business, make a life change or take up a new creative pursuit. The greatest obstacle they face?

Themselves.

Yup! The hardest person to convince of your worthiness is you. Until you believe a) you can do it and b) you have a right to do it, not much will happen.

I’ve said this before on this blog and I’ll say it again, our society does a terrible job growing people who believe in themselves. We all come into the world feeling “pumped.” By Junior High, you can already see a lot of shut down pumps.

Yeah, people run around getting all excited about collecting careers and titles and credentials. Why? Because we’ve been told those external “things” will make us worthy to others. So, you spend your life jumping through hoops to scavenge all the things on your societal worthiness list. In middle age, you proudly hold up your list for the world to see.

Yet, you may not feel good. In fact, you may feel worse than when you started the list pre-junior high.

Why?

Because it’s a wild human-goose chase. If we “grow” people who believe in themselves, they will follow their own hearts and create their own lists.

I’ve got my custom-designed list. Have you got yours?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hey rebellious ones and fellow wishcasters,

Starting off 2010 with a big dream sounds good to me. This year I’m going to explore and promote “lifeness.” I define “lifeness” as being one self, a seamless merging of the play self and the business self and the classroom self. Why we’ve been taught to put on a different face for work or school makes no sense to me. All it does is promote human misery and unsavory methods to self-anesthetize from the emotional pain it invariably causes.

Being who we are is our natural state or we wouldn’t be born into natural lifeness.

The best way for me to be myself and for you to be yourself is to stop buying into the ridiculous myth that we need to divide and conquer our own personalities to be “successful.” So, I’m supposed to work with and be impressed with the phony you? Conversely, you are supposed to work with and be impressed with the phony me?

Complete garbage!

Here’s to achieving lifeness …

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hey bad girls and boys & wednesday wishcasters,

In 2010, I wish for folks to disobey more. That’s right.

• Stand up and be counted, even if you’re the only one doing so.
• Make a scene.
• Say, “no” to anything that goes against your values.
• Catch all the shoulds flying at you and dump them in the trash can.
• Stop going along with programs you don’t believe in.
• Start being the change you want to see in the world.

People love to use, “I can’t make a difference” as an excuse for not standing up for what they really believe. That’s a big fat lie. You can make a difference – in your own life, in your neighborhood, in your country. The real question becomes, “Do you want to make a difference?”

If your life has no spark, if you feel like a dead-zone inside, if you complain about your situation, if you feel taken advantage of, if you keep asking yourself, “is this all there is to life?” chances are good you’re still that obedient little boy or girl who didn’t make your parents mad.

Perhaps, it’s time to …

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hey People Who Like To Do Things Differently,

I’m designating today “Flaunt Your Flaws Day.” The intense societal pressure to be perfect can make you do crazy things. It can drive you over the edge of despair. It can make you second guess your every move.

Forget perfect. It’s not achievable or desirable.

I used to think I had to be perfect: say perfect things, look perfect, be in perfect shape, be a perfect employee, be a perfect wife, be a perfect friend, be a perfect daughter, be a perfect small business owner.

Not interested in being perfect anymore. I want to be me with my so called flaws. Flaws get a bad rap. We’re supposed to keep working on them until they disappear. Flaws are the flip side of your greatest strength. You can’t be great without a balancing flaw. To be flawless is to be mediocre, to be unreal, to be dull and boring, to never make anyone mad, to always go along with the program, to live in fear.

The late, great Paul Newman said, “If you don’t have enemies, you don’t have character.”

Society and its institutions try to remove people’s flaws. Yet, if you remove them, you remove what’s unique, different and compelling about a person.

Take me. My greatest strength? You can’t pull the wool over my eyes. I will investigate anything that doesn’t add up and take action. My greatest flaw? You can’t pull the wool over my eyes. I will annoy anyone who does not want the status quo challenged/changed, who does not want anyone to look under the floor boards or take action.

If you get rid of your greatest strength, then you will also get rid of your greatest flaw. For that reason, I say celebrate your flaws!

What strength/flaw can you celebrate? Or maybe you don’t agree. I’d like to hear it and so would my open-minded readers.

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hey fellow wishcasters & other interested parties,

Today’s question by Jamie Ridler: What would you like to embrace? Me, I’d like to take my innate ability to produce idea after idea and create more programs around it. People have always said to me, “You are a great brainstormer.” Despite knowing this in my own heart, I embarked on an occupational journey after college that did not connect with brainstorming. I listened to folks who said, “You can’t make money doing that.” I believed their small-time thinking.

It is only in the last 3 or 4 years that I’ve changed my own thinking enough to realize that, yes, I can make money doing things that come naturally to me, like writing inspirational essays, musing and finding greatness in others. Hey, maybe it’s the small-time thinking that’s all wrong.

The economic downturn presents a good example. So many problems to solve, so many innate gifts, yet we all walk around helplessly looking for others to create jobs that tend to be rigid and often soul-deadening. I wonder where we all learned to be helpless, to not follow our innate talents, to believe that the job categories out there represent what people really need to live fulfilling lives.

Any ideas how we became so helpless?

Muse thx, Giulietta

p.s., I know many of you live out of state. If you want to see where I’m going with combatting helplessness, check out Think Milky Way Big

Hi singers and potential singers,

A new karaoke night started in my town. It’s in the place that used to have karaoke a few years ago. A smaller space with great accoustics and a huge song list. My favorite karaoke combos.

Karaoke has the power to change your life. I know because it changed mine. Most us of think we cannot sing. I don’t know where this comes from, but it’s not true. It’s the rare person who cannot carry a tune and even that person may be listening to a pre-programmed voice that started in his or her youth.

I believe singing comes naturally to humans. During my three summers of eight-week overnight camp, we were always belting out tunes. In our cabins, at our meals, on the bus, on hikes in the woods.

Singing liberates. And it’s free! You can sing anytime you want. If you want to liberate your voice, consider a singing teacher. I can recommend someone great in my town! The lessons liberate that which is already there, that which has been supressed.

I’m forming a karaoke club for people who want to sing but don’t want to venture out at night alone. Email me if you’re interested!

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Already Wishcasting Wednesday again! This week Jamie asks us what we’d like to complete. My mind went in a million different directions! Honestly, I wake up every morning musing with ideas and while some people might say, “Giulietta, focus, focus” I see my cauldron of rich ideas as my greatness. It’s hard for me to be around people and not share the ideas that come to me in their presence.

Kinda like a greatness clairvoyant!

Whatever it is that you do that releases you from the “autopilot” so many of us find ourselves locked into day after day — that is your greatness.

I would like to complete my first info product on finding greatness. It’s been in the making for a medium time! I will offer the product and personal muse time with me. When I download products, I end up skimming through them once or twice, not getting too much out of the experience. My approach will be different. It will take into consideration that humans buy products but need human encouragement to move forward with the product’s content, especially something as personal and emotional as finding your greatness.

I’ve worked with lots of people in small groups or one and one, and it’s always a relief for them to find their greatness. Otherwise, we spend our lives searching, searching, searching … asking, “what am I here for?”

Do you know what your greatness is?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hi all,

For today’s post, I decided to pick a random quote out of my quote book. Landed on some neat words from the psychologist and philosopher William James, “To change one’s life: Start immediately. Do it Flamboyantly. No Exceptions.”

Did some quick research. William is the brother of novelist Henry James (Turn of the Screw, Portrait of a Lady). What intrigues me is that William lived from 1842 to 1910, so even back then people wanted to wake up and change their lives. If you surf the Internet you may get the idea we are the first generation to be dissatisfied with the status quote. Clearly that isn’t the case. Feeling hemmed in by one’s circumstances has been around for a long time. We just like to think we are somehow more emotionally advanced.

Why is it so hard for humans to changes their lives, to live flamboyantly?

Interestingly enough, I got in trouble for dressing flamboyantly at my first job out of college. I wore big earrings and really bright orange and yellow floral patterns, purple, lime green, etc. My boss took me to breakfast one morning and said, “You dress too flamboyantly.” I knew right then I needed to find another job and that the conventional work arena was going to conflict with my personality.

Why are we supposed to tone ourselves down at work? Will that make us work better or make us more controllable? I never quite understood the “dressing down” philosophy.

I’m curious if this quote speaks to you. Are there ways you could live more flamboyantly or would you rather keep your life the way it is?

Muse thx, Giulietta