Take Back Your Life!

Hey rebellious folks,

On the way out of my painting class, one of my classmates said, “Stay out of trouble.”

I responded, “Actually, I look for trouble.”

Trouble to me means challenging the status quo. Curious what it meant to others so I looked it up in the dictionary. All negative definitions such as “the quality or state of being troubled esp. mentally” and “a negative feature: drawback.”

But is flirting with “trouble” really negative? Or is staying out of trouble — being obedient — negative as well?

Do we pay an emotional price for staying out of trouble? For doing what we’re told? For being good little boys and girls even when we are adults?

Beginning in elementary school, I seemed to butt heads with some of the teachers — mainly the ones that wanted complete control. I spent quite a bit of time standing in corners or being sent outside the room. Did I harm anyone or myself? No.

I simply didn’t agree with what the teacher either said or did not do what s/he asked me to do — like stop laughing (yes, if you can believe it.).

If we’re all being raised to be obedient and ultra polite, how can we ever change the world? Won’t we be too scared to stand up to folks or systems that aren’t good for us? (more…)

Hey creative thinkers,

I want to start off this post by thanking all of my fabulous commenters. Your insightful comments take what I’ve written and stretch it one rebel step further!

According to this Newsweek article, American creativity has been declining since 1990. Possible culprits? Increased television watching, less life hardships, standardized school curriculum and nationalized testing. Teachers say there’s little time for creativity due to curriculum and testing requirements.

The best part of the article?  The demand for MUSES will be way up! Gave me some great ideas for my biz. I’m gushing creative excitement here! (more…)

Contrarians Hey,

I’ve been enamored with Leonardo da Vinci since I found him in the encylopedia set my parents bought from the saleswoman who came knocking on our front door back in the 70′s. So much so that I named one of my cats after him. Furry Leonardo has long since gone to puddy heaven, but my love for da Vinci remains. Take this quote of his, “Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!”

Do you go through life with your eyes open? (more…)

Hey Rebels,

As a young child, I wandered about my world asking many burning questions. Why are pussy willows furry? Where do babies come from? Why did my neighbor have the word “butts” on her outside ashtrays? How long would it take me to dig to China? Why did the neighbor’s dog kill my rabbit? How does the player piano make music when I press on the giant pedals? Where does the wind start?

Later in life, I learned to suppress my burning-question asking tendencies and instead focus on giving the “right answer” to other people’s questions: parents, teachers, professors, supervisors, doctors, government leaders. The pressure to always have the right answer became intense, especially at work. One morning the CFO called me to his office with a PowerPoint question. “Fortunately,” I knew the answer or who knows what employment horrors might have befallen me. (Looking back the so-called horror might have been welcomed if I’d been focusing on a question other than, “How do I keep my job?”) (more…)

Hey rebellious ones,

Most of us spent our youths waiting to get permission from parents or teachers to do the things we wanted to do. Then we went to work and got permission from our bosses to do the things we wanted to do. It eased us gently or not-so-gently into a permission-based life, where we ask others of all ages if it’s o.k. to do the things we want to do.

By the time we reach mid-life, many folks have instituted a self-imposed restraining order to the point they don’t even ask permission anymore. Even that’s been beaten out of them.

I semi went along with getting permission until I went on a bike trip to Europe in the early 90′s. A few of us went down to the beach and started walking along the shore. About 15 minutes later, I noticed a no trespassing sign, stopped and obediently said, “Hey, we should turn around.” One woman with a fiery spirit kept walking. She said, “If someone doesn’t want us to be here, they’ll let us know.”

Her words started me in my tracks! They got me going forward. They empowered me to stop living a permission-based life. If I get a great idea and someone wants to be a barrier, I simply go around them. My philosophy? They’ll see how great what I’m doing is and want to join in. If not, oh well! It’s a great way to take back your power …

How about you, have you ever lived a permission-based life? If liberated, how does that feel?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hey readers who like to shake things up,

A few weeks ago, I left a comment on a blog and won a DVD called, The Hustle for Worthiness, by Brene Brown. I enjoyed the entire DVD. It’s excellent. Some advice Brene passed along from a friend reinforced something I’ve been talking about for years. (I don’t have the exact quote cause I lent the DVD to someone!) The gist of it was, if you want to save the women, you have to save the men, too.

Makes sense, right?

If women are oppressed by their roles, then men are too. Not all women agree with this. I did a lot of research and wrote a paper on liberating men in grad school. My female teacher slammed it. I got it back covered with unflattering comments scrawled in red and an unexpected B-, the lowest grade I got on any paper in my three years of study.

Did I produce an inferior paper or did I choose an inferior topic? Got my own theory.

I know that a lot of men out there have dreams too. They’ve told me. The problem being men and women both get locked into the generic American Dream to work and consume, work and consume. It doesn’t leave men a lot of options once a family gets entrenched in this cycle. Then folks succumb to the “it’s too late now” or “I’ll do things once my children graduate from college.”

I wonder if sacrificing your own life for your children, who will then presumably sacrifice their lives for their children ( and so on), if this model really creates a happy adult society? Wouldn’t a thriving society filled with active participants of all ages be more vibrant?

Yes? No?

If you’re woman, would you be willing to reduce your standard of living so your husband can try something new? Have you?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on saving the men too …

Muse thx, Giulietta

Hey rebellious ones,

I got to thinking the other day about the whole notion of being rich. Does being rich mean having a lot of money or does it mean something else to you? Webster’s defines rich as, “Having abundant possessions and esp. material wealth.” I used to define it that way too until I got laid off from my high paying job about 8 years ago. Living on less money for awhile taught me a few things about being rich. The most important one learned that having such a narrow definition of rich ignores or downplays the riches most of us have in our lives whether we make a ton of mula or not.

It can make folks think their lives have been failures because they haven’t measured up to some income standard.

Let’s challenge that definition by acknowledging different ways to be and feel rich!

I feel rich when I kayak on a meandering river.
I feel rich when I sing at a karaoke night.
I feel rich when I’m sitting with a group of friends drinking wine and laughing.
I feel rich when I contribute to a discussion during a documentary night in my town.
I feel rich I when have life shop participants tell me it changed their lives.
I feel rich when Jimmy and I take a walk in the moonlight on a hot summer night.

How do you define rich? Lots of money or something else. I’d love to hear.

Muse thx, Giulietta

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

Hey life lovers!

Glad you stopped by today. I didn’t watch all of the Superbowl – working on Son of a Preacher Man & Because the Night for karaoke — but I did catch parts of it and the winning speech by Drew Brees.

He said, “We just believed in ourselves and we knew we had an entire city and maybe an entire country behind us.”

You have to believe in yourself. It might sound overly simplistic to say that. Yet, I know it’s true for my own life and for the lives of others. If you believe in yourself, you can move mountains! Belief gives you the equivalent of “emotional adrenaline.”

So, how come more of us don’t believe in ourselves? A collective societal fear of the power & awesomeness that self-belief generates. Each generation holds the next generation back. Some of us manage to burst through the hands holding us back. Others don’t feel strong enough to do so.

I want you to know that you are strong enough! We are all strong enough. Do you notice yourself “holding back” anyone in your life? Perhaps, try encouraging them instead. We know the world we’ve created, where people hold each other back doesn’t work.

Let’s try believing in each other for a change!

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