Take Back Your Life!

Hi friends,

As a child, I had no problem speaking up. It came naturally. If something didn’t make sense to my little 6-year-old mind, I asked questions until it did. Now as I got older, I started to get in trouble for asking questions, for questioning the status quo. Sent to my room or sent to a classroom corner or sent to the unemployment line.

I got the message loud and clear: the best way to get along was to go along. I bit my tongue for ten long years. But this left me feeling crazy and out of sorts with myself. I decided the best way for me to get along was to not go along. In a society that values obedience, the easiest way to do this is to forget the outcome. If I dwelled on the possible outcomes – none of which might even happen – I became paralyzed with fear.

Let go of the outcome and you’ll get go of the fear. Is there something you need to say?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

There’s a great book by  rachel carson, the environmentalist, called “A Sense of Wonder.” In it, she says, “A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.”

I’ve known for about 15 years that the march toward adulthood slowly beats the sense of wonder out of us. Prior to that I walked obediently along the beaten path, not questioning where it would lead me. I believed that I’d be happy at the next bend up ahead and when that didn’t make me happy, then it would be the next one. But can I tell you something? No matter how many bends i went around, I wasn’t happy. I became happy only when I took the path less traveled by. When I started to create my own route through life.

Being on my own path also restored my sense of wonder. I can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning and learn something new. Something I want to learn; I need to learn. That’s the problem with today’s generic life blueprint, it doesn’t take into account individual interests. How can we all want the same things in life? The real secret? We don’t. Making us into “want” clones deadens desire, deadens wonder.

How about you? Do you have your sense of wonder intact? If you do, how did you keep it or get it back?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

I get a lot of e-newsletters. 97% of them want to help me make more money. While I understand we all need money, I’m starting to wonder if this obsessive focus on making money actually drives money away from us? It feels increasingly desperate to me and I’m wondering if it feels desperate to money too?

Read an article a few months ago that said we are actually less happy than we were 40 years ago, even though most of us have more things and gadgets.

One of the books that got my life moving in a new direction sometime back, Do what you love and the money will follow, downplayed the money part. It will come if you really do what you love. Are most of you doing what you really love? Do you even know what that is?

It took me awhile to figure it out, but I love challenging the status quo. And there are lots of ways to do that — in my community, in my writing, in my life shops, in my conversations. When I’m in that zone I feel unstoppable, on top of the world. And the money has started to follow. Yet when I started doing what I love, making money was not my objective.

Let me ask you this. To capture your attention does it really have to be about the money? I’d love to hear why or why not. Also, if we didn’t need money to live and learn, what would you like to learn? What classes would you sign up for? What adventures would you take?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Do any of you have ideas for something new, something daring, something outrageous? Could be for a biz. Could be for a life adventure. Could be for a better world. If you’re following my posts with any regularity, then you know that I’m all for making more life. It may or may not have anything to do with making more money. That would be your choice.

Chances are good that right now, you’re probably sitting on a great idea. We like to think that only some people come up with great ideas. It’s not true. We all do. But just a few of us act on those great ideas.

Before I learned to think milky-way bit, I’d get a great idea and lightly toss it around. I’d mention it to a few friends, get a little pumped, then talk myself out of it and climb back down into my dark rut. Poof! A few months or a few years later, I’d read in the paper that someone else came up with a similar idea and went with it. It became a hit!

Has this happened to you with some of your ideas?

Frankly, I don’t feel we are encouraged to just “go for it” with ideas. All you have to do is look at the fear mongering going on in the news day after day to see that what we are encouraged to be is frightened — of everything.

Wouldn’t it be a more energized, upbeat world if we pursued our ideas full throttle instead of holding ourselves back?

What idea do you have that you’d like to run with? What’s stopping you? Keep digging down to find your real fear …

For anyone stopping by my site, please check out my life shop, “Think Milky-Way Big …” It’s an idea I had, that I’ve decided to go full-throttle with … This life shop is just the start!

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hi fun folks,

Recently, I read that children laugh 300 times a day and adults only 15. In my rebel book, that’s completely unacceptable. What’s going on here? Why do adults laugh so little?

The author of Laugh For No Reason, Dr. Kataria, says children laugh unconditionally whereas adults need reasons. Have we forgotten how to laugh? Have our adult lives become so dull and predictable that there’s nothing left to laugh at? Even TV shows have canned laugh tracks to let us know when we are supposed to laugh.

Maybe if adults laughed more they’d feel better. The American School of Laughter Yoga reports that laughter can be

• an age-inhibitor
• a pain reducer
• a stress buster
• a depression reliever
• an immune stimulator

Instead of giving us drugs, perhaps doctors should give us prescriptions for laughter?

Since I tend to laugh at the slightest provocation, needing a reason to guffaw feels alien to me. My third grade teacher actually put me in the corner for laughing! Looking back that made no sense. Punishing a child for what? Disrupting a bunch of ongoing non-laughter? The last kind of person tossed into a corner ought to be a happy one.

Want to try something unpredictable? Pick a day next week and keep track of the number of times you laugh and what you laugh at. I’m going to do it too. My new action step? Get my laughs back up to 300 a day …

Muse thx,

Giulietta

p.s. Check out the American School of Laughter Yoga at http://www.laughangeles.com & the book Laugh for No Reason.

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

Howdy,

I’ve noticed a lot of folks run around crying for change. Way fewer folks actually stand up and do something about it. That’s probably the number 1 reason life/governments/economies tend to stay the same – complete lack of action. I know it’s fear. Just wondering why we continue to reign each other in when that method clearly doesn’t work?

Maybe we should replace some of the holidays we have — the ones that seem to be shopping-oriented — with action days. People have the day off from work to take a chance and be the first person in line to do something. I used to need to know that someone was going to be in line behind me. 9 out of 10 times the person who said they’d support me lost his or her own nerve and I ended up at the front, alone, facing a not so happy authority figure. I got used to it. Now I have no problem being the first one to speak up, to write up, to walk up. Makes me feel powerful and alive.

If you’re serious about changing the world, you need to get comfortable being first in line … What’s something you’d be willing to be first in line for? (Besides gelati and new high tech products.)

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