October 9, 2018 by Giulietta Nardone
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” ~ Winston Churchill
I stood up for myself as a child. For that bravery, I got tossed out of classrooms, told I asked too many questions, or sent to sit in the corner.
That skill was not and is still not wanted by society.
It interferes with the agenda of those in charge.
By high school, I had retreated into myself. It took many classes in assertiveness training, public speaking, theater and willful practice to restore my childhood courage.
This is what I discovered the second time around: As an adult, speaking up can be met with turned tables. Suddenly, you become framed as the problem.
Nice tactic to silence anyone with a different opinion.
Now, would that get me to zip it?
Nada.
No amount of having myself labelled the problem could be worse than sitting in a chair terrified to speak up. (more…)
May 23, 2018 by Giulietta Nardone
“All humans are essentially wild creatures and hate confinement. We need what is wild, and we thrill to it, our wildness bubbling over with an anarchic joie de vivre. We glint when the wild light shines. The more suffocatingly enclosed we are – tamed by television, controlled by mortgages and bureaucracy – the louder our wild genes scream in aggression, anger and depression.” ~ Jay Griffiths
For some reason, our society likes to de-wild people. At younger and younger ages. For reasons that don’t quite make sense to me.
“Shut up and sit down, please!”
Most will learn to sit more quietly at their school and work desks, presumably learning and producing more. They are deemed brilliant. Those that do not are deemed troublemakers or misfits and left for societal dead.
But are the over-domesticated ones really learning and producing or is that an illusion? And are they happy?
Perhaps not as much as you might imagine. (more…)
December 26, 2017 by Giulietta Nardone
The greatest risk is really to take no risk at all. You’ve got to go out there, jump off the cliff, and take chances.” ~ Patrick Warburton
As we head into 2018, which has such a lovely ring to it for some reason, you have a wonderful opportunity to throw more caution to the wind and pursue more of what will make your heart sing. Life goes by in a flash. Why keep waiting to do what you truly, deeply, madly want to do?
The only right time is now. That is all you have at your fingertips. You may or may not reach retirement. I don’t like that living model anyway. Working like a dog until you are 65, then finally doing what you want. That makes no sense. Why not just live along the way?
I always loved the film, “The Year of Living Dangerously” with Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson (1982). The title drew me in and didn’t disappoint. It has romance, intrigue and danger. They live on the edge and love every minute of it.
Can you make 2018 the year you choose to live dangerously? I am going to make that pledge for myself if you care to join me. I will be more dangerous in making my art, programs and stories and marketing my art, programs and stories. I will take even more emotional risks speaking up, something I view as my life’s big project. (more…)
September 1, 2017 by Giulietta Nardone
“Never give up. You only get one life. Go for it!” Richard E. Grant
About twenty-five ago, after having all sorts of battles with my inner adventurer’s reluctant nature, I decided to just go for things. The first thing I did was go to Greece by myself. It was nerve wracking and I cried a few times, but in the end it was one of the best things I ever did for myself. That opened the door to all sorts of adventures.
Since then I have just gone for it many times. Each time it gets easier. (more…)
December 26, 2016 by Giulietta Nardone
Happy 2017! May it be the year you feel powerful.
“When someone tells you that you can’t do something, perhaps you should consider that they are only telling you what they can’t do.” ~ Sheldon Cahoon
It’s common for people to tell you, “oh, you can’t pull that off” or “why do you want to try that?” or “that’s impossible.”
If there is something you want to do, please don’t listen to other people who tell you it can’t be done. They might not be able to do it, but most of us can usually accomplish anything we put our minds to. Try it yourself and then decide if you can’t do it. Chances are good, though, that you can.
Many, many years ago, I quit my research job to make a career change to graphic design. I went to a head hunter and said I want the following things in a job: Flexible hours, the ability to mold it to myself and a boss that believes in me enough to let me be free. She said, “Those jobs don’t exist. But if I do find one, I’m taking it for myself.”
I didn’t sign up with that firm and went to another one and repeated my dream job to another headhunter. She said, “Let’s try to find it.”
A few weeks later, she called about a job.
I went on the interview and knew the minute I walked into the office that this potential boss was different than all the other managers I’d worked for. We talked. I showed him my design portfolio. He was interested in hiring me.
I said, “I need to be honest with you about who I am and shared my three wishes for the job.” (more…)
April 8, 2016 by Giulietta Nardone
My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.” ~ Patricia Graynamore, Joe Versus The Volcano
Too many people go through their entire lives sleepwalking, like they are on some kind of autopilot that they can’t wake up from.
I used to be on autopilot to the point that sometimes I’d get in my car and find myself going somewhere I wasn’t intending to go. Once I found myself on the Mass Pike without any change in my purse for the tolls. I had to scrounge around the console and glove box gathering up 4o cents to get off at the next toll exit.
Once I got off, I pulled over and subjected myself to a flurry of rather frank self-talk, “What is wrong with you? How did you end up on a major highway when you were going to the Natick mall?” (more…)
March 9, 2016 by Giulietta Nardone
“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
It strikes me as ironic how liberated in thought were some of the folks who lived over 100 years ago. Folks like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau. They didn’t have access to the Internet and all the mega knowledge you can find on there, yet they seemed to have this intuitive grasp of the human condition.
I’m big on experimenting with life because it leads you to places the “permission” and “perfection” blueprints would never take you. I know I say this a lot, but children are naturally curious and explorative. Yet, we decide around first grade that only certain people should have the power to decide what are youngest folks will do. Why not let the children take on more responsibility for their own lives? They are wiser than we believe them to be. That will empower them to achieve full selfdom instead of molded, someone else’s selfdom.Lately, I’ve been a mad, creative scientist of art! Trying all sorts of art techniques, mixing it, freeing it and I must say, wild experimenting! is super fun and liberating. Talk about a natural high. In one painting, I might start with watercolor, then add acrylic paints, then scribble with acrylic or water color markers or regular markers or add some fibre paste or glitter or stick-on bling. (more…)
January 11, 2016 by Giulietta Nardone
Believe In The Beauty of Your Own Dreams!
“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”
~ Anais Nin
When we are children, we have lots of dreams. By the time we reach young adulthood, we’ve already begun saying, “It’s too late.”At 23, I looked in the mirror and thought I looked old. I felt like I was washed up and I hadn’t even started. Looking way back, I can say with all certainty I didn’t look old at all. And I hadn’t taken any real chances. And I wasn’t washed up.
How did a young woman at the beginning of adult life develop such feelings of despair?
I soon discovered I wasn’t alone in my feelings of “life has passed me by.” A lot of my friends felt that way as well.
We force folks into a life of despair by separating them from the things in life that make them feel alive. That is done during the “molding” process where we not only get molded, but become spiritually and soulfully moldy. And today’s kids are encouraged to get moldy earlier and earlier.
The wildness extraction process begins at younger and younger ages because folks of any age running around making noise makes folks who’ve been trained not to do that, “very, very nervous.”
They seem to want young children to pick their life path by the time they get out of preschool, to get serious about learning ONLY in seats, to see fun and self-expression as some personality disorder that needs to be squelched.
(Check out in The Jan/February Atlantic Monthly the article: The Preschool Trend That Is Crushing Kids.)
More and more kids are being labelled hyperactive because children are not allowed to run free anymore through the woods. First of all, it’s hard to find any woods that aren’t golf courses or wetlands. But then if you do, you don’t have time because you’ve got hours of homework every night.
Fortunately, my feelings of “too lateness” passed when I returned to my childhood love of all things creative. Writing and painting and singing. That reconnection opened up my life for me!
I can now share that I have done the greatest things in my life since the age of 40. I plan on continuing to do great things as long as I’m alive. Stereotypes about who should act like “something” at a certain age will not stop me!
You can do anything you want as long as you stick with it … and tell the folks who try to stop you to “get out of your way, thank you.”
Now, what is it that you want to do?
Best wishes for achieving your dreams,
October 26, 2015 by Giulietta Nardone
Modern dance inventor Isadora had it right. We came into the world wild and before long we were anything but wild. I fought the de-wildification as best I could and managed to survive school and work with bit of wildness still left inside. In the past 15 years, I managed to get a good deal of my wildness back. Frankly, I feel a hell of a lot better. Walking around with an imaginary bit in your mouth is not fun. It hurts and you can’t say what you need to say because you think you’ve got a mouth full of metal. Why we insist on doing this to young people so they’ll stand in line politely at the bank is beyond me. Sometimes, someone really ought to yell, “Can you please get another teller out here?” (I did say that once. It felt really good.)I’m convinced that the more wild we feel inside, the more we can love our own lives. Like any trapped animal, you start to go crazy in captivity. You long to kick up your heels and run free if you want. Hand and hand with trying to suppress the wild is trying to suppress anything mysterious.
(more…)
September 18, 2015 by Giulietta Nardone
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
I got the idea for this Giulietta the Muse business after I did a thirty day guest blog for Skirt! Magazine in March 2008. Back then, blogging was still pretty new and I was the only one blogging for the entire month at the request of the Assistant Editor. I’d never blogged before and felt apprehensive: What if I have nothing to say? But I took the leap of self faith anyway. Interestingly enough, the words that poured out of me all revolved around encouraging others (including myself) to Take Back Their Power.
I’m convinced the words came to me through divine intervention because I’d never really thought about power as something I could acquire, something I could take back, something I could stop giving away. I always thought it was something big, burly dudes had.
Boy, did I have that wrong!
Anyone can take their own power back if they start doing certain things. It’s important to be aware that you have power to begin with like Alice says above. You had power at birth and gradually gave it up in exchange for things like safety and pats on the back and adults calling you a good little boy or girl. I felt so powerful when I was a sassy little girl saying provocative things to adults. I felt unstoppable.
I’d like to share three of my favorites with you. (more…)
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