Take Back Your Life!

Hey risk takers!

Last Thursday night at karaoke I sang, “I’ll Always Love You,” by Taylor Dayne. Remember her songs from the 80’s? Needless to say, it’s what my mind considers a hard song – maybe equal to one of those double somersault reverse inward pike Olympic dives with a 3.2 level of difficulty. Six months ago, I listened to that song and said, “no way,” snapping it back into the CD case.

In the interim, I started going to a local karaoke night every Thursday. No matter how I felt or what excuse my little mind tried to come up with to worm its way out of the adventure, I showed up with at least 1 or 2 new songs to perform. Needing to sing a new song each week pushed me into unchartered singing territory. (more…)

If you’ve read my Skirt! essay, River Talk, then you may recall that I don’t remember much of the information stuffed into my head in high school. In addition to Siddhartha, I’ve recalled the basic premise of the Samuel Beckett play, Waiting For Godot. Two guys, Vladimir and Estragon, wait on a country road by a tree and talk about how they are waiting for Godot. But of course Godot never comes. As a high school student I thought, “what a dumb play.” Now as a middle-ager, I think, “wow, that play’s brilliant. It’s a commentary on life.”

Do you have a Godot (or Godots) in your life? Something that you’re waiting over and over for that never comes? (more…)

Hey life renegades,

Life can seem like an endless slog or a magical love affair. It depends on your ability to answer the question, “What makes you get up in the morning?”

During my childhood, I couldn’t get enough of life. I raced out of bed to explore the natural landscape near my home. I scaled the face of Bald Rock (o.k. a small hill a few roads over), I climbed pine trees, I waded in brooks, I watched butterflies, I taught riding lessons in my back yards without the aid of actual horses.

That love disappeared when society shoved me onto the tracks headed toward conventional adulthood. By my late twenties, I kept asking, “Is this all there is?” I’d broken up with life. We’d gone our separate ways. I had no real reason to get up in the morning. I guess I had stumbled onto some kind of career track. Yet, the notion of a generic career never appealed to me. I always felt like a caged animal in a work zoo. If we lived in this free society I wondered, how come we can’t leave until 5:00? I began saying to colleagues, “Let’s bust out of here and sit at an outdoor cafe and drink salty margaritas.”

They’d say, “Oh, that sounds fun. Too much work today. Maybe next week?”

Those weeks turned into years and finally into a decade and still no disobedient margarita hookey.

I realized I had to help myself if I wanted to fall in love with life again. I volunteered at a theater in the next town as the curtain puller. This simple act of opening and closing an unbelievably heavy curtain led to me opening a new act on my own life.

One of the actors introduced me to karaoke and returned me to hiking and bike riding. With life once again coursing through my veins, I also reconnected with my rebellious roots.

I fell in love with life again. We’ve been going strong ever since.

Muse thx,

Giulietta

p.s. A few years ago I celebrated my birthday drinking salty margaritas at an outdoor cafe. As wonderful as I’d imagined. How about you? Have you had your margarita moment?

Hey Wonderful Readers,

I helped a bumblebee get out of my laundry room and return to freedom yesterday. In the process, I noticed how tiny its wings were in comparison to its large body and watched in amazement as the little flapping wings lifted the bee up off the windowsill and through the open window into my yard.

My up-close-and-personal moment with the bee piqued my curiosity, so I googled bumblebees. One of the entries I clicked was a quote by Mary Kay Ash, “Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn’t know that so it goes on flying anyway.”

Her quote on the courageous little bumblebee got me thinking how imprisoned most of us have become by our own little wings (aka limited belief systems.) Unlike the bumblebee, most of us humans use our our little wings as excuses for not even trying. At least once a week, someone tells me why what sounds like a great idea will not work. “It can’t be done,” she or he says. I respond with, “What makes you think that?” Because she or he says, “It’s not practical” or “it’s never been done before.”

That’s just a cop out, a fear of trying something unknown. Much easier and safer to say, “It can’t be done.” Why not believe everything’s possible? From my own experiences in life, if you think something can be done it can be.

I wanted to stop some rezoning from taking place in my town. Lots of people said, “It’s a done deal, don’t even bother to try.” In my mind, there are no such things as done deals. I hooked up with some other folks who believed we could stop it and we proceeded as if we could. It worked.

When you believe in your mind and your heart that something can happen, then you start acting in ways that make that possibility a reality.

Is there something you’d like to attempt but those close to you or even you yourself keep saying, “don’t bother, it can’t be done?”

Muse Thx,

Giulietta

p.s. I’d love to have 499 subscribers to my blog by August 1st. If you like what I write about,  perhaps you will help me by subscribing to Take Back Your Life updates via RSS or Email? Thank you.

Hey people who dare!

My purpose for Giulietta the Muse has always been to encourage my readers and clients to summon up the courage to get out of lock-step. Looked up the definition of lock-step on Merriam-Webster.com. They define it as: a standard method or procedure that is mindlessly adhered to or that minimizes individuality. Lock-step marches you in a direction not of your conscious choosing. After awhile it becomes second nature. So much so, that you may not even realize you are marching until some event in your life forces you to notice it.

Such an event might be a job loss or an illness or even something as simple as a comment a friend or stranger makes. Once you look down and notice your legs marching in a direction you don’t recall pointing them in, the real life awakening begins.

For those of you want to turn around and “skip” in a new direction, please consider checking out my newest life shop: How to stop being so busy and start living a meaningful life.

If you live in the Greater Boston area and are free on Saturday, April 24th in the am, I’d love for you to join us!

Muse thanks,

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 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

It’s definitely in vogue these days to be busy, very busy. The assumption being it’s a good thing, a sign you are living a full life, that you are fulfilled, that you are not lonely. Socrates didn’t seem to agree. He said, “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” And he lived back in 450ish BC. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing people today dash around a lot faster than they did back in his time. Thoreau also addressed the subject, “It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?”

Honestly, I try to avoid using the word busy. It’s never felt like a word I wanted to use to describe my life. It’s full, exciting and dynamic, but not overloaded with busyness. I still have time to self-reflect and think about my choices. If you look up busy in Webster’s, definition #4 says, “Full of distracting detail.” That intrigues me. Does being busy distract you from living the life you want to lead? I’ve had acquaintances who described themselves as “busy” but didn’t seem to get anything out of the busyness or do anything they really wanted to do.

Sometimes I wonder if people get addicted to being busy, to never slowing down long enough to figure out where they are going and if it’s a place they want to go to. But hey, maybe I’m off the mark here, maybe it’s good to be busy doing something all the time.

Not sure if your life is busy or satisfying?

Try following yourself for a day. Write down everything you do, why you’re doing it and what you think would happen if you didn’t do it. Kind of a mini self-evaluation. Then cross check it with things you’d like to be doing. Do the lists match?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Hey lovers of life!

A fun woman I follow on Twitter, picked a word for the day. On a whim, I decided to pick one too! Unpredictable. Today I’m going to mix up my routine as much as I can. Maybe start my daily walk going a different direction. Read a book backwards. Eat desert first. Wear two different socks. Go through the self-service at the supermarket two times. Write an essay beginning with the last sentence. Do three twirls on my way to the mailbox. Make a to do list with only things I WANT to do on it, ad infinitum.

Take a look at your own predictable behavior. Can you mix it up? The best thing about changing my life up is that I get to see things from a different vantage point. You know those “see if you can find the differences between the two photos” exercises at the back of magazines? I often turn the page upside down. It bring a new perspective and makes it easy to find some of the harder to see differences. Reach out and say, “hi” first. Sit in a different seat if you take a class.

Just now I turned to the last page of a book I’ve been reading “forever” called Agenda For A New Economy. Been stuck in the middle for about 4 months. Last two lines?

“We have the power to turn this world around for the sake of ourselves and our children. We are the ones we have been waiting for.” Good words to start the day with. I’m a huge advocate of rescuing yourself. Just get the ball rolling. If it isn’t rolling nothing will happen.

Go forth and be unpredictable!

Muse thx, G.

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