Take Back Your Life!

“You must go after your wish. As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning.” ~ Barbara Sher

Can you imagine a world where no one ever had a dream to achieve something great?

Most of what you see wouldn’t even exist.

Recently, I rewatched Flash Dance, an 1983 movie that got panned by critics but went on to be loved by the people, making it the third highest grossing film in 1983. When I first watched it I was enamored with the dancing. This time I was enamored with Alex’s dream process.

A welder by day, dancer in a club by night, Alex had a dream to attend the prestigious Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance and Repertory. But didn’t really have the guts to apply, worried by her lack of formal training. Her boss turned boyfriend reads her the riot act when she whines about not being good enough to apply to the program.

“When you give up your dreams, you die, ” he says and walks away.

That riles her up to apply and, of course, she does the most amazing emotionally pumped up audition in the history of auditions. It’s so good, I’m not sure she even needs to attend the school anymore, but as the film fades to black, I presume she gets in and does.

We all seem to have dreams as children and some later as adults, but too many of us reject our own dreams as impossible, without even trying to achieve them.

I fell into that chasm for awhile myself.

It’s easy.

You stop believing in your own dream and so do your friends. You all end up living the life of quiet desperation Henry Thoreau warned us about 1885.

However, if you are lucky, something will reactivate your dream — at any age — and you will have a second or even third chance to pursue it.

No matter what anyone tells you, it is never too late to go after your dreams.

Stan Lee created his first comic at 39. Laura Ingalls Wilder published her first little house on the Prairie book at 65. Susan Boyle won Britain’s Got Talent at 47. Vera Wang entered the fashion design industry at 40. Julia Child didn’t have her first cookbook published until 50. Charles Darwin was 50 when he published On The Origin of the Species. Ray Kroc was 59 when he bought his first MacDonald’s. Grandma Moses started painting at 78. Gladys Burrill ran her first marathon at 86.

Thankfully, they didn’t listen to the naysayers who have given up on their own lives.

If something “lights you up,” do it. I can almost guarantee it will make all the difference in your life.

Start with baby steps and keep going … It will be the best of times, it will be the worst of times. At times you will want to give up. These are the times to steel yourself and keep going. Many people give up right before they achieve their dream. That is often the darkest of times.

Want to share your dreams? I find giving them voice can be a good way to get them rolling again. Add them below!

Muse Thanks, Giulietta

Are You A Slave To The Mundane?

In May, I went to the memorial services for a fine young man who died too young in a motorcycle accident.

As grieving friends and family got up to speak about the contributions he made to the world around him, the same refrain kept coming up. He was known for saying, “Live At The End Of Your Comfort Zone” and by all accounts lived his life that way.

It is indeed a fabulous way to live your life. A way to feel alive and enjoy every morsel life has to offer.

I wish more people adopted that creed of living. Instead, most of us are terrified to leave the comfort zone we draw around us at an increasingly early age.

My grandfather came to the US from Italy at 17, to find a better life. Alone, he worked hard, saved money, opened his own company and paid for the passage of many of his family and cousins. That took courage and guts!

Today, I think he would be talked out of doing that, which would be a shame.

We are all so concerned about living safely, that we have forgotten how to live at all.

Sometimes to live a life with meaning, you have to live what others might call dangerously.

Dangerously might mean travel or it might mean challenging the status quo. Or talking to strangers. Or standing up for the defenseless. It can mean physical danger or it can mean emotional or financial danger.

The men and women who have successful companies usually put everything they owned on the line to get their business up and running. They knew that taking that risk was the only way to get where they wanted.

How often do we have the courage to tell someone what we really feel? We say, “Oh, it is nothing.” When it is anything but that. If you think about it, sharing your feelings isn’t that big of a deal, but we’ve turned it into something huge, something we should not do. And it has serious consequences down the road.

I entered life living dangerously, forging streams, climbing small hills, exploring the woods, expressing myself, telling the truth about how I saw things. Today, kids are pretty much  forbidden from doing the childhood activities I took for granted. Life has inherent risks, my husband always says, “It is the price of admission.”

There is a quote by Charles Lindbergh, “A life without risks, is a life not worth living.”

Ask yourself, do you live a safe life, do you live a dangerous life or do you live something in between?

And is that okay with you? Is there anything you long to do, but do not because you are afraid to venture out of your cozy comfort zone?

Muse thanks, Giulietta

ps, in honor of this fine young man, I have started a painting called, “Live at the end of your comfort zone.”

pps, if you want to write, please join me in July for Writing Under The Stars. If you child would love to paint whatever they wish, please have them join me for Wild Expressive Painting for Children.

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” – Oscar Wilde

About 7 years ago, I ran a local program called, “Let Go Of Who You Aren’t: Be Your Perfectly Imperfect Self.” It had a few brave people in attendance. Honestly, like so many of my ideas it was simply ahead of its time. More and more, I’m hearing people discuss that topic. Sometimes, I’m just too early for the party.

Okay, we come into the world screaming to be ourselves and for awhile we are. Little kids tend to be honest and forthright. They speak their own little truths and its so refreshing. I worked with some children a few years ago. One of the little girls — an old soul in a young body — gave me a wonderful compliment: “You let us go wild in a good way.”

I loved that!

As for myself, I was wild for a lot longer than most because my mother did not send me to kindergarten. I went briefly to a nursery school in the bottom of our church where all we did was sit on our blankets, take naps and eat crackers. I remember doing little else and I have an excellent memory. (more…)

“To live a life of excellence, you will have to take risks. You will have to step into new territory and climb new mountains. If you’re up to something that’s as big as you are, it’s going to be scary. If it feels perfectly safe, you are probably underachieving. To leave your mark in the world, you will have to stand someplace you’ve never been willing to stand before. And you will have to have the courage to aspire to excellence.”

~ Debbie Ford

Despite all the May/June high school and college graduation speeches that encourage those graduating to go for the brass ring, doing so rarely happens in a life time.

The problem with those types of speeches is that everything leading up to them often runs counter to living such a bold and daring life. Those speeches wouldn’t be needed, if we encouraged our young to take chances. The look and feel of young life would be totally different than it is now. Thus, the inspirational speech the adults give to the young as a reminder to themselves to take risks before it is too late. (Note to self.)

Most of our lives are way too scripted and safety oriented. I read a few months ago that colleges are now looking for students who are different! They want something more off beat than the well-rounded students getting all A’s they’ve wanted for several decades. Fascinating but welcomed. Students will be able to follow their own strengths, perhaps.

If you want to always be safe, physically, emotionally, financially, your life will be driven by a lot of fear, a fear of losing instead of gaining. Most folks who make it big in business at one point risked most of the money they had. (more…)

“People rarely succeed unless they have fun with what they are doing.”
~ Dale Carnegie

I view every day as a chance to have fun. What is fun to me might not to be fun to you and vice versa. And that is okay. Only you can decide what passes fun muster for you.

So many are being encouraged to follow generic lives with generic experiences and generic responses to achieve generic accolades given out by folks usually living generic, un-fun lives themselves.

Does that sound at all like you? Never? Sometimes? All the time? (more…)

Believe In The Beauty of Your Own Dreams!