Curious about Exuberance and Exhilaration: Do You Know What They Feel Like? If So, Have You Experienced Them?

Definitions first:

• Exuberance : The state of being exuberant; an overflowing quantity; a copious or excessive production or supply; superabundance; richness; as, an exuberance of joy, of fancy, or of foliage.
• Exhilaration: The act of enlivening the spirits; the act of making glad or cheerful; a gladdening. The state of being enlivened or cheerful.

Yesterday, when planning today’s blog, I was experiencing both exuberance and exhilaration because of feeling great physically and the two new programs I am working on. The first is a great marketing class given by my favorite marketing guru, Robert Middleton. The second presents the life-changing Happy, Healthy and Wealthy Game.

Both motivate and inspire me to produce. I experience an exuberance of joy and the exhilaration that enlivens.

Who would have thought that this state could have been multiplied to extreme by a mere machine? Today it happened.

When I started up my computer, it achieved a block before it finished coming to life. Nothing would work. If I clicked on an icon, it would disappear. When I clicked to launch my browser, nothing happened. I shut it down with the switch and started over, and it seemed even worse. I tried everything I could think of to no avail.

I approached panic. I will not bore you with the technological details. After close to two hours of trying everything I could imagine, I celebrated exhilaration and exuberance - big time. The computer and its programs had come to life and returned to normalcy. I kissed and hugged it, and here I am!

Instead of writing what I learned as a techie, I am now going to return to our topic. It is time to celebrate by sharing some meaningful quotations:

• “The riches of life, the love and joy and exhilaration of life can be found only with an upward look. This is an exciting world. It's cram-packed with opportunity. Great moments wait around every corner.” - Richard M. DeVos
• “Exuberance is better than taste.” - Gustave Flaubert
• “Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.” - George S. Patton
• “You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world.” - Sheilah Graham

A few more with an interesting twist:

• "Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance." - Anne Sexton
• "Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep." - Edward Hoagland
• "Caution, not exuberance, should be our fiscal motto." - John Chafee
• "I had an opportunity to watch a liftoff. I remember just feeling this sense of exhilaration when the shuttle went off." - Christa McAuliffe
• "I have no objection to a little exuberance in the young learner." - Quintilian

Two for you to chew on during the week:

• “Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.” - Yoko Ono
• “Time has been transformed, and we have changed; it has advanced and set us in motion; it has unveiled its face, inspiring us with bewilderment and exhilaration.” - Kahlil Gibran

May you have a week filled with exuberance and exhilaration and no computer problems!

Curious about Audacity: Are You Audacious? Try Adding Some Audacity to Your Life or Some Life to Your Audacity

“Definition of Audacity: Daring spirit, resolution, or confidence; venturesomeness. Or: Reckless daring; presumptuous impudence; -- implying a contempt of law or moral restraints.”

May I suggest that you embrace audacity and start making it work for you.

I find it quite curious that along with the positive portion of the definition is added a rather negative connotation with the words “reckless, impudence and contempt.” Yes, I feel that it does take courage to live our lives with audacity, but it also adds excitement, adventure and success.

Even Benjamin Disraeli stated, “Success is the child of audacity.”

And Publilius Syrus (85 B.C. to 45 A.D.) wrote, “Audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear.”

I take part in many packed teleseminars and am amazed that when a leader or facilitator asks for feedback and/or questions that so few of the participants respond. As a presenter, I also find this to be true. I know it does depend upon how comfortable your listeners are with you and the subject, but it also is a sign that they lack the confidence or audacity to speak up.

Before I share some of the few quotations I found - yes, there were only a few compared with the huge number I have found for other themes - let me give you the definition for audacious:

“Audacious: Daring; spirited; adventurous. Bold in wickedness; presumptuous; impudent; insolent.”

Again, the second part of the definition seems quite negative and it may be that this interpretation of the word is the reason so few add audacity to the way they act and think.

Here are some of the quotations. And, thankfully, they are all positive.

• “With audacity one can undertake anything, but not do everything.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
• “I was young and audacious. So I created a way to express my concerns outside of the establishment.” - Joey Skaggs
• “The first quality that is needed is audacity.” - Winston Churchill
• “Freedom is a crusade, to be carried on enthusiastically around the earth. These are Americans who have not lost the enthusiasm and audacity of the American Revolution.” - Sargent Shriver
• “Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.” - Karl Von Clausewitz

In addition, here are a few with a different twist:

• “If men knew all that women think, they would be twenty times more audacious.” - Alphonse Karr
• “I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.” - John Dewey
• “Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.” - Jean Cocteau

Recently, I watched a video of James A. Ray giving a presentation, where his theme was, “It’s not what you do. It’s how you do it.” I am urging you to do what you do with audacity and you will be overwhelmed by the outcomes.

Here are some parting quotations to work on this coming week:

"Audacity, more audacity, always audacity." - Georges Jacques Danton (1759-1794)

“The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor.” - Christian Nestell Bovee

Have an audacious week!

Curious about Awareness: How Aware Are You of Yourself, Your Life, Your Path and What Is Happening around You?

“To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.” - Eric Hoffer

“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.” - Aristotle

I just experienced an incredibly exciting week! Even though I was busier than usual catching up after my four glorious days of being away at the National Storytelling Festival - listening to stories of all flavors - I also took part in two life-changing programs.

The first is Robert Middleton’s Fearless Marketing Program and the second is the Happy, Healthy and Wealthy Game. Both have already heightened my awareness. Both require that we start by examining and assessing where we are right now - our starting point.

I feel that they are many facets to awareness and becoming aware and, to my delight, the experts have written and stated a plethora of thoughts and ideas about “awareness.” So, following is a sampling of the great quotations I found.

General thoughts about “awareness” and its strengths:

• “The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.” - Lao Tzu
• “Whatever we are waiting for - peace of mind, contentment, grace, the inner awareness of simple abundance - it will surely come to us, but only when we are ready to receive it with an open and grateful heart.” - Sarah Ban Breathnach
• “There is an awareness within us that is part of a universal awareness - we are sleeping giants!” - Henry Reed
• “The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.” - Nathaniel Branden
• “Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.” - Bodhidharma

A few twists and other areas of thoughts on “awareness”:

• “The first issue is the awareness level the general public has of things they can and should do to protect their systems and network connections.” - John W. Thompson
• “We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.” - Martha Graham
• “Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.” - Emily Post
• “Education has always served to increase my awareness. Teaching helps me better understand what it is that I do.” - Ron Carter
• “Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.” - Christopher Morley
• “The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.” - Paul Cezanne

How about developing “awareness?” What works for you? And, what are the advantages?

• “I think you're born with a certain sensitivity and awareness and perception, and I think you have to develop the manual skill.” - Shel Silverstein
• “Solitude sharpens awareness of small pleasures otherwise lost.” - Kevin Patterson
• “A lot of people allow themselves to become dull because they fear pain, but pain is a form of awareness.” - Don Van Vliet
• “Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.” - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Awareness of how we are doing is not always easy to accept. However, when we become more aware, we realize a wholeness and beauty in our daily lives. As always, I will end with a couple of great quotations for all of us to work on this coming week. Let me know how you do.

“I am interested in the notion that people can become so obsessed by their world that they lose sense and awareness of how they appear to other people. They're so earnest about it. But that's true of so many things.” - Christopher Guest

“Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.” - Stephen Covey

Curious about Significance: Do You Know and Understand What Holds Significance for You?

“What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is, as a sensitive instrument responsive to the world's beauty, is everything!” - H. P. Lovecraft

“Significance” - what a loaded and important word and concept! Why do I make this statement?

I think what led me to being curious about significance is that I am starting to participate in two new programs for me - one about marketing and the other a transitional goal setting game. As it is, I always seem to be overloaded with projects. So adding two more endeavors to my weeks will be a challenge, but will provide a driving force to examine my priorities. I have to determine what actions hold the greatest significance for me and my progress.

As I thought more about this, I realized that I already practice this sorting in a plethora of ways. I receive many e-mails and e-newsletters. For each one, I distill the main thoughts and messages down to the idea(s) with the most significance. I have also learned to do this with magazines, books, teleseminars, presentations and meetings. I also realize that I need to do this with my writing, speaking, training, storytelling and marketing.

I believe that the more succinct we can be with ourselves when we are stating our purpose, our mission, our values, our intentions and our goals, the more significance our lives and work will hold.

This week, I found some differing quotations that, I feel, will get you thinking and, hopefully, spur you on to decide what holds significance for you:

• “Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.” - Herbert Read
• “The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.” - Eudora Welty
• “Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.” - Michael Korda
• “But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.” - Diane Johnson
• “I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.” - Pablo Casals

And, then there are the quotations that are a bit more unusual:

• “For me, the number three seems to have a particular significance, relevant in some strange ways to the relation between man and nature.” - Erno Rubik
• “Full, saturated colors have an emotional significance I want to avoid.” - Lucian Freud
• “A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigor and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities.” - Walter Gropius
• “If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?” - Laurence J. Peter
• “Even if you wanted to be a hermit, people come out looking for you. I don't want to cloister myself away, but it is important for me to write about issues that have universal significance. One of them that has resonated with me all my life has been the theme of injustice.” - Iris Chang
• “Just as we could have rode into the sunset, along came the Internet, and it tripled the significance of the PC.” - Andy Grove
• “I believe every era has its significance and the same holds true for players and coaches.” - Sachin Tendulkar

Ask yourself what holds significance for you? What messages and parts of your life and work are significant to you and others? I believe that we are all significant and that we can pursue significance for ourselves and everyone who is affected by us.

“Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.” - Arthur Eddington

Curious about Reality: What Is It for You? And, Do You Accept It?

Definition of Reality: (1) The state or quality of being real; actual being or existence of anything, in distinction from mere appearance; fact. (2) That which is real; an actual existence; that which is not imagination, fiction, or pretense; that which has objective existence, and is not merely an idea.

I do realize that the above definitions from a reliable dictionary are literal and true. However, after searching for relevant quotations - of all of the themes I have pursued in my blogs and e-newsletters have never had so many to choose from - I have discovered that reality means a lot more than “being real.”

I am writing about reality, because, even though I don’t have or watch TV, I hear and read all the time about the so-called “Reality Shows.” Do they depict “Reality?” The snippets I have seen while traveling and have heard from those who watch them, don’t seem like reality to me. But, that’s another story.

I read a huge number of books and magazines that deal with business. Recently the book, 9 Lies That Are Holding Your Business Back ... and the Truth That Will Set It Free, was suggested as reading for a new marketing program I’ve signed up for, given by Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing.

I am excited, because the authors, Steve Chandler and Sam Beckford, tell it like it is - the reality of owning and running a small business. Interesting, however, are the number of stories about those business owners who don’t accept the reality of the “Lies” and eventually go out of business because they believe the lies and keep on doing what they have always done.

So, I ask you, what is your reality? How important is it to you? Will you accept a different reality?

Let me share some of the huge number of interesting quotations I found:

• “Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.” - Beverly Sills
• “Other people's opinion of you does not have to become your reality.” - Les Brown
• “If you don't change, reality in the end forces that change upon you.” - Stuart Wilde
• “Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.” - Anais Nin
• “Don't Take Anything Personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.” - Don Miguel Ruiz
• “Few people have the imagination for reality.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Some quotations from artists, writers and poets:

• “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.” - C. S. Lewis
• “The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.” - Tom Clancy
• “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” - George Bernard Shaw
• “In reality art is always for everyone and for no one.” - Eugenio Montale
• “I accept reality and dare not question it.” - Walt Whitman
• “The space within becomes the reality of the building.” - Frank Lloyd Wright

And, here are some quotations that refer to work and business:

• “You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality.” - Walt Disney
• “We must start with the reality that corporations cannot guarantee anyone a lifetime job any more than corporations have a guarantee of immortality.” - John W. Snow
• “We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we're in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There's no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either.” - Steve Ballmer

Of course, I want to leave you with some quotations to think about this coming week:

• “Through some strange and powerful principle of ‘mental chemistry’ which she has never divulged, nature wraps up in the impulse of strong desire, ‘that something’ which recognizes no such word as ‘impossible,’ and accepts no such reality as failure.” - Napoleon Hill
• “If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.” - William James
• “Life's experiences are intended to make you eventually face yourself. Face reality!” - Harold Sherman

Do have an incredible week! And, remember, I would love to hear from your.