Consider the evolution of awesome

Awesome is a great word. It used to mean "eliciting awe," and implied a mix of inspiration, fear, exhilaration: like I felt the time I used my pocket knife to free a huge buck deer that got it's antlers tangled in the ropes supporting a pine tree. It was awesome.

When I was a kid, awesome took on "lower-case A" status and came to mean "cool" or "really good." All the kids were saying it and that use has stood the test of time. I have a coworker who uses awesome to indicate satisfaction with the successful transmission of an e-mail.

But I think awesome is becoming new again. Today if often means something like "stands out in a very special way." It carries the implication that you're being super effective just by being yourself. And that's the key: being yourself is a very important part of it.

This is encouraging. It means that every single one of us can and should be awesome. It means that being awesome is no more difficult than simply being who you are, striving for your dreams, developing your talents, overcoming your fears, spending your energy trying to bring out into the open as much as possible of what you have to offer.

Do that and you will elicit awe, that mix of inspiration, fear and exhilaration. Keep doing it and you'll find yourself surrounded by others who do too. That's where we're headed: from Awesome, through awesome back to Awesome again.

Ever forward.

Posted via email from Ever Forward

Success hounds your steps intent on devouring you and showing you that you were right to keep going.

Success shadows failure where ever it goes. People who never give up understand this. The people who work every day to bring what they have to the world keep doing it because they understand this truth. Sure they experience failure, defeat, discouragement. They may even get overwhelmed. But they endure because of an abiding sense of possibility.

Failure and discouragement imply their own opposites. If you fail, it's because you stuck your neck out. If you're discouraged it's because some inspiration motivated you to try.

Be warned. You are being hunted. Success hounds your steps intent on devouring you and showing you that you were right to keep going.

Ever forward.

Posted via email from Ever Forward

What's the point of not being awesome?

Is it is easier to not live up to your potential? What about all the envy and armchair negativity that goes with it? Tuning out with television can take the edge off, but the sense of unrest and frustration that comes from rotting potential is always a grating, uncomfortable feeling that never really goes away.

Is there some benefit in not bothering to be awesome? Is it really harder to strive for your best, most creative, most incredible?

I really don't think so.

Ever forward.

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Imagine if creativity for its own sake were an agreed upon and highly regarded social value.

Evolving your freedom and taking chances on your passion are the best things you can do for yourself, your loved ones, and for the world. 

Consider what you think and feel inside. What happens in there that you don't like? What is about you that stands in the way of you? Of you prospering and thriving, of you unleashing your creativity, of hatching and achieving your dreams? 

Who wouldn't want to unlock their best possible self? The one that doesn't hold back on being awesome. Imagine a world where all of us, or even most of us, are doing that work. The result would be a world so totally different, a society so transformed, that I don't think we'd even recognize it.

Imagine if creativity for its own sake were an agreed upon and highly regarded social value.

Ever forward. 

Posted via email from Ever Forward