Greatness or Fear... Choose!

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"Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must."

    ~ Seth Godin; Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Seth Godin released his latest book yesterday and although I will go out and get it soon, I had to write about the above quote from the book now. It strikes me as summing up exactly what is draining people of their greatness: fear. The last two weeks I have been commuting downtown for a gig and what strikes me as I ride the train is how beaten down people look. I live in a nice suburb, so it is not like these folks are probably not off to good jobs and that they don't have lovely homes, etc. It's just that they look lifeless and exhausted (even on the way home).

It's sad when people give up on finding their greatness and living their lives as works of art, so they just settle on muddling through. Don't get me wrong in every life there are times when we all need to just coast, but that people stop looking or give up the hunt is a tragedy.

Brings me back to two of my biggest life lessons:

1) Life is short... love well!  Learned this from losing ones I loved and wondering--what am I waiting for? We only have so much time and we never know how long that will be so... giddy up! This is in regards to all aspects of life but especially when it comes to love. Romantic love, love of ourselves, love for our life's work, EVERYTHING!

2) Map It Out! When I was in a discombobulated time in my life I created Me Mapping to map out my life and actually see what I was spending my energy, time, money, attention, etc. on. Looking at my life on paper made some things very clear. It is not like then everything magically fell into place but now I am closer to decluttering what is not working, engaging with the important things in my life, and finding myself more grateful for what is already working.

I couldn't agree with Seth more. It's time we all draw our own map, sidestep the fear, claim our brilliance, create our art, and truly get our GREATNESS. Quotes like this one is why I am in his Tribe.

*this is inside cover of Seth's last book Tribes and you can't tell but in the top left corner is a photo of me :)