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A Note from Deanna
Thank you
for your commitment to Living With Intention!
So many
exciting things to share, so little e-zine space.
I’ll do my best to be brief, but I’m having a joy
seizure right now, bursting with excitement to share with
you a couple of very cool developments in my life.
1)
My new
book, Living With
Intention: Designing
a Wildly Fulfilling and Remarkably Successful Life, will
be available next Tuesday, November 29th!
We are conducting a huge campaign that day to try to
reach the bestseller list on both Amazon.com and
Barnesandnoble.com—no small task, but we’re up to the
challenge. Oh,
and we need your help! Anyone
who purchases the book that day will have immediate access
to a phenomenal library of free personal and professional
development resources from experts like Jack Canfield
(bestselling author of The
Success Principles and
the Chicken Soup
for the Soul series), Cherie Carter-Scott (author of If
Life is a Game, These are the Rules), and Hale Dwoskin
(bestselling author of The
Sedona Method), among others.
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Please
mark your calendar and log onto www.deannadavis.net
on Tuesday, November 29th to reserve your
copy of Living
With Intention, as well as hundreds of dollars
in complementary bonus gifts.
You will receive a special notice reminding
you of this campaign…please share it with anyone
you know who deserves to live a wildly fulfilling
and remarkably successful life.
We would love your help to make this dream a
reality. Watch
your in-box on Tuesday for all the details!
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2)
It’s
official. Add “blogger” to my bio.
Thanks to my exquisitely talented virtual assistant,
Cynthia, I have just launched my Living With Intention blog
(or “web log” for those of you who are unfamiliar with
the term, as I was until recently!).
It’s part information, part humorous musings on my
perpetual life struggles and adventures, and part journal.
Yes, you, too, can listen in on the somewhat confusing
banter that infiltrates my brain on a regular basis.
Sound intriguing?
Disturbing? Interesting
enough to take a look? Just
visit http://deannadavis.typepad.com/living_with_intention/.
In particular, take a look at the first entry
(November 18th) for a quick overview of my benign,
near-meltdown the day before my book signing.
Share your comments as you see fit.
Looking forward to seeing you in blog-land.
In this
issue of Living With
Intention, I’d like to share a quick story about the
single most important aspect of living a wildly fulfilling
and remarkably successful life—a powerful perspective.
The second article today focuses on the unbelievable
success that can be yours when you just
ask. And,
don’t miss out on a few other ways to create a life you
love.
If you like what you read here, please encourage others
to subscribe! If
you’re not a subscriber, here’s your chance to sign up
for this free monthly publication - click
here.
In this week's issue:
Ideas
for a Wildly Fulfilling Life…
Powerful
Perspective
It was a
glorious Mother’s Day morning when I realized how
powerfully perspective can frame a situation.
I had been awakened to a lovely breakfast in bed,
provided by my husband Michael and my one-year-old daughter
Malina, and had been treated like a queen all morning.
It all seemed decadent and delightful to me.
As the morning wore on, though, I started feeling a
little under the weather.
I was convinced I would shake it off, so I continued
to celebrate my special day with my little girl and sent my
husband out for a jog. Moments
later, tragically and unexpectedly, it hit me.
I lamented my fate when I succumbed to the fact that
I had sadly acquired a full-fledged case of the stomach flu.
I’ll spare you the details (yes, you can safely
continue reading), but rest assured that what ensued was not
pretty. I tried
to wait it out, fake it out, block it out, but that feisty
little virus wouldn’t relent.
It gradually overtook my resolve to prove I was
invincible.
Now, my
daughter, age one at the time, had never been privy to such
a sad display of misfortune.
As such, the experience was a bit unpleasant for her,
and, as you can guess, for me.
I counted the minutes until my husband would return
so I could pass the parenting torch to him before crawling
into the dark solace of my bedroom to brood. He
returned home to find us upstairs, me in a heap on the floor
and Malina sitting next to me, patting my back and offering
toddler-brand comfort. He
quickly assessed the situation and stepped in to help,
gently saying, “Malina, let’s go downstairs and play
now. Mommy
doesn’t feel good and she needs to rest.”
She looked
down at me, up at him, and back down at me.
She then threw a rather knowing glance in his
direction and said, without hesitation, “Mommy’s been
drinking out of the toilet.”
She said it with this underlying tone that suggested,
“Dad, just between you and me, I’m thinking she’d feel
a heck of a lot better if she didn’t drink out of the
toilet.” It
took me a moment to realize what she had just shared.
I started laughing harder than I thought possible,
given my less than favorable circumstance.
My husband did the same.
So did Malina, who, beneath her giggles, seemed to be
saying, “Yeah, yuck it up all you want, but you and I both
know what caused this. Get
your act together.”
After
clawing my way back to health, I realized how well this
incident illustrated the power of your perspective in any
situation. From my
perspective, I had been enrolled in the
germ-of-the-month-club without my consent, and it was
wreaking havoc on my idyllic image of and desire for what
Mothers’ Day should be.
From Malina’s
perspective, I was making an ill-advised decision to do
something I had adamantly advised her against.
Drinking out of the toilet is against the rules.
It’s just not a good idea, no matter how thirsty
you are.
I started
thinking about the wide array of things that can color your
perspective and, subsequently, your experience in life.
True, your past experiences and current vantage point
will always impact your version of reality, just as they did
with Malina and I that day.
My life experience had taught me what it meant to
have the flu, and from my vantage point, it was tragically
very clear what was happening.
Her life experience had given her no such basis from
which to assess the situation, and she was quite convinced
that drinking out of the toilet was simply a bad idea that I
was now paying for. Dearly,
I might add.
There are
many other things that can impact your perspective besides
past experiences and current vantage points.
A powerful perspective requires that you learn, with
each experience, that sometimes what you think you see is wholly inaccurate.
It’s also about asking good questions and making
conscious decisions about how you choose to view the world
and your place in it. It’s
about using proven ways to adopt a powerful
perspective—like choosing an outlook of optimism,
practicing gratitude, and finding meaning in all you
do—that will set the stage for living the life of your
dreams.
Take a look
at books like Martin Seligman’s Authentic
Happiness, Cherie Carter-Scott's Negaholics: How To
Overcome Negativity and Turn Your Life Around, Viktor
Frankl’s Man’s
Search for Meaning, and my own book, Living
With Intention, for an array of ideas that can help you
adopt a powerful perspective.
Even
if each day
doesn’t necessarily measure up to your standards (like
Mother’s Day didn’t for me that year), the grand
total of your days can be anything you want it to be,
given thought, choice, and a powerful perspective.
How can you create those thoughts, choices, and
perspectives in your life?
All it takes is awareness and action to
make your present and your future a remarkably different
experience than your past.
Ideas
for A Remarkably Successful Life…
Just Ask
As I have
been joyously—although madly—preparing for my book
launch and promotional campaign, I realized that there is an
unbelievably powerful success tool out there that everyone
has access to, but few people actually capitalize on in an
effective way. That
is the ability to “just ask.”
I have been
literally stunned by the cadre of supportive people out
there who seemed to be eagerly waiting by the phone for my
call so that they could sign on to help me with my book
promotion. These
are people who really didn’t need
to give me the time of day.
Rather, they are people who simply love what they do,
are passionate about helping others, and who resolutely just
want to share in the spirit of giving that makes the world a
better—and more productive—place to live.
So many
people are afraid to ask for help, for fear of looking
stupid, seeming needy, or because they don't want to be
turned down. The
fact of the matter is that all successful people have been
where you are…they started somewhere, and someone at some
point offered them the support, mentorship, or encouragement
they needed to take the next step toward their destiny.
As such, they’re often pleased to help others who
can benefit from their expertise.
What does it take to effectively ask for help?
Not much…all you need is:
1)
A
great attitude and honest commitment to creating a win-win
opportunity both for you and for them.
If you are asking for their help, how might you offer
to support them? You
would be surprised at the extensive value you can provide to
people through your knowledge, network of contacts, energy,
creativity, or other “no-cost” resources.
Look for ways that you can offer a resource in
exchange for a resource.
2)
The
clear understanding that sometimes people will, indeed, say
“no” (although it’s remarkably less often than you
think it will be). In
those cases, truly successful people simply say, “Big
deal. I’m no
worse off than when I asked the question.
I’ll try someone else, or I’ll make this request
at a different time, because sometimes, ‘no’ simply
means ‘not right now.’”
Remember that so-called “rejection” is really a
neutral experience when you look at it.
If you ask someone for support and don’t get it,
you’re no better or worse off than before you posed the
request. So keep
trying until the scales tip in your favor towards the
“better off” side of things!
3)
An
iron-clad intention to secure support or resources.
Recall that the definition of intention is “a
determination to act in a certain way.”
Intention requires both deciding
to seek support and doing
everything you can (in respectful, creative ways) to
secure it. So,
set the intention, take the action, and see what magic
ensues.
4)
A
spirit of positive connection, good will, respect, and
energy. People
respond to honest requests that are filled with integrity
and possibility. You
don’t need to be as polished as you do polite, and you
don’t need to be as sophisticated as you do sincere.
A genuine, heartfelt appeal will win people over
nearly every time and pave the way for unprecedented
success.
Give
these ideas a try and see for yourself how very simple it
can be to ask, to give, and to receive.
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Resources That Will Change Your Life
In
the spirit of the last story, I will simply make one
last, heartfelt appeal for your support and help in
spreading the word about the Living
With Intention book campaign on Tuesday, November 29th.
This book was a labor of love and the
culmination of a lifetime dream for me, and I want to
help as many people as possible with the information
and inspiration it contains.
I will also be donating a portion of the
proceeds to two marvelous charitable causes, so by
helping yourself to this new resource, you will also
be helping others.
Thanks in advance for any assistance you might
provide! See
you on Tuesday, November 29th, at www.deannadavis.net. |
Women Making a Difference...
Ideas
to Help You Thrive
Poetry, Art, and Life Wisdom
By Mary Anne Radmacher
As many of you know, my book was founded in part on an
unforgettable and thoroughly thought-provoking poem called Live With Intention, by Mary Anne Radmacher.
I will share the words of this now world-famous poem
with you here, and emphatically encourage you to visit Mary
Anne’s site, www.maryanneradmacher.com,
for more information about her truly inspiring and
life-changing work. If
you have holiday shopping to do, New Years’ Resolutions to
keep, or treasured people to connect with, Mary Anne’s
words and artistic representations are the perfect fit.
My sincere thanks to Mary Anne for her kindness,
spirit, wisdom, and support.
To all of my phenomenal readers, please accept this
gift of her words and allow them to guide your transition
from this year into the next:
live
with intention.
walk to the edge.
listen hard.
laugh.
practice wellness.
play with abandon.
continue to learn.
appreciate your friends.
choose with no regret.
live as if
this is all there is.
-mary anne radmacher-
Best wishes
for a blissful holiday season and many thanks for your
support of my passion and my work!
Copyright ©
2005 all rights
reserved.
Published by Deanna Davis,
PhD, co-owner of Applied
Insight. Deanna is a life and business
coach, professional speaker and writer who helps people
design wildly fulfilling and remarkably successful lives -
on their own terms. Deanna is an admitted laughaholic and a
strong proponent of adding chocolate as a key component of
the USDA Food Pyramid. For information about her
professional speaking and coaching services, contact Deanna
at
deanna@appliedinsight.net
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You
may freely distribute the articles in this newsletter as
long as they are carry the following notice: Copyright 2005
Deanna Davis, PhD, www.appliedinsight.net.
Applied
Insight
104 S. Freya St., Turquoise Flag Building #226-B
Spokane, Washington 99202
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