“Trust thyself:  every heart vibrates to that iron string. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prompt:  If there’s no enthusiasm in what you do, it won’t be remarkable and certainly won’t connect with people on an emotional basis. But, if you put that magic energy into all of your work, you can create something that touches people on a deeper level. How can you bring MORE enthusiasm into your work? What do you have to think or believe about your work to be totally excited about it? Answer it now. (Author: Mars Dorian)

Passion + Purpose = Good Works

Work is love made visible.  – Kahlil Gibran

Time is precious.  Passion and purpose motivate.  They push me to explore, discover and create.  Work becomes play.  That’s excitement.

Fun - Drawing by Flo

Work that I can fall in love with attracts and excites me.  I can sense it from the beginning when I’m flirting around with the possibilities of pursuing a new project or purpose.  My inner questions are always the same.  Does what I’m about to undertake appeal to my senses?  Will my attraction to it be worth the time spent with it?  How will the work make me feel? Giddy and excited?  Renewed and reawakened?  Does the work get under my skin, inside the marrow of bones, and penetrate my heart?   Will those feelings last?  Will they be the same tomorrow, next month or next year?  Or will I lose that loving feeling?

Love is fickle.  Time is wasted.  Attractions create distractions.  Nothing is quite like those first moments when work is new and feelings of enthusiasm, energy, and excitement arouse the senses and motivate the heart and mind.

Love is work.  It takes work to hold on to those first feelings.  It takes work to rekindle waning excitement.  It takes work to remain open to new possibilities on old projects.  It takes a passionate purpose to keep enthusiasm at the forefront of the work.

Time runs out.  But passion and purpose endure.  I see it in ancient art created, classic books written and people committed to good works then and now.  And that motivates me to keep doing what I love and loving what I do.  Good works, that’s what I get totally excited about and that’s what I want to do.

Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prompt: Trusting intuition and making decisions based on it is the most important activity of the creative artist and entrepreneur. (Author:  Dan Andrews)

Fall Up

We all fall.  We fall out of the womb and into life.  We fall off the edge.  We fall on bad times.  We fall prey to schemes and scrupulous scandals.

Babies learning to walk fall.  The brave baby gets back up and tries again.  The frightened one returns to the comfort of crawling a bit longer.

We fall in love.  Couples meet, passion pulls and love hits.  We fall out of love.  A heart breaks.  One lover waits, recuperates and loves again.  The other fights fear, embraces doubts and retreats to avoid losing to love repeatedly.

Drawing by Flo

We fall off the wagon.  We have vices to end and vital changes to begin.   Quit smoking and start exercising more.  Quit overeating and start dieting.  Quit procrastinating and start doing.  A routine begins and ends too soon.  A fallen few start over and finish.   Other fallen ones quit.

We all fall.  We need to fall up.  We need to emulate the baby who keeps on keeping on finally walking.  We need to fall up like those who never give up on love.   We need to keep getting back up into the wagon no matter how many times we fall out of it.

Falling down is easy, but falling up is easier.  Falling up keeps us in constant motion. Movement—a heartbeat, breath flowing, blood running through our veins—keeps us alive. And living is what it’s all about.  Keep falling up.