How can my product make someone’s story better?
How can my service make someone’s story better?
How can my idea make someone’s story better?
How can I make someone’s story better?
This is the one question that creates the business model, the business plan, and is, itself, the culture of a business.
Beauty, at its core, stands for and means that which is right. Not the kind of beauty that is graded in Miss America pageants, but the kind that unfolds in moments of awe.
The next time you hear someone say “look how beautiful” – think of them saying “look how right.” That, after all, is what they’re trying to convey when they’re lost in orchids, sunsets, mountains, or a child’s laughter, right? Such rightness makes us tremble.
So we give…we give ourself to pointing out, outlining, exposing, sharing and creating this kind of beauty. For her role is endless. She’s needed in our businesses, she’s now a must in our products, she is service, she sings in our art, she’s the one special part of our latest favorite song, she’s the purpose of poetry, and she makes our head nod up and down in our fulfillment.
When you get it right you’ve got yourself something beautiful. And when you’ve created beauty you’ve done something right.
Beauty is the universal agreement to such rightness. Put her into all things.
Monday, for me, always holds some freshness. Actually all mornings do as well.
For most people, it appears that simply starting is the hardest part of any journey. I feel that a bit of that burden is lifted when you start from a place of newness – a place that’s fresh.
Yes, all of your steps that you have taken got you to where you are on this Monday. But the gospel of Monday is that your steps taken today will take you wherever you decide and choose them to. We can’t hear that enough can we? We decide and choose our reality.
We probably need to ask ourselves what do we want next Monday and what do we want 10 years of Mondays from now.
We can’t change the past, but 7 days from today they will refer to today as the past. And like or not, we all are holding the pen, in real-time, that’s about to write out this Monday.
The old is gone and the future is waiting for you to write it. You are the author, narrator, and protagonist.
Yesterday is the soil our ideas today grow in and garden for tomorrow.
When you think about yesterday – think data – think trends – think fulfillment.
When you think about today – think rain – think energy – think growth.
When you think about tomorrow – think bloom – think hope – think harvest.
is no.
That’s tough, though, when we want to, and at some point need to, say yes to email, text, people, friends, relationships, golf, twitter, and for some of you – The Kardashians. The need to be kept up with, right?
This is where noise comes in. Noise is the byproduct of giving into your wants at the inappropriate time. Noise is anything that robs your musical moments. Noise is out for itself, and ridiculously jealous of your music. Noise knows nothing of meaning or fulfillment.
Look at that…no is the first two letters of noise (just saw that….interesting).
Music, on the other hand, comes from doing what you have to do when you have to do it.
To give proper attention to the music we all long to make, we must say no to noise.
No song ever wrote itself.
No goal was ever obtained through occasional proper action.
So in a world that appears to have a million yes boxes to check off, where does one start?
Shrink.
Go small.
Have one box to check. Say no to the other 999,999 boxes.
Smaller worlds lead to bigger lives and even bigger music.
Ashton.Gustafson 