When you’re happy, you can start a happiness virus through your social network, according to a Harvard and UC San Diego study.
So update your Twitter and Facebook status with good things and spread the love!
No conclusive info about when you’re down, although I know that’s as good a people repellant as B.O.
"Ever feel like work requires you to stifle your personal impulses,
goals, interests, desires? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that work
must be all wood nymphs and light. But when work impedes, rather than
supports your goals, it’s time to shake things up, to look around, to
take inventory and take charge. I had a successful job;
some might call it a career, even. I was monogamously employed for
going on eight years, my entire adult-post-education-life."
If you’ve wondered how to go about pursuing work you’ll love, get comfy and sink into this deliciously fun and creative account Melea Seward wrote for SuperViva: Unemployment RULES. Her journey has led her to a Performance of a Lifetime - literally!
Please share stories of your own experiments here!
Inspired by Melea’s article, I’ve decided to spice up my life by following an impulse every day. Well, honestly I don’t have to try to do that. But it’s kind of fun to have this be an explicit goal.
This morning I was passing a crew of 5 constructions workers who were setting up one of those lit up >>> signs that tell you a lane is closed. At first the sign transfixed me, as for the first time I noticed how, up close, they look like a giant Lite Brite screen
They all smiled. I didn’t know if it was in confusion or in trying to process what I’d said. Of course they all looked very cute in that way that construction workers do. And I kept walking. Half a block later one of them drove up next to me and I turned. He was still smiling and I smiled and kept walking.
It’s only May and Heather has already reached her goal of "kicking ass in 2006." Perhaps it’s because of her strong intention, listing the goal not only on her life list but on a tshirt from the SuperViva store. As she tells it in her blog:
"I bring breakfast over and am about to sit down to eat when the
boyfriend says, "Hey, can you bring me the sharpie from over there?" So
I do and start to sit down again. Then he says, "Hey, can you come over
here?" and I’m tired and all I want to do is sit down and eat my
oatmeal and have a cup of coffee, but I’m still standing, so I go over.
And before I notice what he is doing, he’s taken the cap off the
sharpie and checks off the box on my shirt."
The thing I like about that goal is it’s completely arbitrary, like my overall goal to "feel good about myself." It’s completely up to her interpretation of what that means and, if the answer is no, what she needs to do to feel like she kicked it.
(Speaking of kicking ass, I wonder if this guy on a flight I was on recently had the same goal. He came out of the bathroom, sat down in the first row, crossed his legs. His leg swung up and kicked me in the butt while I was waiting for the bathroom. I couldn’t help laughing out loud thinking "Who ever thought I’d get kicked in the butt on an airplane." That wasn’t one of my life goals.)
Lisa Peake, with the David Allen Company, wrote a thoughtful blog posting about how SuperViva fits into the GTD methodology. This company is based on David Allen’s best selling book Getting Things Done : The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.
I’m excited that Lisa immediately got how the organization options on your SuperViva life list help you GET THINGS DONE:
"The feature I liked most about it is that you can easily mark an item on your list "Active" or "Backburner". The backburner seems to me another way of saying, I still like this thought enough to keep it, but I just don’t have the resources to commit to it right now. It can take some courage to move that fantastically cool idea OFF your "To-Do" list and over to your Someday/Maybe/Backburner list because then you have to trust that sometime in the future you will have more time, more energy, or more money; and that you will get to some of those cool ideas."
If you’re a practitioner of David Allen’s GTD methodology I’d love to hear what you think, whether here or on the reader discussions on the Davidco site.
Check out the cool new "pitch wizard" from 15 Second Pitch.
I recently met Laura, the pitch woman herself, at an event in New York. She put us all to the task of trying to explain what we do or who we are. (Unless you’ve really worked on a pitch, you probably need improvement as I certainly did.)
The site has a "create your own" pitch tool. Laura also works with clients to help you develop a pitch for yourself in short consulting session.
(How did I do pitching Laura? 
PS - If you’ve used SuperViva and like it, I would love to hear how you’d pitch it!
