Every so often, I’m going to devote a blog to telling you about some of the Amazing people that I know who you might want to know as well.  In this blog, I’m going to tell you about three of them.  Right off the bat, I want to recommend that you visit my blog talk radio site www.blogtalkradio.com/hope42day so that you can listen to my guest tomorrow, Coach, Author, Leader, Trainer, Self-Confessed Foodie and in-the-closet-comedian, Byron Van Arsdale, who will be talking about a new company he launched “Lead Great Meetings” as well as his book, “No More Lame Conference Calls – The 6 Principles You Need to Lead Great Meetings (July 2011″ check it out, you’ll be glad you did.

I wish I could tell you about one of my very best friends who is an incredible writer, digital publicist, speaker and comedian but she’s very particular about who she’ll take on as a new client.  So, if you are intrigued and you’re a very good person, with a great mind and a message to get out to the world…..contact me off line and I might give you her information.

If you need a great marketing person, or as she calls herself “a marketing gunslinger” then I’d like to introduce you to a new friend of mine, Elizabeth Quintanilla.  Elizabeth and I met last year because a mutual friend of ours who we both respect immensely, invited us to lunch so that we could meet.  This friend has never done that before with me, so I knew E.Q. had to be someone pretty special.  She’s smart, very creative, brave and it probably doesn’t hurt that she is gorgeous as well.  Whether you need someone who can help you launch your business up to levels you may not have realized you could get to or someone who can help you solve complex business problems by creating strategies for success…..Elizabeth Quintanilla is your person.  She may be booked when you contact her, but be patient and keep trying….it will be worth it.

The last person I’m going to tell you about tonight is none other than the CEO and Founder of “Idea Champions” Mitch Ditkoff who is also an author, speaker, leader, husband, father, friend and what I would call “a comedian with his light on”.  I met Mitch, gosh I guess it’s been at least four years ago, when my “she who will not be named” friend brought Mitch to me to be a guest on my show to talk about his newly launched book, “Awake at the Wheel”.   Since then he’s been a guest on my show a couple of times and thanks to social media and blogs, I’ve gotten to know him much better and appreciate all that he brings to the world.  If you visit his website, he’s got a couple of videos of himself as the Keynote Speaker at various well-known companies. Let me put it this way, having Mitch Ditkoff as the Keynote Speaker for your company would be like having a live TED CONFERENCE right there at your company doorstep.  If you don’t get the reference about TED CONFERENCES suffice it to say it is a collection of some of the brightest and most gifted leaders and speakers of our time.

I have plenty more amazing people to share with you, which I will at least once a month, but these three ought to give you plenty of juicy information to explore.  Enjoy!

Who do you know in your life that other people should know about?

Lately a whole lot of people have been talking about allowing your creativity to come through authentically no matter how weird it may feel or be!!  Seth Godin wrote a recent blog about “Being Weird” and the vunderbaugh author Sarah Bird sent out a tweet today containing a you tube video cleverly promoting her next event–it was all about creativity. and of course one of my all time favorite authentic creators, Mitch Ditkoff, blogs about creativity on a regular basis (and with a very offbeat approach as well!).

This semester as I inch toward actually seeing the end of the tunnel for education journey I embarked on awhile back, I am taking a Mass Communication’s class (taught by Dr. Tim England) which is teaching us all kinds of information about radio, television, broadcasting and programming (yep, it’s right up my alley).  It is amazing, simply mind blowing how far we have come in such a short while when it comes to communication. Talk about creativity!!  History is being re-written every 5th of a second I’m sure.  Now anyone of us can be a programmer and broadcaster with free web radio and YouTube.     What is happening now is that who will really stick out are those of us who really let go and step out there and be who we are…..wonderfully weird and all.

Look at Lady Gaga.

Here’s the Brainy Quote definition of “weird”

Definition of Weird Weird

Fate; destiny; one of the Fates, or Norns; also, a prediction.

A spell or charm.

Of or pertaining to fate; concerned with destiny.

Of or pertaining to witchcraft; caused by, or suggesting, magical influence; supernatural; unearthly; wild; as, a weird appearance, look, sound, etc.

To foretell the fate of; to predict; to destine to.

There certainly have been many times in my life when family and friends  have called me as weird and now is finally my time to embrace it…but in a good way. In a truly wacky good way.   In a truly creatively, wacky, authentic, double-somersault weird way.

The other morning I was talking with my mom (who is one of the wacky hilarious people in my life) and I warned her as I pulled up into the line to order my coffee that I would have to order pretty soon but that it would only take a minute.  Well, wouldn’t you know that the voice that came out over the speaker was just about as unexpected and wacky as you could expect to hear at 9:30 in the morning.  My mom started giggling uncontrollably because she knew that I knew that this girl’s voice sounded like we had stepped inside of a bar on Star War’s. In fact, that is what my mom whispered into my ear as I was trying to repeat my order to the voice.  Then we, my mom and I, collected ourselves and continued our conversation until, of course, I drove up to the window to pick up my drink and the person with the voice repeated my order again and handed me my drink.  At that point I was really trying hard to be polite and not crack up laughing  because of my mom laughing since she heard the voice again.  What I was seeing that of course my mother could not see over the phone, was the person that the voice was coming from so did not match  her voice. It was definitely weird. Not the girl, bless her heart,  just the whole situation of us with our off kilter humor and her voice at that time of the morning.

Anyway, all this to say that I have had little vignettes of laughing at the absurdities of life all throughout my life thanks to my mom, my dad, my brother and several hand-picked friends who “get” (even encourage) my real sense of humor.

Let your creativity shine,  be yourself and for heaven’s sake embrace your inner weirdness!

Nanny McPhee

Turns out there are a lot of people who think they can talk with angels and do!!  One of those people, who I believe is the “real deal” is Angel Therapy Practitioner Margo Mastromarchi. Margo was certified as an ATP by another “real deal” Angel person that you may have heard of, Doreen Virtue Ph.D.  Now for some of you who read my blogs on a regular basis, I realize that the title of this blog containing the word “angel” may have told you that this one isn’t for you—-so this blog isn’t for you—it’s  for all the rest of us!

I interviewed Margo today on Blog Talk Radio’s Hope42Day which you can hear by clicking on the link of the show’s name.   I was introduced to Margo by our mutual friend best-selling author and soul writer/speaker/teacher Janet Conner.  Janet teaches great  teleclass series offering deep soul writing teachings and in one of these classes, Janet offered each of the student’s (as part of the class) an individual session with Margo Mastromarchi.  I’ve met a lot of people in my life who are at various levels of spiritual and energetic exploration but within the first five minutes of talking with Margo on the phone I could feel that she was authentic.  In fact, while interviewing her on Hope42Day, I felt like I had taken the proverbial blue and red pill and was floating about five feet off of the ground. Margo’s a Reikki practitioner as well.

One of the bits of wisdom that Margo shared is that we all have guardian angels who are here to help us. All of us do.  Some of us “hear” our angels in different ways.  She said that angels will repeat themselves and so if you notice yourself getting the same idea over and over again to sit with it and see how it feels to take one small step towards it.  Of course, you know that the dark side of my brain was saying, “oh this is nice, but what if that’s the obsessive compulsive side of my brain?!??!  huh Margo, what about that??!” Well, here is what I’ve figured out for myself.  I’ve gotten very quiet guidance before to drive in a certain direction or talk with a certain person and when heeded, that guidance has never led me wrong. I’ve also gotten very direct and abrupt guidance such as “look up!” when I’m looking at my phone and about to run off the road.  But I’ve also asked the angels to give me direction so they do all the time.  Margo says that because we humans operate under free will, the angels will not interfere with us unless asked.  When the manic part of my brain is operating the feeling is that “I’ve gotta gotta do something or gotta gotta say something”.  I know then that “ain’t no angel talking”–at least none that I’d care to entertain.

All I know is that I am a sucker for Divine love.  Even during the typing up of the show script, I felt the angels coming through and an incredible warm peace taking over. That warm peace feels to me like Divine love but so does a very high energy that feels it can vibrate the whole room around me if I let it.  There’s a difference between that kind of high vibrational energy and mania.  The core of it is grounded is the best way I know how to describe it.  When your manic there is an edge to it and a brittleness. When you are feeling energy from the Divine, it is a natural healing energy that fits right into your being….just bringing the volume up on your energy.

One of the reasons I chose to become a Life Coach was because I loved engaging that Divine energy into helping others connect with it.  I gave up the day in and day out corporate life because I was someone who could get so distracted by the illusion of importance we humans tend to make up about our careers/jobs and the work world in general.  I used to be so right there in the thick of it. Which isn’t a bad thing but it isn’t a good thing either. It just was an “is” thing for me that I had to pay attention to and heed the guidance I was being given to find other ways of contributing to the world where I could truly make a difference without harming myself and others in the process.  Having a highly competitive attribute in my personality when run strictly by my ego, it can become a harmful thing.  Thank goodness there are people in this world who can be of the world but not in the world and run companies, like my friend, best-selling author/speaker/leader and CEO of Idea Champions, Mitch Ditkoff.  Our world sure could use more leaders of Mitch’s nature.

Anyway, the message I’d like to leave with you is that if you want to talk with angels, you can.  You  can.  Just you, right now in the privacy of your own home, office, car.  Just ask.  And listen for what answers you receive. You just may be pleasantly surprised.

Angel Wings

One of my favorite affirmation posts that I receive every morning is from “The Universe” created by Mike Dooley. The standard line that is at the bottom of every post is “thoughts become things…choose the good ones.”  For some of us, choosing the good thoughts are easier said than done.  Some of us may have a brain that is naturally drawn to the shadier aspects of life.  Some of us have been majorly influenced by the environment that we grew up in and/or are living in now.  Still others may have gotten into the habit of looking at life through the pessimist’s lenses for so long that changing our ways from pessimistic to optimistic is too uncomfortable to contemplate much less choose!

What I’ve learned along the way in life from being someone who can either be way over in Valhalla  land in terms of how I consider life or way down inside the bottom of a dark well is that you can choose to get help to reconfigure your receptors. Aha!! You mean I don’t have to do it alone?!   No you don’t!  I’ll never forget the first time I heard my brain communicate an understanding to me about what I was going through in a compassionate way….it felt like I could almost feel the dopamine rising.  Slowly but surely after weeks and weeks of therapy, I was learning how to replace the negative voices in my head with the positive, soothing voice of my therapist.  From this experience I learned that those positive and loving voices certainly felt much better than what I had stuffed my brain full of over the years.  I wanted more of that good time feeling!

From that point on I was drawn to people, words, art, beliefs and science that expressed the positive aspects of life.  I believed that settling into the negative thoughts about myself, other people and life had become such a natural way for me that I knew that I would have to apply effort to choose to seek out positivity.  Over time, choosing the good thoughts has become easier but I apply effort every day to finding support systems through friends, family, affirmations and people I follow that can help pick me up if I stumble.  One of my favorite blogs to read is written by a friend, Mitch Ditkoff, who is the Founder of a company called “Idea Champions” Who writes a blog called, “The Heart of Innovation” .  What I enjoy about Mitch besides his wisdom and ideas is the humor and positivity that is a consistent thread of all his posts.  Surely someone who has seen and continues to see as much of life as Mitch does with the Fortune 1000 companies that he works with, etc. has every reason in the world to have perhaps at least one eye that is jaundiced, but I have yet to experience that from him (here’s an interview with Mitch on my BlogTalkRadio/Hope42Day show).

Choosing good thoughts over bad ones takes about as much effort over time as reaching for a carrot instead of a cookie.  Over time you’ll increase that muscle that chooses good thoughts in your brain from being an atrophied little semi colon gasping for breath against the side of your brain wall to a hearty well-developed cushion that will expand as needed to buffer and bounce away any negative thoughts that threatens to stop you in your tracks from moving forward in your life.

Start now! What good thoughts will you choose to have?

Somehow I got on the subscription list for Newsweek and have been receiving “free” magazines for week’s now. I like Newsweek, don’t get me wrong, but I haven’t made time to read any of the magazines until now. The newest issue is called “The Creativity Crisis” http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html and is all about how the children in America (from Kindergarten through Sixth Grade) are experiencing a decline in their creativity. Arguments are made that it is because of all the time that kids are spending in front of the boob tube and/or computer or that teachers just don’t have the time in class to explore creativity. This article actually has a lot of data from various sources and good news (ultimately).

And it got me to thinking. How do you express your creativity? Sometimes we’re creative without thinking of what we do as being creative. For instance, my husband, the web developer is so left brained it isn’t even funny but does he come up with ingenious solutions for all kinds of ways to make our household hum? Yes! I think he is one of the few who is a “bridged thinker” meaning that he is able to access both the left and right side of his brain equally as well.

We can be creative in our business as well. Look at Sam Rosen of Thought Lead (http://thoughtlead.com/) who at 24 creates innovative ways for us to do business all the time with his partners. Also my friend, Mitch Ditkoff and his team at www.ideachampions.com.

I don’t knit (but so many of my friends do), I don’t paint (ditto) but I usually score off the charts in creativity. I think that is because of the way that I look at the world. Let me put it this way, I’d rather score high on creativity than flat out balls to the wall crazy! Because I don’t have children, I don’t have the opportunity to be around kids as much as I’d like to be but I got to say that the kids that I am around seem pretty darn creative to me. I have several friends on FaceBook with kids who are between 3-10 and some of the ideas and ways their kids communicate seem to be very creative. I also have friends with teenagers who are extremely creative so I am heartened to believe that the teens of today will be able to lead the teens of tomorrow in a creative direction towards solutions.

How do you express your creativity? Are you good at communicating difficult points of view with a myriad of people? Do you draw or paint? Are you a musician? Do you knit crazy funny wonderful “animals” like my friend Risa? I’ve loved every single one of them that she has shown me thus far…not too sure what planet this animals come from…but would definitely want a collection of them. Look around at the children in your life, how can you help them be creative? Who helped you to be creative?

Go search on YouTube for “Gravity Cats” and get a laugh. There are so many ways to be creative? What will you create today?