Awesome

While we were watching Neil Pasricha’s TEDxToronto talk about Awesome at WDS I kept thinking that I wanted to share his message with my kids. I decided to show it at my son’s girlfriend Deanna’s birthday celebration. We had already watched it again after we got back from WDS, to make sure I could find it and also to review the message. I wasn’t sure if talking about the finiteness of our lifetimes, suicide, and divorce would be too heavy for a celebration of a 21 year old college senior. We screened it for the birthday bash last Saturday, and it was a huge hit.

The three A’s of Awesome that Neil talks about in his video are

• Attitude – maintaining a positive attitude even when things happen in our life that we don’t like. To paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt, we can’t control what happens to us but we can control our reaction to it.
• Awareness – Neil encourages us all to get in touch with our inner three year old, to continue to see the world through fresh eyes as though we’re seeing everything for the first time. This requires us to be present.
• Authenticity – I loved the part about Rosey Grier (born on July 14th!) being comfortable enough with who he is to pursue his inner direction.

My daughter Molly has an email group on her website called Awesome, which she hasn’t used since she was in college at Madison. I loved the idea of it – sharing awesome things with awesome people. There was never any sarcasm or mean-spirited comments. All the posts were positive and helpful. Great concept, Mollio!