Enjoy the amazingly enchanting self-portrait photography of Zev, gifted Massachusetts teenager. Flickr photostream here.

These are not self-portraits … yet wow!

The post Enchanting Self-Portrait Photography By Gifted Teenager appeared first on truenorth QUEST.

We say “NO” a thousand times for every ‘YES’. Life Design requires strong intention, creative resolve and relentless focus. To hone in on the SIGNAL, we pierce through the NOISE.

Forget about Apple … what you or I think about any company and its products is not really important. Things that are REALLY REAL rise to a much higher level.

In the world of ideas and perspective though, it’s fruitful to cross-pollinate, generating new styles of thinking. Give 90 seconds to this video:

There is so much around us. All the time. It tries to get in us and shape us.

Living a signature life that is simple and elegant means living from the inside out. To feel the music, to experience the unique story of our lives will require strong vision and intention. We craft our lives and work around that focus.

Everything is then enhanced …

Our lives. Those we love. People around us. Our personal world. And the world-at-large, as our influence expands.

The post Living Your Signature Life appeared first on truenorth QUEST.

This is surprising: our nonverbals – our body language – not only affects how others perceive and understand us, we are powerfully influenced by it ourselves.

Amy Cuddy does research on body language. The science is now showing we can actually transform our body chemistry by changing our posture.

We can begin to change our mind and body chemistry in as little as 2 minutes with power posing. Testosterone levels rise. Cortisol levels decline.

I actually find it quite astounding that by being aware of how we are carrying ourselves physically, and by making strategic and yet simple changes, we can positively alter our hormonal profile. This then leads to changes in behavior. And changes in behavior open the door to changes in life outcomes.

Invest a little time with her Ted Talk presentation …

We can leverage our sense of personal power with power posing!

The post Power Posing: Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are appeared first on truenorth QUEST.

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

— Winston Churchill

The post On Taxing Your Way to Prosperity appeared first on truenorth QUEST.

Human beings are creatures of story. Plot. Narrative.

How could things change if we connected with the power of story in our personal lives?

In story there is a sequence, a flow, a progression. There is history … there is also legacy.

In law, a legacy is a gift, a bequest, an intention of will of those who have preceded us. We stand on the shoulders of those before us. Those who come after us can go even higher.

When I think of connecting with the power of story, I first think of family. This is where we first come to experience story.

We can also think of the story of our nation. What about the story of a company or organization?

Everyone deserves a chance to live in their story, to walk with others, even as we experience our personal storyline. Really, who wants to be in someone else’s parade?

It’s healthy to honor and memorialize those before us. We preserve the memory of our foundation. And we create and build upon that foundation.

Let’s not disconnect from what brought us to this point. Let’s certainly not yield to a superficial, shallow mindset that only thinks about now – an expression of selfishness and ingratitude.

Here are some tips from Donald Miller to help us see our lives in the context of narrative.

Instead of thinking about stories as just fiction or movies, can we think about “story” in a personal way? What about groupings of people (companies, organizations, faith communities)? What about countries?

photo credit: Creative Commons / Jackal of all trades

The post Personal Advantage: Connect With the Power of Story appeared first on truenorth QUEST.

Free yourself from the concerted effort of wholesale conformity that is underway all around us. The merchants of mass identity are relentless.

The FIZZ is omnipresent. It’s everywhere. Are you worn out from being over-stimulated and shoved in a certain direction?

We’re under assault says Alan Bissett (Who Stole Our Reading Time, Books Blog at the Guardian):

In the 90s, there were a mere four TV channels (Britain). Each household had a single phone-line, usable once at a time…

Now, the reader is under assault from hundreds of television channels, 3D cinema, a computer-gaming business so large it dwarfs Hollywood, iPhones, Wii, YouTube, free commuter newspapers, an engorged celebrity culture, instant access to all the music ever recorded, 24-hour sports news …

We gladly “kiss the hand” of celebrity culture. Pretty embarrassing, isn’t it? What about our own lives and the significant people connected to us? What about the things that are really important?

A leisure time that was already precious has been chewed into by text-messaging, Facebook and emails. Almost everyone I speak to claims that they “love books but just can’t find the time to read.”

Are We Losing Our Minds?

It is costly for those swept away by the flood waters of “fizz.”

So besieged are we by the entertainment industry that we are being stimulated only in certain directions. The sound of fizz is everywhere. Sustained concentration on the printed word, whether in-depth argument or fictional narrative, creates a particular cerebral event which visual-dependent media cannot.

In a real sense, we’re losing our minds. It’s diminishing our thinking.

The assault upon this has meant the very theft of our thinking space … (the) pregnant, mental pause of reading has come under threat like never before.

An Anedote?

Life is too valuable to be mass-conformed …

One of the leading things we can do is read. Good reading FREES us from mass identity and helps to develop and preserve our individuality.

A moderate reading pace, 15 minutes per day, 5 days out of each week, will net you 15 two-hundred page books per year.

It’s a modest investment of time that can yield personal development, awareness of history, spiritual growth, professional development, and more. Reading builds leadership into our lives.

Raise the standard. Spread the word. Champion good reading … inspire children, youth and adults to read.

Just 15 minutes a day is a promising start.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE …

Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?

The Dynamism of Books… They Have Power

If you like what you see here, you can receive an email notice when new content is available.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR WEBSITE, BLOG, OR EZINE?  You’re welcome to as long as you use the entire article and include this text with it:  “© 2012 Brian Del Turco.  Discover more at truenorthquest.com.”

© 2012 Brian Del Turco.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The post Doing Life In a Carbonated Culture – Are We Losing Our Minds? appeared first on truenorth QUEST.

Take a look at the graphic I put together on the right … the golden arrow is a pathway – our quest to move towards our destiny with accuracy.

The line represents our exploring and experiencing different things in our questing. As we intersect with our destined pathway, we enjoy our highest energy and sense of purpose.

These experiences talk to us. This is the golden pathway we are looking for. The energy and joy we experience are clear indicators to us of our unique destiny.

There are other signs too that are speaking to us, if we will only listen …

You Feel Alive!

As you intersect with your golden pathway, you can expect these signs or indicators. These experiences will speak to you, empowering you to get more accurate about what your pathway is (and rewarding you for staying on it).

You Get Clear On the Journey

As we pay attention, time and experience will bring clarity. Clarity should be a high value with us.

On the negative side, pain and chronic frustration equally speak to us.

Hear what your heart is saying. Learn to discern. Reflect. Ask for wisdom from above. Journal. Write some statements, articulating what you are sensing and what you see in your near, intermediate, and more distant future.

You may want to innovate and try new things: they may awaken passions and desires that want to rise and live.

Let’s advance in life and work with confidence, resolving to live our best lives. Imagine what will happen as more and more of live with a greater accuracy and sense of destiny.

Everything will be lifted.

How does this make you feel? What are you sensing right now?

The post The Golden Pathway to Your Destiny appeared first on truenorth QUEST.

It’s the Yo Mamma Battle of Compliments! Happy Mothers Day.

The post For Mothers Everywhere: It’s the Yo Mamma Battle of Compliments! appeared first on truenorth QUEST.

I’m on something of a quest to be heretical. Let me tell you what I mean …

Heretical is one of those words which even sounds ugly. There’s certainly a negative feel to the word. But read on, there is a meaning to the word which is good, a way that we can be heretical in a very positive way!

Of course usually we think of a heretic as a person who believes and practices a religious heresy, something antithetical to the faith.

I’m not fascinated with fundamentally challenging my faith and becoming a heretic as we normally think of it.

It is healthy though to constantly quest to live more accurately, to seek to align everything more harmoniously to our set of beliefs. This may mean that we challenge contemporary beliefs and norms related to our faith, getting to its core essence.

Remarkable Heretics

There’s another sense in which we can use the word heretical though: a person who holds a perspective, an opinion, a way of thinking that is at odds with what is generally accepted by most people.

We become a dissident, a nonconformist.

Big (and smaller) breakthroughs and advances come via heresy.

And Us?

Do you (do I?) need to be heretical, challenging the status quo about something? Is there some dogma in your life or in your realm of influence that is simply not right?

Dogma: a set of principles or belief laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. Perhaps.

It could be a belief or way of life in your family. What about business philosophy and practices? It may be something related to public policy and our political life together. There is no sphere of life and work immune to erroneous dogma.

Everyone can provide a lead on something – including you and me. Leaders challenge norms and current ways. They see something better and bigger and move towards it.

This is how change for the good happens. Personal change as well as change on a larger scale.

Just some seed-like perspective to get us thinking in a new direction about things. You’ll have to take it further.

The post Here’s Your Permission to Be Heretical appeared first on truenorth QUEST.

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

-President Harry S Truman, 33rd president of the U.S. (1945-53)

The post On Giving Them Hell appeared first on truenorth QUEST.