Sonia Marsh - Gutsy Living

1000 Awesome things: A way to look at your life

June 27, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

In one month, Neil Pasricha’s life changed. His wife came home and said, “I don’t love you anymore,” and one month later something even more painful happened to Neil. He called his best friend Chris on a Sunday evening and they chatted and laughed about a TV show they were watching. The following morning Neil found out that Chris had committed suicide.

For months, Neil found it difficult to think about anything good in life and needed a way to focus on the positive. So one day after work, he came home and logged onto his computer. He decided to start a blog called “1000 Awesome Things,” where he would write about universal things that we love, but don’t talk about. For example waiters and waitresses that give free refills without us asking, or peeling a hard boiled egg and getting one big chunk of shell off at once. Slowly over time, Neil was able to put himself in a better mood.

At first, no one read his blog except his mother. Gradually he received dozens of hits/day, then hundreds and one day he received a phone call from someone who said he’d won the best blog in the world award. At first he thought this was a scam. “So which African country do you want me to wire my money to?” Neil thought, but when ten agents wanted to represent him for a book deal, this led to the Book of Awesome a year later.

Neil says that what helped him grow was to take a look at life in terms of the 3 A’s.

Attitude
Awareness
Authenticity

Attitude: Everyone has highs and lows in life, and when we experience lows we have two choices on how to handle them:

a. Twirl and swirl in gloom and doom forever.
b. Grieve and then chose to move forward, and take baby steps into the future.

We need to focus on the second choice.

Awareness: Three-year-olds have a fascination with “seeing things for the first time.” They love to explore and we need to go back to being a three-year-old again and remember how we felt when we experienced things for the first time. As adults for example, driving and hitting all the green lights, smelling fresh bread being baked, simple things.

Authenticity: This is just about being you and being cool with that. Neil gives the example of the tough football player, Rosy Grier, born in 1932, one of the original Fearsome Four, of the LA Rams, who happened to love needlepoint, and who came out with a book, “Needlepoint for men” after he retired from football.
When you’re authentic, you follow your heart and put yourself in places and situations that you love and enjoy.

How has this changed me? It brought out my desire to explore my local neighborhood with fresh eyes. It made me think about how to get unstuck from a rut.
So last week I decided to visit the Laguna Beach Visitors Bureau ( about ten miles from where I live) and pretended I was a tourist so I could discover new places and events close to me.

I found Jazz Wednesdays at Hotel Laguna.
I discovered the Laguna Culinary Arts with classes for cheese lover, pasta lovers, Date night Couple classes in cooking.
The Sawdust Festival offers Studio Art classes year-round on Saturdays taught by professional art instructors.
The Laguna Art museum has an exhibit with Noguchi, a Japanese American artist.
The Laguna College of Art and Design offers financial aid to students (would I qualify I wonder?) and offers a Rodin exhibit in July-September.

I walked around town with my new three-year-old fresh eyes and found treasures, I’d never noticed before.

Sometimes we forget to look around us. There is more that surrounds us than we now.

How do you make your life awesome?

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Image of child and flower courtesy of Uncommon Scents

Jumping into Gutsy Living

June 24, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

Today is a special day for me. I am launching my new author website and WordPress blog for Gutsy Living.
To say that I’m a little nervous about this change makes me sound “Un-Gutsy” but it’s the truth. As some of my blogger friends know, I made it one of my goals for 2011 and after several months of researching and pondering about the investment and the need to take the plunge, I finally decided that I could not do it alone, but would hire a professional to help me.
I met Kirsten Wright at a local Bloggers meeting about two months ago. We sat down and after she handed me her business card, I said, “You know, I’ve been wanting to change from blogger to WordPress and have noticed how every professional blogger seems to use “Thesis.” Kirsten listened to me and started giving me a long explanation on how WordPress was definitely the way to go and how as an author, I needed to think about an author website as well. My initial thought was, “She seems to know a lot, she also talks a lot, and she’s mentioning a custom made website and blog, when all I want is Thesis. This is probably to get me to spend more money than I want to.”
After about twenty minutes, Kirsten could tell that I was getting a little overwhelmed with all the information about custom coding, etc., and she left to chat with some of the other bloggers. I sat there in a daze, and suddenly realized that I was all alone and most of the bloggers were much younger than me and knew one another.
I got up, headed to the table with appetizers and could not find anyone else alone to talk to, or a place to sit. That’s when Kirsten noticed me and said, “Come join us.” It was her act of kindness that made me look at her as a caring, young woman, rather than simply as someone trying to get my business.
Later that evening, I checked out her website, and was impressed with the ease of navigation on her site. I watched her videos and realized that she is an expert on social media, has been interviewed on local TV, and is a writer for OC Metro magazine. She offers free videos on her site to help people like myself learn more about how to use Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging tips and so much more.
The following day I called her to discuss the vision I had for my blog theme. We met at Starbucks and Kirsten pulled out some stock footage of tropical beaches as backgrounds for my website as well as fonts for logos. We connected and she understood the creative side that I was looking for as well as the coding side. “Sonia, you’re an author with an upcoming book. We need to focus on that aspect first.” I agreed with her as I have read how agents and publishers want aspiring authors to have a professional website prior to publication.
It’s now been six weeks since I started working with Kirsten and I am so happy with my new site. Several of my friends who used blogger and switched to WordPress had major headaches transferring content and photos over. Don’t ask me how, but Kirsten said, “No problem,” one of her favorite phrases. I would love to hear what you think about my new Gutsy Living website.
I asked Kirsten if she would offer an incentive to those who might be looking for a new blog theme or an author website and she is offering a 10% coupon to anyone who contacts her through my new site. If you’re interested, I think she’s fabulous.

I wish to thank all of you who already subscribe to my blog through the RSS feed, you will still receive updates. If you were subscribed through Google Connect, please click here to subscribe to my new site.

Launching my new website tomorrow

June 23, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

What a day!

I am LATE in writing my Thursday post.

Today I wrote my first post on my new Gutsy Living WordPress blog and Kirsten Wright, who has been developing my custom website showed up at my house to launch my new site this morning.

So why isn’t it up and running as planned?

Blame my web-hosting company. Yes, after Kirsten was on the phone with some kind man from India for about one hour, the final outcome was, “It will take about 24 hours to fix the problem.”

So there you have it.

If all goes according to plan, please come back tomorrow. I am very excited about launching my new Gutsy Living site.

Here’s a quick peek at the theme on my FaceBook page which I hope you “Like.”

Thanks for understanding.
See you tomorrow.

Photo credit Comland-Design

Which do you fear most? Success or failure?

June 20, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

We’ve all heard about the fear of failure and the fear of success, this is not a new topic, however, what about outside pressures?

If you’re a writer hoping to become a published author, or you’d like to start your own business, you’ve probably been through the following scenario. You share your plans with others, then feel like a failure when things take longer than expected while you’re in the process of accomplishing your goals.

I’m here to say, “Don’t.” “Don’t allow pressure from anyone, especially parents, close friends, a spouse or even your kids make you feel like a failure because you’re still in the process of following your dreams.”

You will always find those who say, “That will never work,” followed by “I told you so,” when things aren’t proceeding as planned, but that’s exactly when you need to step up to the challenge and keep going. Please don’t allow negative comments to influence your desire to follow through with your goals.

I listened to the video above where Dr. Regina Dugan, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), speaks about how fear of failure can limit success. DARPA is the agency that gave us the GPS and the Internet, as well as other now-everyday technologies. Dr. Dugan says they encourage their researchers to fail because you cannot have a big success without failures, and you cannot fear failure in order to have a big success. (Dr. Dugan talks about failure, success and risk taking at the 3:20 mark.)

You can find more in this article by Russell Bishop, “Is the Fear of Failure Holding you Back.”

Here’s to your success from me.

I hope you’ll keep pushing through all the challenges to succeed with your dreams and not allow other voices, not even your own, to stop you.

Here’s my life list, what’s yours?

June 16, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

10 items on Sonia’s life list

Starting today, we are sharing 10 items on our life list, which according to Karen Walrond is all about creating our own adventure. How do we do that? By “Injecting cool stuff as well as the more mundane stuff,” Karen says. The idea came from Mighty Girl who was sponsored by Intel and Verizon to make her life list. Check her list out on her blog if you want ideas. (I wonder how we could get ours sponsored?) just a thought.

I listened to Karen Walrond speak at the WDS conference in Portland, a few days ago. Her topic was something that we can all relate to: “The Beauty of Different.” I became enthusiastic about what she said that people want to “fit in,” yet they love people who are different. I never thought of that before, but it’s so true.

As a photographer, Karen loves to capture people’s faces and in her video below, you’ll understand what she means when she says, “The reason we love different so much is that we find it beautiful.” Talk about different, Karen is a former engineer and a current yet (non-practicing attorney) a photographer, author and was born in Trinidad and Tobago, yet grew up in Houston. She states all her life she was trying to fit in until she discovered that people actually love different.

10 things on Sonia’s life list

1). Take a Spanish immersion class. Live with a family in Panama for three months to become fluent.
2). Host a party with friends to share and discuss the 10 most important things on your life list.
3). Join a bike club that is non-competitive and friendly.
4). Teach English abroad through CELTA program.
5). Write a second book about, Being Gutsy over 50.
6). Make presentations on Gutsy Living in the U.S and abroad.
7). Visit Australia with the goal of perhaps living there for a while.
8). Volunteer in Kenya or Tanzania with children.
9). Build a community of baby-boomer adventure-seekers who share an enthusiasm for life.
10). Explore new places and keep learning and growing.

Please share your life list if you want to participate. If you don’t have one, you can still participate by commenting. This post will be up until Monday June 20th, so you have time. Remember you’ll have 100 items on your own list, so these don’t have to be the most important.

Just think about what you’d like to do, however big or small. Doesn’t matter.