Greetings!

Everyday, you make decisions large and small. All your decisions affect your future--how your life turns out--in some way. Everything you do counts. I didn't always believe that everything counted. A year or so ago, I heard someone say, "Either everything you do is important or nothing is." I thought the statement was hyperbole. Not everything?! Surely some things don't count. I was wrong. Everything, every little move you make, adds up into who and what you are, and more importantly, the future you create and live in.

If the future is embedded in the present, and everything counts, then what decisions and little actions can you take every day that create a life that results in greatness? I want to know the answers to these questions. Not only that, I want to live the answers.

How about you? If being great--living a life of greatness--is a choice, would you want to live that life? What would that life make possible for you? For the people around you? For the world?

• If you want great performance from yourself, the first step is to say you can. In this article, you'll see how your beliefs make what you do possible or impossible. It's all in saying that you can.
• I believe that recognizing and nurturing the best in others is essential to personal greatness. To learn how theater director Scott Palmer elicits great performances from his ensembles, check out the excerpt from our interview.

We'll be on hiatus in August, so enjoy the rest of your summer. See you in September!

Peace be with you,
Tara

Say You Can   The first step is that you have to say that you can.--Will Smith One pitfall of focusing on your goals is that sometimes you can get very focused on what's missing. In our culture, we're taught that to rectify what's missing, we must work very, very hard to get to the goal, keeping our eyes on the prize. There's a problem with that approach, though. Staying locked onto what you're working toward can put you into a "don't have" mindset. By extension, "don't have" can turn into "can't have." What I mean by that is while you are working toward your goal, thousands of little thoughts flit through your head that say, "you haven't succeeded yet." These thoughts have a way of going to an extreme. Words like can't, always, never, should have, could have, would have creep in. You may find yourself obsessively comparing your progress to someone else's--negatively or positively. Or you may find yourself thinking that whatever you do is not enough: not good enough, not smart enough, not fast enough. Just plain inadequate. These thoughts all have the same effect: masking progress and signs of success. When you spend all your time focused on what you don't have yet, what you do have--which is right under your nose--goes unnoticed. I'm not saying don't be goal focused. Quite the opposite. You should have your goals written down and you should review that list every day. But once you've reviewed the list, your focus should be on what will you do today that will make certain you take at least one step toward the goal. At the end of the day, the last thought should be on acknowledging the progress. Any progress. Because everything you do counts. Everything. When you say that you can, you create possibility. If you say you can't, you've made that so, whether you're aware of it or not. In the quote that begins this post, Will Smith was responding to the interviewer's response to his can-do-anything attitude. She told him that just because she could read a physics book didn't mean she could become a physicist. To which Will Smith replied, "The first step is that you have to say that you can." Everyday, you and I speak possible futures--sometimes highly desired ones--out of existence just by letting the "can't" dwell in our heads. Is it possible to rid our thoughts of the negative? One thing I know for sure is it's possible to put new thoughts into your head on purpose. If you say you can, then it's a choice between will I or won't I? That puts this thing into a whole new realm, doesn't it? Instead of residing in a place of impossibility, you're living in possibility and choice. What do you want to achieve? Remind yourself that you can. Take one step toward your goal today.

Much Ado About Greatness  An Interview with Director Scott Palmer Needy, arrogant, wanting to be the center of attention, and very insecure. Doesn't sound like someone you'd want to hire, does it? Not to Scott Palmer. Scott expects the people he directs to be like that--and also bold, highly motivated, and talented. Scott is a theater director and acting coach who loves watching great performances. So that means rounding up the best actors he can find to put on his innovative adaptations of Shakespeare's classics. This summer, Scott is directing Much Ado About Nothing in an outdoor performance at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. To find out what his secrets are for getting great performances out of people others might find difficult, I sat down with Scott at a sunny Corvallis café recently. According to Scott, getting the right people is the most important part of the process. And it's not always possible to get someone with the perfect skill set for the role at hand, either. For example, to cast Much Ado About Nothing, which will be performed outdoors in a football field sized venue, it's just about impossible to find someone who has done that kind of acting before. He looks for people who can be boldly decisive. "I don't want someone to make the right decision so much as to make a decision. I want them to make a choice. People who are willing to take risks." Read the full article online...