If you have problems with tossing balls forward instead of up and across, practice in front of a wall. The balls will hit the wall, then they’ll hit you. After you’ve been clunked in the noggin a few dozen times, you’ll learn to pop up and across.
The International Jugglers Association is a wicked good organization. To learn more visit http://www.juggle.org.
NOT INTO JUGGLING?—HERE’S A GROUP ADVENTURE TO TRY
Pick up the phone and call the couple you always get together with on Friday night. Invite them to a Friday Night Eureka! Adventure. Tell them to expect a surprise. Do the Eureka! adventure as part of a group—there’s safety in numbers. Doing a Eureka! adventure night with friends also makes it more fun.
Do the following:
• Have appetizers at the fifth restaurant listed in the yellow pages.
• Have your entree at the thirteenth restaurant listed in the yellow pages
• Have dessert at the twenty-third restaurant listed in the yellow pages.
If this is all a tad too random and free-spirited for you, then have each person in your party write the name of a restaurant that they want to try, but have never visited, on a slip of paper and put the slips in a hat. Pull them out and have drinks, appetizers, entrees, and desserts at the restaurants in the order they are pulled from the hat.
If time allows, go to the movie with the greatest number of letters in the title. In the event of a tie, flip a coin.
NOTE: A friend in New York City did this and e-mailed me that they also found some great new restaurants as a result. Sounds like they have a real appetite for adventure.
My wife, Debbie, once suggested we go to the movie with the greatest number of letters in the title—we ended up at The Making Of An American Quilt, a tear-jerking chick flick. I was the only guy at the show; I think it was a set up. However, the experience did inspire some fresh marketing ideas for a telephone company client a month later. You never know where adventures will lead or pay off.
WE INTERRUPT THIS BOOK UNTIL AFTER YOUR ADVENTURE. PLEASE PUT THE BOOK DOWN AND ENGAGE YOURSELF IN A SPONTANEOUS ADVENTURE. NO, REALLY. PLEASE.
E-mail your stories, digital photos, or videos of your adventure to [email protected]. I’ll respond to every e-mail and post the most inspirational ones at http://www.EurekaRanch.com.
Imagine how it would feel to live out an adventure every day, all day long. Imagine being able to transform the obstacles that life dishes out into opportunities. Imagine taking control of your circumstances, rather than allowing your circumstances to control you.
Adventure is about thinking big and taking action on the thoughts. It’s about having the courage to be bold and brave.
Adventure is not something you simply imagine—it’s how you must live.
Good for you, traveler. You’re on your way!
MUSIC BONUS: The link below takes you to a web page that with a song called “Let Your Dreams Come True” written and performed by Scott Johnson of Google Press. It captures in lyrics and music the essence of this chapter.
The web page also has a link to a Brain Brew segment where David and I did helped a caller quit her job and pursue her dream.
Visit http://www.doughall.com/JSYB2
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WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT
The Eureka! Way of Life requires that you be EXCITED, AWARE, PASSIONATE, and ENTHUSIASTIC. It requires that you not be BRAIN DEAD!
Being brain dead is being dull and terminally serious. If you want to experience brain death, ask an insurance salesman to explain the difference between term and whole life insurance. Or make an appointment at a funeral parlor to discuss advance payment programs.
“It’s your brain. Use it or lose it.”
– Richard Saunders
Under the Eureka! Way of Life, it’s advisable to avoid exposure to the brain dead. Here are 10 dead giveaways for identifying brain-dead individuals:
1. They don’t observe the holidays of April 1 and Oct. 31.
2. Their fingers point in only one direction—away from themselves.
3. Their doors are closed, their shades are drawn, and they cast no reflections.
4. The family pictures on their desks are studio portraits, not snapshots.
5. They think Dr. Seuss is a pediatrician.
6. They’re rude to waitresses and waiters.
7. They wish children would “just grow up.”
8. They once had an original thought, but decided it was gas.
9. They have chapped lips from kissing the boss’ butt.
10. They get wicked mad when you tickle them.
The brain-dead are everywhere. I once encountered one at an outdoor summer concert of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. It so happened I had a half dozen bottles of soap bubbles on my person. A handful of 10-year-olds nearby looked bored, so I gave each a bottle.
It was an enchanted evening. As the fireflies flickered and the orchestra played an arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E Minor Opus 64, those of us who were so equipped blew bubbles.
Then we noticed Brain Dead Man, sitting cross-legged on his blanket. As our bubbles floated by, he scowled and swatted at them.
My jaw fell open. The kids shrugged and took their bubbles elsewhere.
Those who embrace the Eureka! Way of Life are not big on rules. For the most part, we regard a rule as an item to break, bend, circumvent, spindle, fold, mutilate, vault over, limbo under, or otherwise grind into a fine powder.
But there are exceptions. And while the notions of innocence and a spirit of adventure are overall life goals, a number of more tactical precepts—call them rules if you must—are available to help you enhance your creativity.
So whereby we, the people, seek to recapture the hope, faith and innocence of childhood, and whereby we strive diligently for purity of thought and freshness of idea, we hereby hold the following truths to be self-evident—the first being:
Respect the Newborn!
Ideas, when they first occur, aren’t full-blown finished products. They aren’t born one second then standing up and walking the next. Thomas Edison didn’t conceive of the light bulb on Monday morning then flip the switch that afternoon.
Newborn ideas are fragile, like babies. Most newborn ideas are ugly, wrinkly little wretches. If the newborn is your own, you’re predisposed to think it’s a thing of wonder and beauty. But it’s going to need a whole lot of nurturing before anyone else will think so because it’s not his or hers. They need nurturing, protecting, patience, loving,