Quest for Success

by Lili Fournier

I'm pleased to offer you something a little different today.  Bookstrumpet is hosting a blog stop for the DVD Quest for Success by producer/director/writer Lili Fournier.  Read a bit about the DVD below, but first let me tell you about its incredible success--it has been seen on 90 million households on PBS, as well as on television networks in Canada, Europe and Israel.   After you read about the series, scroll down for two interview excerpts from the series, one from Richard Branson and one from Marci Shimoff.  Enjoy!

(You'll find all the info on where to find Lili Fournier at the end of this post).

Quest for Success

Today’s most influential thinkers, visionaries, authors and heroes share their wisdom and key principles to success, and personal and societal change. These people include: Sir Richard Branson, Russell Simmons, Stephen Covey, Jack Canfield, John Assaraf, Harv Eker, Marci Shimoff, Byron Katie, Wayne Muller, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dahli Lama.

This Quest For Success explores what it takes to live a life of true happiness, personal fulfillment and authentic success. This is an extraordinary journey on that most profound of human longings, our search for happiness and fulfillment, and the wisdom we will need to find it.

Each of us has a heroic path to walk. This is a call to greatness that begins with you. And igniting that spirit, that passion for the possible, is where the journey begins.

“This critically acclaimed PBS series features the essential teachings from the great leaders of our time. This remarkable series is a treasure chest of wisdom with the power to transform your life. My praise could not be more sincere” – Jack Canfield, “Chicken Soup for the Soul”

Richard Branson Interview Excerpt: Richard Branson The Risk Taker

Sir Richard Branson is best known for his Virgin brand of over 360 companies. In 1972, he opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records. With his flamboyant and competitive style, Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s, as he set up Virgin Atlantic Airways. An inveterate adventurer, his current passions include Virgin Mobile and the upcoming Virgin Galactic. Sir Richard is a noted philanthropist and member of the Clinton Global Initiative, who has devoted billions of dollars to reviving the ecology.

LILI: So what do you think has been your core strength and has made you take all these enormous risks? I mean, the sort of dangerous element of the challenges you’ve taken on physically and in business? Is there something in your childhood that has driven you to these kinds of adventurous extremes?

RICHARD: I think the adventure side of me, I suspect, has been brought up by my mother, in particular. I remember age 5 we were driving to my grandmothers’, and two miles before we got there she dropped me off in the countryside and told me to make my own way there. She would’ve gotten arrested today. And I got horribly lost, but it was her way of trying to get me to stand on my own two feet. Age 8, she doesn’t even drive me, she puts me on a bicycle and tells me to ride 300 miles to granny’s house. And so on, and so on.

LILI: 300 miles?

RICHARD: Yes. She taught me to stand on my own two feet. And we were never allowed to watch television, we always had to be… I remember Peter Scott, who died trying to get to the Antarctic, was a relative of ours, Douglas Barr, was the man who was in the Second World War on tin legs, and he was a great friend. I knew him as a young man, and I used to steal one of his tin legs, and he would recant all his wonderful stories. So I was brought up in an atmosphere of adventure. And I suppose I’ve been fortunate enough in life to have done some magnificent adventures, as well as being an entrepreneur, and I think that being an adventurer is kind of similar to being an entrepreneur. You’re setting out to do something that man’s never done before. And you’re setting out to do it better, you’re setting out to protect the downside. The downside in that case is your life, you obviously want to make sure you come home, and on occasion we’ve come close, but I think we’ve managed to cover the downside, and get rescued when things go wrong.

LILI: That was a hot air balloon?

RICHARD: My very first big adventure was trying to get across the Atlantic in the fastest time on a boat, and we sank 200 miles from England, and we were picked up by a banana boat. And actually the first time I saw a picture of myself, and this lady on the banana boat…I was dripping wet, and she said, you poor boy. You most likely haven’t seen, but they’ve gotten you, son. And there it was, a picture right on the front page of the newspaper. But then the following year we built another boat and broke the record. And then for many years I tried to be the first to cross the Atlantic in a hot air balloon, and succeeded, although we splashed in the water again. Rescued by helicopters, and then we did the same across the Pacific. We made many attempts to try to go across the world, and there were magnificent trips in the Himalayas and other places, but the weather always intervened.

Marci Shimoff Interview Excerpt: About Knowing Who You Are

Marci Shimoff is the woman's face of the biggest self-help book phenomenon in history, Chicken Soup for the Soul. Her six bestselling titles in the series, including Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul and Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul, have met with stunning success, selling more than 13 million copies worldwide. Marci is one of the bestselling female nonfiction authors of all time. Her breakthrough methods for personal fulfillment and professional success are summed up in her own bestseller Happy for No Reason.

MARCI: I think we were put on the planet here for two reasons. One is to learn our lessons. What is it that you as an individual soul here are here to learn? The second is to love. To learn and to love, and those are the two reasons that we’re in this human incarnation is to learn the lesson that we are love, that we are a divinity within.

LILI: Well, that brings up an interesting conversation that I wanted to have with you about how we can draw abundance and prosperity into our lives because so often reality, so to speak, is two parallel universes. One is a lack and one is abundance, and at any given moment, we have the choice. We have the power of choice as to which universe we’re going to live in. You talked about the power of awareness and awakening, and so what we’re really traversing at times is the moment that we’re choosing to live in love or we’re choosing to live in fear.

MARCI: There’s a great story about a Cherokee elder who was talking to his grandson that there are really two energies within each human being… and they’re like two wolves…I’m sorry. I’m not remembering this story. (takes a moment to remember)

There’s a great story that’s told about a Cherokee elder who was talking to his grandson and is telling his grandson that the human condition is like we each have a battle inside of ourselves, and the battle is between two wolves. One wolf is the wolf of unhappiness. It’s the wolf of fear and anger and jealousy and frustration. And the other wolf is the wolf of love. It’s the wolf of gratitude of gratitude, of appreciation, of kindness, of generosity, of forgiveness, of compassion. And the grandson says, “Well, which wolf will win?” And the grandfather says, “Whichever one you feed.”

So it’s up to us in every moment which wolf inside we’re going feed. Are we going to feed love? Are we going to give more attention and more energy to love? Or are we going to give more attention and energy to fear? They’re both there. And what I’ve found is that people who are the happiest are those who have just learned to make a habit of giving more of their attention and energy to love. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what we’re here for. We’re here to really win this battle between fear and love. And I don’t think we do it through fighting in the normal sense of fighting a battle. We do it through not resisting, through opening up, through embracing. I don’t think the way is through denying the negatives, but it’s through opening up and embracing those, all that shows up. And then what we find is then the fear and the anger dissolve into the energy of love because there is no more powerful energy on the planet than the energy of love.

There’s this story from one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books that I love to tell, and it’s about how important it is to express love and appreciation for people. There is a woman who’s designed these blue ribbons that say, “Who you are makes a difference.” And a high school teacher from New York City had heard about these ribbons and decided to do a little experiment with her class. She ordered up a whole bunch of ribbons for her class. And one day, she invited each student forward, one by one, and gave each one of them a blue ribbon, and she acknowledged them for how specifically they had contributed to her life. ‘So, Susie, I appreciate so much because you’re such a great listener. You seem so attentive.’ And ‘John, I appreciate you so much because you have such a great sense of humour.’ After the ceremony was over, she asked them how it felt, and they said, “That was great! We loved it!” She said, “Good. We’re not going to stop this here. I want you all to take home with you three ribbons. I want you to walk up to one person in your life who’s made a difference, and I want you to tell them how they’ve made a difference in your life and hand them a ribbon. Then hand them the other two and ask them to pass them along, and in a week, report back the results.

That afternoon, one of the kids went to his part-time job and went up to his boss and said, “You know, I’m just a punk teenage kid, but six months ago, you believed enough in me to give me a job and give me a chance and because of you, I’ve been able to make enough money to go to college in the fall. Who you are has made a big difference in my life, and here’s a ribbon that says so. And here’s another ribbon, please pass it along.” That afternoon, his boss went to the company president and said, “I’ve worked here for ten years and I’ve never told you I think you’re a creative genius. You inspire me every day with your creativity. Here’s a ribbon that says, ‘Who you are makes a difference.’ You’ve made a big difference in my life. Oh, and here’s another ribbon, please pass it along.” That evening, the company president was driving home and thinking who could he give this ribbon to, and he realized it had been a long time since he’d said anything positive or uplifting to his fourteen year old son.

So that evening, he called his son into the living room and sat him down and said, “You know, son, most of the time I just yell at you for all the things you do wrong, but I realized tonight on the drive home that you’re the most important person to me besides your mother. You mean so much to me. I don’t know who I would do without you…what I would do without you. I love you so much.” At that, his son burst into tears and ran out the door causing his father to think that he might have made a mistake. A few minutes later, however, his son walked back into the room, and his son was carrying something in his hand. His tears were cleared up, but he had something in his hand. And as his father…As the son got closer to the father, his father could see that what he had was a gun. The boy looked up at his father and said, “Dad, I was going to commit suicide tomorrow because I didn’t think that you loved me. Now, I don’t need to. Please take this from me.”

That is a true story about the effect that one person had on another person’s life just by telling them that they appreciate them. Now, I don’t know this for a fact, but I believe that we would have a lot more peace on this planet of ours, that certainly needs more peace, if people on a more regular basis were to tell the people around them that they appreciate them. So here’s a little assignment. Tonight, before you go to sleep, tell one person in your life why you appreciate them. Don’t just tell them that you do, give them a reason why. Tell them why you appreciate them. And notice not only how you feel different, but how it changes the people around you as well.

For additional information visit http://www.questforwealth.org/

To learn about all of Lili Fournier's products, visit http://www.questthejourney.com/products/products.html

The complete list of tour stops is available at: http://virtualblogtour.blogspot.com/2008/09/quest-for-success-dvd-d...