music | Bigg Success

Tag Archive: music

Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover

Written on March 17, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Balance, Happiness

clover Happy St. Patrick’s Day everybody! We hope you’re having a good one. We have to celebrate today with song!

___

Listen while you read! Click the purple player to hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's post on The Bigg Success Show: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

___

marylynn
Does that mean you’re going to sing, George?

___

george I hope not. We want our audience to keep listening. I only put you through that torture, Mary-Lynn.

___

We do like music here at Bigg Success as you may have noticed by all the songs and bands we talk about.

___

marylynn
I’m more of a melody person and George is the lyrics guy.

___

With it being St. Patrick’s Day, we started thinking about the song, I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover. What a happy little jingle, written all the way back in 1927 but, ironically, overlooked until Art Mooney popularized it in 1948.

___

george The song opens, “I’m looking over a four-leaf clover that I overlooked before.” And in the lyrics … see I am a lyrics guy … are three great lessons.

___

Sunshine + Rain = Roses

The second part of the song goes, “One leaf is sunshine, the second is rain, Third is the roses that grow in the lane.”

___

marylynn This is the first lesson we see in this wonderful song and it seems particularly appropriate right now as we face tough times. Sometimes the sun shines. I just love sunny days. The sun represents the good times.

___

Up until about a year or so ago, we were living in pretty good times, economically. We often aren’t thankful enough when we’re in the middle of them.

Then it rains. And we’re in the middle of a storm right now. But the thing is – if the sun was always shining, if it never rained – would we really appreciate the sunshine?

It’s the change of weather that makes weather more interesting. It’s the change in circumstances that makes life more interesting. And boy, are they interesting right now or what!

This part of the song wraps up talking about the roses that grow in the lane. And here’s where the lesson comes in. Without the sunshine and the rain, those roses wouldn’t grow. Without the rain, those roses wouldn’t bloom into their full beauty.

So it is with us. It takes sunshine and rain, good times and bad, for us to reach our full potential. Because in the down times, when the challenges may be the greatest, we gain wisdom, strength, and skills that we would never have otherwise. And those things carry us to greater heights than we could have ever imagined when the good times come.

The fourth leaf

The song continues, “No need explaining, the one remaining is somebody I adore.” St. Patrick’s Day is all about luck. The fourth leaf of a four-leaf clover is often associated with luck. And how lucky we are if we have someone to adore! That’s the second lesson from this song.

Isn’t it interesting that the song doesn’t talk about having somebody who adores us? It’s showing us that to give our love, our adoration, is so very important. Because we can’t really love someone else fully unless we love ourselves enough to have some love to give, some extra capacity. Then we can experience the joy of giving love.

Let’s not overlook the third lesson

Believe it or not, that’s the whole song … it’s like the whole song is a chorus.

So you may be saying, “Wait a minute. They said there were three lessons in this song and so far they’ve only talked about two of them.”

Good catch. The third lesson is in the first part of the song. “I’m looking over a four-leaf clover that I overlooked before.”

Since we view four-leaf clovers as a sign of good luck to come, we wonder …

How often do we overlook the good luck that is right in front of our faces?

We have wonderful people in our lives. We have the basic necessities we need. We have so much and we often fail to stop and be thankful for it. Yes, today is a day to realize how lucky we are. Our stocks and the value of our houses may be down. But we shouldn’t overlook how fortunate we are.

We feel fortunate that you spent time with us today. Thank you so much.

___

Get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly – it’s FREE!

___

If we don’t have enough of this one thing, we’ll fail. If we have too much of it, we’ll fail. Join us next time to find out what this one thing is … and exactly how much you need of it to succeed bigg. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes.

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00352-031709.mp3

Related posts

Is It Better to be Lucky or Smart?

(Image in today's post by woodsy)

0 Comments

6 Great Ways to Keep a Conversation Going

Written on August 22, 2008 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Communication, Networking

When you meet someone for the first time, the hardest part is usually just getting the conversation started. But sometimes it’s also hard to keep it going.

We did some research and found a lot of articles on the internet about starting a conversation, but few about keeping it going. We also found that many suggestions for conversation starters would probably be better conversation “continuers”.

So we thought we’d focus on that part of the conversation today.

Hear us share our conversation continuers on The Bigg Success Show! Just click the purple play button: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

With some people, it’s tough to keep the conversation going. They may be extremely shy or you might just not “click” with them. In those cases, you may just have to resign yourself that it’s not going to happen and move on.

6 ways to keep the conversation going

One simple way to keep a conversation going is to ask questions. Don’t get too personal. Keep it light-hearted. Also, don’t fire them off so rapidly that the other person starts to feel like they’re being interrogated. We use this one a lot, particularly early in a conversation. But here are six of our favorites ways to keep it going:

#1 – “What’s the best book you’ve read recently?”
Variations could be best movie, TV show, or music they’ve heard.

#2 – Offer up some interesting trivia.
Just don’t go Cliff Claven on them! If you’ve heard something that intrigued you, and it’s germane to the conversation, share it!

For example, we heard not long ago that 80% of all men said they would marry the same woman all over again. However, only 50% of all women said they would marry the same man. Can you see an interesting conversation coming out of that tidbit?

#3 – “If you could trade places with one celebrity, who would it be?”
Variations could be favorite actor, or you could limit it to favorite living actor, etc.

#4 – “If you could do college all over again, what would you get your degree in?”
This question also has many interesting variations. For example, you could ask them what’s the one class they would like to take now.

#5 – “What are you working on that’s fun?”
We heard this one from our friend Chris Brogan. It makes “What do you do?” seem boring, doesn’t it. We loved this question the first time we heard it.

#6 – Create a game.
We like to come up with a word of the night or phrase of the day. It’s an interesting word that naturally came up in the conversation. Ideally, it’s a word or phrase with a double meaning of some sort. Then see how many times it can be worked into the discussion.

What’s your favorite way to keep a conversation going?

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes.

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Don’t Shy Away From Networking

(Image by whitebeard)