Author Archives: michelle

Brought Me to My Knees…

As mentioned in ‘my friendship experiment over the last 10 months’ livestream last weekend, I’ve let myself fall back into some of my deepest friendships.

It’s brought me to my knees in gratitude. And up lots of mountains (why not choose our own, physical or energetic? — I’ve talked a lot about this, how our greatest creativity can bring us to choosing our own challenges/”problems”, it’s what the #CreativeHeroine Experience was about).

It’s also found me dancing late into the night in places like Italy, laughing in spaces called Unicorn or to fields meeting friends’ donkeys. This conscious recommitment period has also inspired me to be better or more active friends with my parentals, to plan a trip with my Mom-in-law and recommit, generally, to daughterhood…

But it hasn’t all been travel, it’s also inspired me to make local friendships a lot more fun and spontaneous, to run (through airports after said late night dancing) and, lately, it’s found me napping on couches named “Lose All Ambition” because they (or is it the friendships?) are so comfortable and comforting.

Like many of us, my life these days needed less FB and IG filters or DMs, less distance, more real convos (r e l a t i o n s h i p s), and, specifically, a lot more direct flights, the DMs I enjoy most.

We can always create what we want to be a part of. And — we have so many people simply waiting for us to arrive or to, themselves, be invited [back to the foreground of our lives or into our hearts].

And we have so many people simply waiting for us to arrive or to themselves be invited.

Send the invite? Send yourself?

Enjoy your business, enjoy your life! 

Life is good,

michelle-black-sig-md-light
Michelle Ghilotti
Success Designer, Brand Activator & Social Entrepreneur 

p.s. If you didn’t catch my livestream on my way back from Alaska around my ten-month friendship experiment, HERE she is. 

p.p.s Watch this space for more information on something happening in my home in Los Angeles. The information will drop on July 16th!

My Friendship Experiment (livestream replay)

My friendship experiment over the last ten months has been THIS. Enjoy listening to the livestream above. I share the sweet and harder part of this + I’ll tell you about the yellow post-it note.

Maybe you’d benefit from a friendship experiment, too?

Enjoy your business, enjoy your life! 

Life is good,

michelle-black-sig-md-light
Michelle Ghilotti
Success Designer, Brand Activator & Social Entrepreneur 

Speechless (Something That Happened @ GGP LA)

Last Saturday night. 

Me. 

Speechless. 

(And, finally, at 11:30pm, after eight hours in heels, also Achy Feet).

Human words never seem adequate enough to describe what happens here each time and what is felt throughout the night. It’s an evening and series of events that must be experienced.

I fail at the words.

Or, the words that come, fail me.

So, I’ll tell you this short story instead:

Before continuing with the lineup last night, Ms. Susan Barton, founder of A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project, activist and speaker and Kristine Carlson, best-selling author and speaker, were sitting next to each other in the front row.

Susan had just finished telling us her story of 20 years of incarceration and the last 20 of helping women like her re-establish themselves as agents of social change in their communities. I was kneeling over chatting with both of them.

As we spoke, she turns to Kristine and tells her the Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff series that Kristine’s late husband Richard and she inspired and wrote often consoled her throughout her time (she was incarcerated for a drug addiction that began after her son was accidentally killed).

Thank you.

These two women had never met before and that share of gratitude between them was made possible last night (photo of Susan and Kristine is the middle shot in the second row of photos).

In my entire creative life, I’ve never felt more grateful. For that moment, yes, and for everything, GGP has allowed people to do, feel and witness.

The GGP.

Thank you to all our founding friends and to the waves of ever growing new friends in attendance (we’ve gotten to a place where we have more people emailing us asking to come than we can fit) and thank you (to Susan Barton and her ever-growing purpose-filled organization, to Kristine Carlson for her heart and humor-filled sharing of her life of love and of her epiphany about her passion after heartbreak (congrats on Heartbreak to Wholeness), Dean Schaefer for being our resident love expert (script your life then have your partner supersize it!), Rachel Kann for starting us out with an insanely POWerful spoken word piece on passion, Scott Passaglia for his heart (always on) and for the rad couple hours of live music and to Josh, Papa extraordinaire, for saying yes to it all: this brainchild, this partnership, everything…

Enjoy your business, enjoy your life! 

Life is good,

michelle-black-sig-md-light
Michelle Ghilotti
Success Designer, Brand Activator & Social Entrepreneur 

Good Grief! (And my leather rocker costume)

We held space for it all under the most beautiful Weeping Willow in the Napa Valley this weekend…

I napped under this tree last weekend and also celebrated there with my husband and friends.

Someone we worked with for the Orange & Blue Ball that happened on 6/8, a costume gala that our family’s foundation, The dg Foundation, created in honor of my late brother, texted our event designer: “…listening to people mourn but still live and love and celebrate at the Orange and Blue Ball was life-changing.”

Good grief, that’s on point. 

Because we can — hold the confusion and compassion, the sadness and the joy, the gratitude and the “I wish I could have done or told them this or that.”

We are everything all at once and when we can honestly speak about the range of these emotions and our natural imperfections (both natural), on and offline, the less separate we feel from our true selves and from others and the more room we continue to make for peace, contentment, and joy…

Enjoy your business, enjoy your life! 

Life is good,

Enjoy your business, enjoy your life! 

Life is good,

michelle-black-sig-md-light
Michelle Ghilotti
Success Designer, Brand Activator & Social Entrepreneur 

p.s. For the livestream on the very topic of “good grief”, or in other words, being able to hold both the sadness and the joy, click here.

p.p.s. for photos of The dg Foundation Orange & Blue Ball and of the 80s leather rocker costume I didn’t want to give back – click here.