Issue #22 -- Introducing… Be The One Awards

Welcome to summer! Things are literally heating up around the world and we hope everyone is finding fun ways to stay cool in the middle of a heatwave. To help our community feel cool, we’re kicking off summer introducing a new award season – the Be The One Awards! 

In the next few issues we’ll be honoring some of the people who excel at Being The One everyday with a new award every week. We’ll also be sharing their stories, success secrets and even their favorite summer snacks.

And the award goes to…

One action, when you only have

One minute:

• Relive Sheryl Lee Ralph’s acceptance speech at the 2023 Critics’ Choice Awards, where she shared a powerful message about self-love, self-belief, and perseverance.

One hour:

• There are awards out there for everything - even dying! The Darwin Awards honor fallen heroes who will thankfully no longer contribute to the human gene pool. Listen to this episode of the Darwin Awards podcast to learn about the most recent winners who met creative and stupid ends.

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One Story

Some awards have been around so long that we forget that they started because of one person. We’ve all heard about the Nobel Prizes and can probably even name a few winners easily – Albert Einstein, Malala Yousafzai, Toni Morrison – but what do we know about the Prizes’ namesake?

Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1833. His father was an engineer and inventor who moved away from his family to Russia when his local business closed. Nobel’s mother ran a grocery store to help support the family during this time until they all moved to St. Petersburg, Russia in 1842. Alfred’s family highly valued education and he could speak five languages by age 17. Nobel went on to study chemical engineering in Paris before he and his family moved back home to Stockholm in 1863. 

During his time in Paris, Alfred Nobel worked alongside an explosive colleague, Ascanio Sobrero, who invented nitroglycerine. Inspired by this work, Nobel wanted to adapt the new material to be more commercially useful in construction. After many years of dangerous experimentation that resulted in the death of one of his brothers and a ban on experimentation with nitroglycerine inside the city limits of Stockholm, Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1866. This invention was successful enough that Nobel eventually grew his business to factories in 20 different countries. Despite his commercial success, Nobel continued to experiment with making artificial silk, leather, synthetic rubber, and enough other materials that he had 355 patents by the time he died in 1896.

Along with many patents, Alfred Nobel had earned a fortune by the time he died and his final act in his will was to use this fortune to reward people who are working to better humanity in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. His final request was challenged by relatives and authorities in many of the countries he worked in, but after a four-year battle the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901.

Since then, Prizes have been awarded to a total of 965 individuals and 27 organizations. Despite building a fortune through destruction, Alfred Nobel ensured that his legacy would be to honor people working to make the world a better, smarter, and more peaceful place.

One Recipe

Once the sun is out in full force, we all start calling our friends who live near the beach or have a pool in their backyard. Summer is the time of gatherings and parties - it’s essential to have a go-to recipe that we can easily throw together and wow everyone. 

Introducing pasta salad! Grab some noodles, your favorite summer vegetables, and a light vinaigrette and you have the perfect side to impress everyone at the next backyard BBQ. Our recipe this week is a refreshing, Mediterranean take on pasta salad that will fill us up, but not weigh us down too much in the water.

Mediterranean Lemon Chicken Pasta Salad

“The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.”

~ Maya Angelou
Author, poet, and civil rights activist

Featured Story: Be The One Awards and the Freedom Formula

Launching the Be The One Awards is a way for us to recognize some of the superstars in our community and show that no matter what your business or schedule looks like you can find ways to Be The One everyday. The summer comes with plentiful opportunities to practice Being The One while we spend time with family, vacation, and do the things we enjoy most.

Next week our awardees will share their stories and examples of ways Being The One helps them achieve their goals and support their loved ones. This week we’re sharing the FREEDOM formula to help us lay the groundwork for future success.

• Foundation

  • Build a foundation on positive thoughts, process, and beliefs. Our quality of life is based on the foundation we create and we can choose to believe that things never work out or we can choose to believe that the world is conspiring in our favor. Obstacles are natural parts of life, but can we use our foundation to help us reframe them and keep moving forward.

• Results-oriented

  • Be focused on results and be brave about sharing them. Even before we achieve our goals, writing down and declaring the results we want can help us chart a path to the finish line and allows people in our life to hold us accountable. 

• Enjoyment

  • Remember to enjoy the ride! Success doesn’t happen overnight and there are going to be highs and lows along the ride. The more we can learn to enjoy the good times as they come, the easier it is to remember that the bad times are only temporary.

• Expectation

  • Be clear and realistic about expectations. We all want to be successful, but what does that really mean? Getting specific about what results we expect clarifies the steps we need to take to get there.

• Dominate

  • Dominate limiting beliefs. Our dominant thoughts can become our reality. Do we focus on hope, abundance, and prosperity or struggle and inferiority? By focusing on creation and being in service for the highest good we can achieve domination over our limiting beliefs and other thoughts that hold us back.

• Observation

  • Be objective. Stepping back and being an observer helps us look at our lives objectively and can even make decisions clearer and easier. We can also surround ourselves with trusted people that can offer alternative perspectives and help us see past our blind spots.

• Momentum

  • Keep momentum up with a great team. We can all be solo warriors, but we do our best work when we collaborate and mastermind. Finding a great mastermind team is key to keeping momentum flowing and also keeps us plugged in to outside perspectives.