Live your life with Joy!

A simple idea in a complicated world. And for many, living with joy may seem impossible, silly even, when you consider all the controversy and difficulties we are faced with and hear about daily.

Yet for Mo Anderson, author of A Joy Filled Life and former CEO of Keller Williams and current Chairman of the Board, joyful living is possible and even necessary in a world filled with controversy and difficulty.

Because “joy” is a choice. An acknowledgment of the blessings of our life. It’s the bi-product of gratitude and a relationship with something more powerful than you and me. For Mo, this is a relationship with God. For you, it may be a relationship and awareness of something bigger than yourself called by a different name.

This awareness allows each of us to look out onto the landscape of seemingly random people and events and “connect the dots.”

An encounter you make today may seem random until years later you realize it wasn’t random at all. It was another piece to your puzzle. A sign. A guidepost. An opportunity. An experience. A lesson. A bridge from who you are to who you are meant to be.

“The magic is in the little things; the daily actions you take and the relationships you make.”

This is just an example of the wise words pouring from the pages of A Joy Filled Life. Spoken with love that has been nurtured by experience, lacking a sense of “judgey-ness” and yet confident in a moral foundation guided by faith, Mo Anderson becomes the friend you never met who throws open a window to gently and firmly allow you to see your best self.

Then, catching a glimpse of the best version of you, each day can be filled with joy…even when the actual day may be filled with challenges and even sorrow. Because you understand even in those moments, and in retrospect perhaps most strongly in those opportunities of character building, the foundation of your faith and purpose is laid.

The chapters unfold like a conversation among friends lingering over a cup of coffee. You learn of her humble beginnings as a tenant farmers daughter living in Oklahoma. “Poor” by the standards of money; however, rich with the life-giving seeds harvested in her soul that have sustained her over eight decades of life.

“We each have a voice and it’s unique to us. We just have to find it. It doesn’t matter when we find it. It only matters that we keep trying until we do.”

 

And a wonderful voice and life it is! Mo carries with her an infectious positive outlook on life. She is quick to acknowledge parents who instilled important life and love lessons, and the blessing of a strong work ethic earned through the realization that your very livelihood, your life, is dependent on the crops you grow. Literally, those crops of her childhood put food on the table. Today, those crops of wisdom and faith are a gift Mo willingly shares with anybody who will listen.

The chapter titles unfold like a journey through life: Be thankful for your foundation, follow your dreams, find your voice, do the right thing, keep the faith, do whatever it takes, build a work ethic, ask for what you need, stick to your word, never quit, and set high standards. Upon this personal foundation, she then transitions to how easily you can incorporate your joy-filled life grounded in personal values to business.

Yet, before you believe Mo Anderson to be a Pollyanna-ish figure living with blind optimism, it’s important to know she is known as “the velvet hammer….”

Yes, she is 80 years old, filled with faith and joy and grace…but this ain’t her first rodeo!

I had the pleasure of hearing Mo Anderson speak at a national event, and then meet her briefly afterwards. Even at 80-years old she is a presence, full of energy and stamina, with the ability to ask the kind of questions that open your mind and heart to a world of possibility.

A world of joy birthed from the realization that we all have gifts to be shared.

Click Here to grab your own copy of A Joy Filled Life, Lessons From a Tenant Farmer’s Daughter…Who Became a CEO. Then find a corner and a cup of coffee and be prepared to be filled with a dose of simple Oklahoma dust-bowl wisdom.

Editor Dawn Damico gets inspired by Mo Anderson! Smart, talented, and filled with Grace and Joy…

A Taste of “Mo-Mentum Builders”:

  • Be integrity-driven in all your dealings, personal and business.
  • Your faith is an important part of who you really are. Build it, believe in it, and bring it wherever you go.
  • What you master in tough times will help you soar in good ones.
  • Do what you say you’ll do. One of the most important fundamentals in business as well as in one’s personal life is to not only make commitments, but to keep them.
  • When standards are clear, decisions are easy.
  • Do your best, work hard, work smart, and be of service to others. If you are blessed with wealth and abundance, then use it to give back and make a difference in the world.