Yesterday, I featured Transformational Luminary, Harrison Klein. Today, I’m presenting you to a woman who shines with her own brilliance - Meet the Flight Attendant for the Exclamation Points! When I asked Rémy Chaussé if she would be interested in answering some questions for my blog interview project, she literally said, “Yes!” a few minutes later. This is the kind of person Rémy is; someone who says “Yes!” to life filled with positivity, dotted with countless exclamation points. I find her to be both an interested and interesting woman and that combination is rarer than you might think. Rémy Chaussé is an inspirational speaker and bestselling author of Living Life As An Exclamation Point! She delights large audiences with personal stories of triumph and also does small one-on-one consultations on creating opportunity out of obstacles. With her exuberant energy, you might call her the Flight Attendant for the Exclamation Points! 
Exclamation points are those incredible, amazing, unforgettable moments that make you feel lucky to be alive. They flood your world when you fall in love! When you get that amazing new job! When things are just absolutely perfect!After surviving a home invasion at age 12, Rémy struggled like so many in-crisis to stay positive. With this as an unfortunate trigger point, she developed a lifelong pattern of attracting people who invalidated everything she stood for. It wasn’t until a magical instant when an “aha moment” told her that someone was literally stealing her optimism (stealing her exclamation points!) that she realized something had to change. In one defining moment, she was able to overcome invalidation once and for all and take back her life. Now she helps people answer the hard questions – Who am I? Does my life matter? What’s next for me? – in an open, honest, and sometimes hilarious search for their missing inner genius. Always an over-achiever and stillan eternal optimist, her influence has touched the hearts and rekindled the spirits of people all over the world as she shares her breakthrough methods for personal fulfillment and professional success.And now, enjoy reading her answers to my questions… I did! SE: What inspired you to write "Living Life As An Exclamation Point"?Rémy: I had just come out of yet another abusive relationship when, one day, I looked around and said, “Where are all my exclamation points!?!” My life had become nothing but teardrops and I longed for that naturally exuberant person that I knew was inside me. So I started researching the subject of optimism. I stumbled across a statistic that told me in a 10-year period, from 1967 to 1977, there were 95,000 articles written on depression and anxiety but only 2,000 articles written on happiness and joy (in psychology journals).I started doing interviews with coaches, therapists, authors, and business leaders throughout the country and found that there was one common theme at the bottom of every story of someone stuck in mediocrity – they were being invalidated. And that certainly resonated with my experiences, starting with my mother who didn’t believe me when I said that someone had broken into our house while I was home alone. That pattern stayed with me throughout life and I wanted to break that pattern once and for all. So this topic of overcoming invalidation became my mission – I wanted to help people TAKE BACK their optimism. SE: If you were granted the power to change anything in the world, what would you change?Rémy: One day, I was walking around the mall (I’m a girl!) and thought it would be fun to find little exclamation point earrings. All I could find were stars, hearts, and lightning bolts but no exclamation points. I noticed that in women’s jewelry there were lots and lots of teardrops and I thought, “Hmmm … that certainly supports my research, with all the attention given to living with depression in this country.” P.S. Why should we learn to “live with” depression? That never made sense to me! As I held a pair of teardrop earrings in my hand, I thought, “Wow! Look at that! You flip a teardrop on its head, and you get an exclamation point instead!” I literally spent the afternoon at the mall buying teardrop earrings. Then I took them all to a jeweler to have them flipped upside down into exclamation points!So if I could change anything in the world, I’d want to inspire people to see how EASY it is to change a situation, just by finding the positive. You literally take a problem and flip it upside down to a new reality. You look at opposites, at things that may seem impossible. Too often, we just try to solve the problem and all that does is keep us stuck in it. But if you look for new realities, your world can very easily change! It’s a matter of keeping your eye on the mountain and spending time focusing on where you want to be. As I learned from Wallace Wattles in The Science of Getting Rich; Thoughts create reality. It’s an exact science and failure is impossible! It really is as easy as changing your thoughts from the problem to the new reality you want to create. SE: Who, living or dead, real or fictional, would you like to meet and have a conversation with?Rémy: I would love to meet up with my grandmother again. She’s featured in my book. Well, the story of her mischievous ghost Alfonso is in my book! I was too young when she passed and I’d love to get her secrets to living an artistic life. She played piano by ear, she painted for hours on end, she made real French toast like they make in Paris, and she believed in spirits here on earth who help guide us. Believe it or not, her ghost Alfonso inspired me to follow my passions! Now that I’m grown up, I’d love to know her perspectives on life’s journeys. I wish everyone who is now a grandparent would put their reflection about life’s lessons on video for us to watch long after their gone. It’s amazing to me how wisdom is timeless.SE:What advice do you have for people who are struggling to stay positive in rough times?Rémy: To use optimism as the force that it is. Optimism is the ability – and the tendency – to see the upside in any situation. What’s amazing about optimism isn’t its complexity. It’s the sheer, raw, amazing power of it. When you’re optimistic, good things really do happen. Opportunities emerge and then they multiply and breed new opportunities, almost like rabbits. Or magic. Optimism is the art of finding your exclamation points. That exclamation point at the end of a thought or idea or sentence … that excitement about a good thing that’s just around the corner … that’s optimism!Optimism is a great quality to have in just about every area of life – it’s helpful in relationships, it helps you survive hardship. Studies even show it keeps you healthier and helps you live longer. But what really strikes me about optimism is how closely it’s linked to opportunity.There’s a reason for this. The more optimistic you are about finding opportunity, no matter how bad things might seem to be, the more likely you are to look for it. And the best, most surefire way to find opportunity is simply to be open and aware and looking.As you might imagine, this gives optimists a pretty gigantic upper hand when it comes to snagging the best opportunities! SE: Where do you see yourself ten years from now? Rémy: I was doing a visualization last year and this overwhelming image just engulfed me. It was so stunning, so vivid, so incredibly real, that it had become a force of its own. In 3D and on my own inner Imax screen. The image I couldn’t get away from was a giant white porcelain book with gold-leafed edges, coming right out of my solar plexus chakra. As each page flipped, these incredible, animated fairy tale characters floated out of me and started dancing all around like a scene out of “Fantasia.” And I’m not just talking about a visual image – all my senses were fully involved. There were birds chirping, dancing frogs croaking, streams of sunlight, wafts of ribbons, melodies and music, you name it. And in the middle of it all was me, on the floor, giving birth to this big white porcelain book. OMG!!!!!What was especially funny (funny strange, not funny ha-ha) was that during that same time period, I kept finding myself in conversations with people – and I’m talking anybody, even the guy behind the counter at the Taco Bell – and at some point in the conversation, I’d blurt out, “I should write your book!” The words would just literally fall out of my mouth, completely beyond my control, while my inner voice would be frantically screaming, “Stop it! You’re not an author! Who do you think you are?” Apparently, some part of me couldn’t get past this whole idea of writing. But another part of me wanted to completely, totally, unequivocally deny it. Period.(Yes, I did say period. Oops.) But lying there on the floor, I knew that this vision meant something big was happening. I knew that it was leading me to a more fulfilling emotional life. I knew it meant that I was coming out of invalidation and into my authenticity, and also expanding my attitude toward others. I knew it meant that I was developing a sense of belonging and finding my perfect place in the universe. I knew in my heart and soul that this vision, this purpose, meant that I was becoming a leader, an adventurer, and that naturally exuberant and charismatic being that appeared on my vision cards so long ago was finally finding her place in the world.I had a book inside me that had to be written! Exclamation Point! So I’m open to the next journey. I had no idea the last 10 years would go like they did, and I have no idea what life will hold in the next 10 years. I’m staying open, and letting life guide me where I need to be taken in order to fulfill my legacy. 
Contact Rémy Chausséwww.facebook.com/LivingLifeAsAnExclamationPointwww.RemyChausse.com
