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Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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Making wishes a reality

Filed Under Guest Writer, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | Leave a Comment

Wishes get a bad rep sometimes. Wishing is seen as a dreamy-nonsensical foray into ‘la-la land” and not very practical. “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,” as the saying goes. Dreamers don’t live in reality. They need to get their heads out of the clouds and snap out of it. Right? Wrong.

Wishes are where the seeds of possibility are sown. A life without wishes would be a colorless, dismal march through a series of mundane, rote tasks en route to a quiet, unassuming death. Without wishes, no expansion would happen, no exploration would occur beyond the Known and the Seen.

That being said, merely wishing doesn’t make anything so.

If wishes are the seeds, they also provide the fuel that propels actions.

“You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.” ~ Richard Bach

There is a significant step between wishing and action, without which you cannot hope to succeed: belief. You must believe that you are capable of attaining your wish. Most of the time, when we first have a wish, we have no way of making it come true immediately. Our wishes are usually outsized and unrealistic compared to our skills and resources we have initially. However, making your wish come true is a process. One of my takeaways from SOBCon11? Believe, then act.

By opening yourself up to possibility, you have changed the nature of your reality. Furthermore, through the combination of wishing and belief, you will have a source of energy that sustains you when your spirits flag and doubt creeps in. Believe, then act. Your options will increase in direct proportion to your actions.

Another central element of making your wishes come true is determining the motivations behind your wish.

“Are you fit company for the person you wish to become?” ~ Unknown

When I was a little kid, I would wish for the dishes to wash themselves. I would wish for a teleporter to materialize at the school so that I didn’t have to walk through the rain to get home. These are “tissue paper wishes” based on immaturity, the desire to escape and are ephemeral, silly exercises in futility.

As you mature, take note of the reasons behind your wishes. Are they selfish ones? Do you wish to better another’s life or experience? What do you ask for? Power? Money? Fame? Why? Having the answers to these questions helps you to make your wishes come true.

We cannot attract anything for which we do not have the capacity to receive.

When we wish for something, we must examine our thoughts and our actions. If they are out of alignment, our desires cannot be fulfilled. From this skewed perspective, we will not recognize the answer to our wish, even if it is wrapped in neon tape and standing before us, covered in blinking lights.

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Anything that currently exists was once a wish. Take a moment today and jot down some of your wishes. See if there is a pattern. Have any come true? Which ones remain to be granted? What steps can you take today to help bring them to fruition?

——-

Molly Cantrell-Kraig is a woman with drive. Possessing an innate sense of purpose and a pragmatic, solution-based approach to empowering people, she fused these two traits in order to establish Women With Drive Foundation. Based upon its founder’s personal history, Women With Drive Foundation is a means through which Cantrell-Kraig may effect change on both a micro and macro level. By providing women with something as essential as personal transportation in order to transition them from poverty to prosperity, she, through Women With Drive Foundation, seeks to empower women to help them help themselves. Through this action, the individual applicant benefits, as does society as a whole. Follow Molly on twitter as @mckra1g or @WWDr1ve (Women With Drive Foundation) or “Like” them on facebook.

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The Top 7 Ways to Motivate Yourself Even on Mondays!

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 8 Comments

How to Own Every Day

I used to not like mornings. Monday mornings were the worst. I liked them so little that I thought of Sunday as the impending doom … that made my weekends even shorter.

One day it dawned on me that if I lived to be 70 holding on to this feeling about Mondays, I’d have discounted 10 whole years of my life. Ten years — 520 Mondays lost, crashed, and burned — due to a bad attitude. I had to find a way to get and stay motivated. I had to get back my Mondays. I was pretty sure that I didn’t have enough future left to be throwing away 10 years like a fool.

Monday mornings made feel like a giraffe — all gawky and spotted, all sleepy eyed and too tired to chew my food. I needed motivation. But I wasn’t sure I knew how to do it. It would take some experimentation. I got down to it.

Who wants to sleepwalk through life? I had things that needed doing.

The Top 7 Ways to Motivate Yourself Even on Mondays!

Motivation, without it, we move slower. We’re susceptible to distraction and procrastination. Inside a company or working from home, what fuels our success is motivation — that reason, that determination to make something good happen.

I figured out early that it wasn’t such fun to be unmotivated. In fact, it was both stressful and boring. I didn’t like myself much and maybe that is what struck that match that got the home fires burning. Once I made it a quest to motivate myself, the rest was mostly easy. Here are 7 ways I found to motivate yourself even on Mondays!

  1. Feel all of your senses with amazing experiences. Give yourself the luxury of time to enjoy your shower. Wear clothes that feel good on your skin. Drink delicious coffee. Eat lovely food that smells good while you’re fixing it. Look at fabulous colors. Listen to amazing music. It’s hard not to feel alive when you put your whole body into the experience. Don’t just bring your head into the day show up with every cell of you. Let your DNA have a chance to be part of what you’re doing.

    It’s no accident nature puts on such a great show at sunrise – it inspires, invigorates, and motivates human beings. Try to see it. Don’t just look at walls, windshields, and buildings.


  2. Live every day as a quest. Work is work, but a quest is valiant and noble. Don’t just brainstorm, conspire. Let your fingers dance on the keyboard as you type. Smile while you think. Enjoy your food. Don’t just walk, stride — feel the ground beneath your feet. When you stop for a break look at the sky. Dare yourself to find everything easier, faster, more fun, and more meaningful.
  3. Work at your best learning level — your challenge sweet spot. Beak down your challenges to meet your skills set. Challenges that are too easy are boring. Challenges that are too hard cause anxiety. Neither state moves to action. Challenges that fall equally between anxiety and boredom inspire us. They catch our attention and feed our need to grow.
  4. Know that almost any work can be motivating. Whether you’re copying documents or cleaning up after a party, devise a way to put the task in your challenge zone. Time it. Measure it. Set a standard for your personal performance. Turn the work itself into art form. Make it a game.
  5. Get curious and confident. It’s hard to think of a knot as a problem when you curious about what holds it together and confident that you’ll find the way to unravel it. Be alert. Be aware. Notice things. People who notice things know more than people who don’t. Then choose the things you notice energize you. Let them fuel your day. Ask new questions. Rather than asking, “What will I do to fix this problem?” try “How can this situation be a strength?” “How can go with it and end up with a better than what I had in mind?”
  6. Stop listening to the voices in your head. Those voices undermine determination and focus. Tell them you might have needed them once, but you know what you’re doing today. Lock them away and get on with being productive. You know how.
  7. Appreciate your ability to choose to be in a good mood AND appreciate the people who respond to that good mood in good ways! You’ll get energy from doing both. Let it fill you up. Be liberal with your smiles and your thank yous. Give a few extra smiles and thank yous to the folks who try to steal energy from you. Be confident that they’ll enjoy their bad moods even more if you leave them alone.

The trick to motivation is knowing that every bit of it is in our control. Even if we start to go off track, we can go back to number 7 and choose again to be in a good mood. Then start all over at Number 1 … No day is lost until we give it up.

It’s your day. It’s your life. You’ve got 7 ways to own every day.
Why would you spend a minute in unmotivated and boring?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Beach Notes: Do You Follow One Course?

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 2 Comments

by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh



When I saw this watercourse this week at the beach it made me think of the quote:

Follow One Course Until Successful- anon

Are you a follow one course type or do you follow many courses?
What is successful for you?

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Why you should just give up

Filed Under Guest Writer, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog, leadership | Leave a Comment

Not gonna lie – a teeny portion of my Ego flinched a little, just typing the title to this post. The hesitation is a sign to me that I’m not completely as untethered from this world as I would like to be, but awareness of my hesitation is leagues ahead of where I’ve been.

As I’ve admitted in previous posts, I’m a reforming Control Freak and time was the idea of surrendering anything to anyone was repugnant to me and an insult to my own competence. With poet William Ernest Henley’s voice echoing in my head, I, and I alone was the captain of my soul.

When you figure in the fact that the majority of my professional life is in sales and marketing, I’ve got so many “in it win it” and “if it’s to be it’s up to me” rah rah tapes running in my head, it’s a wonder I still have friends. :) I’m Stuart Smalley on steriods.

Here’s the kicker. You can be those things, as long as you understand the difference between with taking ownership of your actions and demanding a specific, pre-ordained outcome that happens as a result of them.

“A wise unselfishness is not a surrender of yourself to the wishes of anyone, but only to the best discoverable course of action.” ~ David Seabury

You absolutely owe it to yourself to identify, harvest, employ and in all other ways nurture your own development. The surrender portion comes when you realize the extent of your part of the equation and the beginning of The Other.

Sometimes the Other is a person. Or it can be an entity, an organization, a process. But  you have to trust that you have done the work. Then surrender the outcome.

“I can tell you that it takes great strength to surrender. You have to know that you are not going to collapse. Instead, you are going to open to a power that you don’t even know, and it is going to come to meet you. In the process of healing, this is one of the huge things that I have discovered. People recognized the energy coming to meet them. When they opened to another energy, a love, a divine love, came through to meet them. That is what is known as grace. We all sing about amazing grace. It is a gift.” ~  Marion Woodman

We are smart. Each of us. We really are. But did you know that there are a few billion of us walking the planet? So much of our reality is predicated upon our awareness of our immediate surroundings and the resultant combinations of those variables. However, there are billions upon billions of iterations of possibilities that exist outside our awareness. Just because we don’t know of something’s existence doesn’t mean that it doesn’t. Exist, that is.

“Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.” ~ Unknown

This reminds me again of Melissa Pierce and her film Life in Perpetual Beta. I’m not sure why people have the perception that stasis is the goal. Logic would dictate that every day of our existence brings new experiences, new individuals and new perspectives. Based purely on a mathematical sensibility, it would be as if each day you were handed two different numbers and expect to come up with the same total each day, regardless of the integers you receive. How can you expect to always arrive at “six,” when on Monday you were given 5+1 and on Tuesday, 6+9? Can’t happen, even using high math.

We are always evolving, always surrendering our current reality for another.  By embracing the paradox of surrendering in order to gain, we are able to move forward. The Borg were right: “Resistance is futile.” Life goes on and stagnation leads to atrophy and death in both a figurative and literal sense.

So…why give up? Because you have so much to get.

——-

Molly Cantrell-Kraig is a woman with drive. Possessing an innate sense of purpose and a pragmatic, solution-based approach to empowering people, she fused these two traits in order to establish Women With Drive Foundation. Based upon its founder’s personal history, Women With Drive Foundation is a means through which Cantrell-Kraig may effect change on both a micro and macro level. By providing women with something as essential as personal transportation in order to transition them from poverty to prosperity, she, through Women With Drive Foundation, seeks to empower women to help them help themselves. Through this action, the individual applicant benefits, as does society as a whole. Follow Molly on twitter as @mckra1g or @WWDr1ve (Women With Drive Foundation) or “Like” them on facebook.

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

 

Be Effortlessly Cool in Your Red Shoes and Own Your Own Life

Filed Under Branding, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 17 Comments

The Red Shoe Tragedy

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The rules, values, and ideas we learned growing up served us in those situations and settings. Some of those rules, values and ideas are universal to humanity, but others were built from the goals people who . Yet we often keep living by those rules long after we’ve left the group, society, or culture from which they came. We still use rules from grade school peer groups to define ourselves and make decisions as adults. The values, rules, and ideas imprint deeper and last longer than the channels for which they were developed to build, serve, and protect.

In my high school, it was a social and a fashion faux pas to EVER wear red shoes. Yet my friends who went to a Chicago high school had never heard of that “law.” It was stunning and amazing that these attractive, fun, funny, intelligent kids could live so effortlessly cool wearing red shoes whenever they wanted. It took outright clear thinking on my part to choose to set aside that rule — The tragedy was that it didn’t occur to me to stop following the red shoe rules until long after high school, long after it was even a remotely useful rule.

In every group, society, and culture that we belong, we use rules, values, and ideas to identify ourselves as members of the group, align our goals and define our roles. We use those rules, values, and ideas to attract like-minded thinkers and to channel our energy in the useful directions. But no single set of rules, values and ideas carries over completely to the next universe of people.

In increments we’ve learned to look outside us — to our parents, teachers, friends, bosses — for answers for the keys to navigate those elusive rules, values, and ideas that define good behavior and outline the clearest path to our success. What meet instead is other people who have also learned to look outside themselves.

The rules, values and ideas we collect over time grow and gather. Each one we add comes from someone else. We keep adding in more to those we’ve picked up and combine them in our own ways to make our own sense. The rules, values and ideas don’t leave our minds when we move on with our lives.

Rules, values, and ideas are like people in the way that few will fit us well-enough to earn the place of a life-long friend.

Who built the rules, values, and ideas that fuel the decisions you make?
If you haven’t named the values, rules, and ideas that are your friends for life, fair chance the answer is: not you.

Every new teacher, location, clan, situation, culture, corporation, church, organization, school, or troop offers new rules, ideas, and values slightly different from the last. Yet no person, group, or association has to live one moment of your life.

Think about that.

It’s your life.
No one has walked a mile in your shoes.
No one knows what you wish in the middle of the night.

Choose your values.
Make your rules.
Have your own ideas.
Be effortlessly cool in your red shoes.
Be your own unique value proposition.
Live your own life.

Are you ready to move the useless rules out of your head and get to a new sort of productive?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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