Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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What gifts have you overlooked this Christmas?

Filed Under Guest Writer, Successful Blog | 2 Comments

Everything is a gift. Everything. Even the heartache and loss we may have all experienced at one time or another in our lives. What significant for me is the evolving awareness and acceptance of the nature and qualities of a gift.

As a child, Christmas was about asking. Tallying the number of presents under the tree, comparing your loot pile with the amounts your brother or sister may have. Shaking and wondering what could be inside the packages… the resigned knowledge that the gooshy one was socks and underwear.

In my house, Christmas was also all about rituals. Christmas mass at midnight, vaulting out of bed Christmas morning as soon as you could smell coffee perking, wafting through the house… My uncles dragging the electric Lionel train set from the attic and setting it up on the living room floor in front of the fireplace. We kids were forbidden from playing with it, but we were allowed to hand our uncles the smoke pellets that went into the engine.

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”  ~Author unknown, attributed to a 7-year-old named Bobby

I was 13 when my grandma died, and with her passing, my Christmases changed. I began to realize that the gifts weren’t the things like my Marx Big Wheel or the shiny baubles I received from Santa. They were the stories I got to hear passed down from generations, like the time my Uncle Bruce was sent to school in a tuxedo because it was laundry day, and grandma’s only other option was sending him to school in dungarees. It was the use of grandma’s best china and the silver that were brought out to herald the season. It was the gift of a musical (and quite frankly, offbeat) family that held a rousing Skit Night after the dishes were done.

“Christmas – that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance.  It may weave a spell of nostalgia.  Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance – a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.” ~ Augusta E. Rundel

As our lives expand, they begin to intersect with an ever-increasing network of people. Teachers, bosses, colleagues, spouses, children… Each person who comes into our lives brings gifts – lessons and love that enrich us and help us to become who we are. What’s wonderful is that if we are paying attention, we can begin to identify our own gifts and strengths.

Once identified, we can begin to hone and develop these gifts and offer them in service to others, which allows them to be magnified. We all have gifts; it’s our responsibility to discover and nurture them. In so doing, we actually multiply the gift, because through enriching ourselves in this way, others benefit.

“We hear the beating of wings over Bethlehem and a light that is not of the sun or of the stars shines in the midnight sky.  Let the beauty of the story take away all narrowness, all thought of formal creeds.  Let it be remembered as a story that has happened again and again, to men of many different races, that has been expressed through many religions, that has been called by many different names.  Time and space and language lay no limitations upon human brotherhood.”  ~New York Times, 25 December 1937, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren, 1938, published by The H.W. Wilson Company, New York

In the year and a half that I have had the privilege of blogging for Liz Strauss, my network has expanded and I have been the beneficiary of many gifts: friendship, support, personal development and laughter. Sometimes, I get very frustrated with myself because I feel as though I have so much yet to accomplish. But when I have an opportunity such as this to look back over the previous twelve months and see the flux and ripples of my great good fortune, I am overcome with gratitude for the intangibles I have received.

The advent of social media has made possible an international, global community that gives a new dimension to the concept of brotherhood. Our earth is becoming increasingly smaller, and our common humanity is ever more evident. I wish to personally thank you for joining me on this journey and I hope I can convey how much I appreciate your presence in my life.

May every blessing be yours, today and always.

L,

M.

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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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What is the recipe of your success?

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

What kind of cook are you? The “measure-y, by the book” sort or the stir, sniff & sample sort? For what it’s worth, I think that not only does each approach have merit, but there are certain times when it pays to err on the side of the extreme of either. What goes into the stockpot of your life?

When I was a little girl, I used to perch on a stool in my grandma’s kitchen and watch as she cooked dinner for us. My knees drawn up under my chin and my arms wrapped around my skinny shins, I was mesmerized by her alchemy as she stood over the yellow enameled Chambers stove.

Grandma’s “composition” was 95 percent a “stir, sniff and sample”/5 percent “by the book” sort of cook. She had an innate grasp of the sorts of flavors that would complement each other and she had impeccable timing as she worked the gas jets under the various pans on the stove top.

However, for specific dishes, she followed her recipe cards, mottled with generations of spatterings of butter or ground-in flour, down to the letter. And why would an accomplished cook deign to use metered, measured rules, when her previous experience had shown her to be quite capable of cooking “on the fly?”

She had learned what other successful leaders already know: sometimes the rules exist for a reason while sometimes, rules are meant to be broken. She had come by this knowledge by trial and error, and perhaps through the wisdom of someone in her family who had passed down the recipes.

Cooking and becoming our own best selves share similar trajectories. For the purposes of today’s post, I’ve used quotes from a single source; a woman whose lessons in cooking and life often overlapped. It was another experience I shared with my grandma: watching Julia Child as The French Chef on PBS.

“I was thirty-two when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.” ~ Julia Child

How many of us sleepwalk through a couple decades before we start to tune in to our own voice? How many of us are just mindlessly “consuming” our lives instead of “cooking what we eat?” Perhaps we gain a realization of our lives, our choices and our preferences as early as our 20s, but I would wager that for most of us, it is somewhere in the 30s, possibly even 40s.

What’s significant is the realization that we are not only the “cooks/creators” of our own lives, but we have the capacity to choose our own ingredients, so to speak. Just as I became more in tune with my cooking once I started gardening – nurturing the vegetables from seed to fruit – I realized that my life was also built from the relationships I nurtured… the people I allowed to surround me.

“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” ~ Julia Child

Curiosity and interest are the natural companions of growth and creativity. When we are passionate about something, we wish to find out all we can about it. We devote time to becoming more adept at a skill in order to increase our enjoyment of our favorite subject. When we spend time engaged with something that interests us, we find that we exude a cheerfulness and magnetism that compels others to want to be around us.

“Nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should.” ~ Julia Child

This is key, because as we go through the various stages of learning and developing mastery, we will encounter frustration and road blocks. From a cooking analogy standpoint, think of having to chill a bowl before whipping egg whites into peaks. The FASTEST course of action would be to grab any bowl out of the cupboard (even plastic, if it’s closest), crack a few eggs, strain them quickly and start beating them with whatever is handy (wooden spoon, fork etc). But if you understand the need for the chilled bowl, carefully separated eggs and the proper mixer, then you’ll appreciate the end result.

One of the other lessons I gleaned from helping my grandma cook was the appreciation of process. The process of preparation is as enjoyable as the finished product. This is a lesson I apply today when visiting a friend for dinner. I’ll arrive in the late afternoon, put on an apron, pour a glass of wine and help with the prep work. Over the dicing of onions, we get to chat about our lives, laugh about stories that naturally filter to the top of the conversation … all while the smells of dinner slowly surround us.

It’s the same with the process or progress to any other goal, although it may not be as directly relateable. Perhaps a challenge to ourselves is to become more mindful of the benefits of how the “simmering” portions of Our Becoming are manifested. Perhaps it’s as simple as awareness that we realize that we’re being patient.  Perhaps we notice an emerging proficiency or another developing strength. Whatever it may be, learn to identify and embrace process.

“It’s fun to get together and have something good to eat at least once a day. That’s what human life is all about – enjoying things.” ~ Julia Child

This is something that my grandma also taught me. I come from a very large Irish family. Our major holidays were spent with at least 40 people in the house at any given moment and (as I mentioned around Thanksgiving on twitter), we had so many cousins, that I was regulated to the Third Tier Kids Table in the kitchen. But for my grandma, building a meal was analogous to building relationships – with oneself or with others. Whether forged over the stovetop or while passing the salt, cooking was a way to teach, nurture, feed and cultivate her family. And that’s what human life is all about: appreciating and enjoying each other and ourselves.

Bon Appétit!

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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.

What do you and Harry Potter have in common?

Filed Under Guest Writer, Idea Bank, Successful Blog, leadership | 4 Comments

Are you going through a rough patch right now? Do you feel as though you are being taxed to your reserves? What is it that keeps you hanging on? Is it a mental toughness? Spiritual sustanance? Physical conditioning? Perhaps it is a combination of the three? Perhaps it is something undefined, yet no less real.

You may have been referred to as “strong,” by those around you. From whence does this strength originate? How do you expand upon it? How do you call upon it? How can you conjure it from the ether?

The answer? I don’t know. I just know that it’s there for those who call upon it – just like the Sword of Gryffindor.

If you are a fan of the Harry Potter books, you are familiar with the Sword of Gryffindor that Harry draws from the Sorting Hat while in the bowels of Hogwarts within the Chamber of Secrets in order to slay a serpent called a basilisk. Two things are significant here: one – Harry is able to draw the sword because he has faith that something is there/within. Something in reserve. …

“We acquire the strength we have overcome.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

…And two (this comes into play later in the series), the sword, once impregnated with the venom of the creature it has slain, is henceforth impervious to that specific poison. The blade is stronger, having triumphed over and internalized this particular obstacle.

Every time you are able to overcome a barrier, you have it now within you to triumph over similar trials that you encounter subsequently.

Strength is measured by what you can withstand – your capacity. Pliability, flexibility, adaptability. Each of these are components to withstanding various challenges that you will encounter as you move forward in your life. As you move forward, your challenges will increase in direct proportion to your capacity to withstand them.

“The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.” – Horace Bushnell

As an analogy, think of a great ocean liner, leaving the harbor. While in the friendly confines of the harbor, the waves met are easily sluiced through. However, as the craft navigates the open waters of the vast ocean, the swells increase.

If you are facing experiences that strain your resources, congratulations. You are getting stronger. Take a moment, center yourself, and ask a few questions of yourself:

Reach out to those who have already developed this particular strength. Ask them about how they succeeded. Adapt what works for your situation. If it helps you to visualize the development of “strength,” I recommend envisioning something like weight training. When weight training, the growth or development of strength actually occurs between workouts, after the muscle tissue has been broken down by lifting.

After you have experienced a particularly turbulent period in your life, reflect about the “muscle building” opportunities hidden within.

Periodically, review your life’s trajectory and see where you had intense periods of effort, possibly struggle. Give yourself credit for the progress you have made. This awareness is the key to building your strength and providing the wellspring from which your spirit can draw the next time you need to tap your reserves.

Always remember, you have it within yourself to achieve great and wonderful things. What are you facing today? How can you overcome it? What would you need to do so? How can you make it happen?
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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.

What are the benefits of being curious?

Filed Under Guest Writer, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog, ZZZ-FUN | 4 Comments

Have you ever read the book, “Who Moved My Cheese”?  I use the premise of the four characters quite often when I consider the various sorts of folks who cross my path on a daily basis. For example, as much as I love my mother, I know that she is squarely in the “Hem” camp. She, among the four analogies outlined in the book, is the character who will continue to visit the empty cheese room, convinced that, surely, certainly, there will indeed be a new cheese shipment arriving any moment. Of course, alas, the cheese never arrives. :(

I’m going to assume that most of the people reading this are probably closer to the “Sniff” and “Scurry” sort. You are probably an early adopter, and know which way the wind blows. You probably sense trends and anticipate movement. You are probably curious.

You are probably either independent, or seeking to further your transition to that state. Curiosity is probably one of the best ways to get there, and I’m going to give you my $.02 as to why.

“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.”  ~ James Stephens

Curiosity is the impetus for bravery in some instances. The curious are DRIVEN, compelled even, by the need to KNOW. As a result, we will take risks. We will shove our fear into our back pocket and “give it a shot.”

If you are still reading, I know that I have found a kindred spirit. You are familiar with that feeling in your gut that almost goads you into action. Your need to satisfy your curiosity is more powerful than your fear of failure. Good. That means that you are destined for great things. Because the curious keep trying.

“Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why.” ~ Bernard Baruch

If you are curious, you are also probably an innovator. Most folks walking this plane are content to go about their daily business without looking too far afield. They stay in their lane; color inside the lines and keep their eyes fixed on the stuff right in front of them. They are “safe,” and that’s perfectly oka-lee-dokalee.

Curious people, on the other hand, disembowel clocks. They rip apart business models. They disrupt stuff left and right. They probably spent a LOT of time in the corner as kids. We can be maddening to people who rather we just leave things alone. Status Quo People get really frustrated with the Curious.

“I keep six honest serving-men,

They taught me all I knew;

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.” ~ Rudyard Kipling

However, it is this seeking that leads to expansion and independence. The same curiosity that brought us Tang and the space program also brought us twitter, cleantech, Futurama and the cure for polio.

Speaking of social media, I also believe that the folks who are out here in the ether are a harbinger of a new paradigm (even the Bieberists). Social media has no boundaries and is populated by those who are Seekers.

Whether talking about the Kardashians or Tahir Square, this new frontier is peopled by the curious. We may not always be talking about the same thing from the same perspective, but we are talking. Which leads to …

“Be curious, not judgmental.” ~ Walt Whitman

In the pursuit of knowledge, it is vitally important to try very hard to uncover information without assigning specific value to it. For example, the earth is not the center of the universe, although at one point in human history, to state otherwise was cause for excommunication. In order to glean the most from our experiences as we pursue information, it is important to dispassionately observe what we find.

Through trial and error, consistent (and mindful) questioning and a willingness to grow our awareness, we will find ourselves on a glorious journey of wonder.

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” ~ Dorothy Parker

Thank goodness.

What led you here today? What would you like to learn? What questions drive you? What steps are you taking to grow your knowledge?

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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.

“What’s in it for me?”

Filed Under Basics, Business Life, Guest Writer, Successful Blog | 1 Comment

“What’s in it for me?” If you have had any sales training of any sort, this mantra will be a familiar teaching prompt which will have been drilled into your head as a means for you to help you help your customer.

In order to get what you want (ie. commission, job security, a raise etc.), you must be able to help someone else obtain what they want.

Although this can appear to have a cynical slant, it’s actually quite unselfish if you can see it from a true symbiotic exchange of energy and matter.

What does this have to do with discipline, right? This week’s post is probably the most woo-woo of the three. Bear with me for a sec.

Over the previous few weeks, we’ve discussed three underpinnings of self-discipline and how to achieve it, namely:

  1. Love what you do.
  2. Like who you are.
  3. Respect yourself in others.

For the purposes of this post, I have reduced high math and physics to exceedingly rudimentary assumptions and theories. Based on the modern theory of matter, energy and matter are very closely related. Further, I believe that we ourselves are highly structured and articulate forms of energy, supported by a network of matter (which itself is probably a denser expression of energy).

I would also posit that there is only so much matter and energy in the form of raw materials available on this planet. Therefore, chances are good that each of us is probably repurposed from various existing carbon molecules lying around. This human genetic variation, when figured into a global model, gives us a pretty good visualization of our true common humanity.

When I say ‘respect yourself in others,’ it’s because quite frankly, there’s probably some of your DNA floating around out there in your neighbor, so to speak.

Last week’s post discussed “liking you you are.” The extension and extrapolation of this premise is that if you like who you are, logic dictates that you must like yourself in others.

“A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You can tell much about a person by the way he or she treats others, especially those who can do him or her “no good.” To bring this back to the ‘what’s in for me’ symbiosis example from the first paragraph, when we discipline ourselves from a perspective rooted in respect for Other, we are, in fact honoring ourselves. Paradoxically, when we give from a position of truly wishing to elevate another, we are ourselves elevated.

I don’t think of this as the same as altruism, per se; but wanting to achieve and holding ourselves to a higher standard through discipline for the betterment of The Whole is pretty close. Closer to altruism would be the understanding and willingness to be strong for others until they could achieve strength on their own. This could be seen in a parent-child relationship; mentor-mentee or any other assumption of sacrifice on behalf of another.

Have you ever been the beneficiary of someone else’s discipline? How did it help you grow? How did affect your willingness to help another? Can you recall times when you chose to discipline yourself for the betterment of others? What was your motivation?

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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.
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