Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You’re only a stranger once.

Change the World: One Choice Decides

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 9 Comments

Go On and Do That

Change the World!

Ever watch someone building a dream? Ever wonder about building a dream and catch yourself thinking, I wish I was meant to do that?

Why would some people get to have their dreams and other people have to go without?

It can’t be luck. It can’t be money. It sure can’t be smarts. Look around. Those things don’t decide who gets what.

How would a universe choose which stars get to shine and which don’t?

Is it that some people know their dreams? Deep in our hearts, don’t we all? We did when we small enough to still dream big, giant dreams. It’s in ourselves. It’s in our hearts. We know.

Ourselves. What’s so scary about going after a dream? Is it the self in ourselves? Is that the question, the word, that stops us from being who we are? We can’t be ourselves because of our self?

Self-directed doesn’t mean self-serving. Self-determined isn’t self-absorbed. It isn’t selfish or self-centered to be who we are.

Truth is, we give our self to a dream.

What’s the difference between the person who changes a dream into reality and the person who looks on?

One changes the world.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

Change the World: See the Light, See the Promise

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 24 Comments

Seeing What’s Inside

Change the World!

Every year at Christmas, my mother had her own tradition. She began buying gifts and wrapping them long before other folks even thought of such things. It was efficient. It was productive. It allowed her to wrap up the gifts in the same careful way that I choose my words every morning.

Gosh, the presents! They were large and small! They were tiny and incredible. They were many, and they were for so many. They sat under a tree that was decorated with such care that I realize now it must be the reason that I spend hours rearranging word that I write until they’re in order.

Under that tree and piled through the large room as proof that my mom had found a reason to return every favor, and every smile she had received. Each gift was wrapped more beautifully than the one before. The bows were crafted and carefully chosen.

The part of the tradition seems only my mother’s was that she waited until Christmas Eve to put names on the presents. Until then, every present only had a tiny number. She said that it was that we wouldn’t shake the gifts with our names and be tempted to open them early. But the result was that those little numbers filled my imagination with wonder.

You see, I didn’t sort the boxes into theirs and mine. I only saw the abundance and the promise of good surprises.

And it made me think about what could be inside the boxes. I could see them shining inside.

The light inside the gift


Imagine if we look at people — the ones we love, the ones we know, the ones we’ve not met — the same way.

Gosh, the abundance and the good surprises inside each of us! See the light? See the promise? Our light shines when we shine on them.

See the gift they are. Be the gift you are. It makes us glow from the inside out.

Thank you for the abundance and surprises you are to me.

I’m a very lucky girl.

Liz's Signature

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

______________
If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

Change the World: One Pound at a Time

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 16 Comments

Hey, Karen, How Can We Change the World?

Change the World!
This guest post was contributed by friend and SOB, Karen Hanrahan. I had the joy of meeting her in October. What an inspiring and delightful person she is! Karen writes of an incredible change in her own life. –ME “Liz” Strauss

One Pound at a Time

by Karen Hanrahan

‘ Tis the season for eating!!! I can hear my indulging commentary “Oh why fight it”, isn’t the holiday season all about the food? “ I’ll be really good after the holidays” (in holiday forked tongue that really means 6 weeks of being bad) “I’ll binge now and worry later” (sort of like I’ll shove it in faster than I did before because in January I am going on a diet)

Welcome to my world. One year ago I was a whopping size 24 or XXX (not the steamy sexy kind of XXX either) It’s one thing to hit 200 lbs, it’s another to go above and beyond 200lbs. At 240 lbs how could any weight loss make a difference – 230 lbs now what? 100 lbs to go?? Forget it.

One brownie became 3 brownies simply because what difference did it make. In the bigger (ha!) picture of things – I was already big.

How did I get to be so darn BIG? Some of it was circumstance (car accident — 2 years of pain), some of it was chosen sedentary-ness (if I didn’t move then it wouldn’t hurt) and most of it became utter and pathetic apathy (it’s just too darn hard.)

For those of us who have been of size, there are details to being fat that are never discussed. Those of thinness take for granted the horrors we of girth endure.

In my minds eye, meaning without ever looking in the mirror, I was skinny. My true self (or the person I could seemingly relate to) would walk down the street see the reflection in the glass window and completely ignore who she saw. What I don’t acknowledge won’t hurt me

I could never sit neatly in my chair. Those of thinness kindly observe that when you sit in a chair, volumes of you don’t roll over the side. I affectionately called it sitting in the round.

After a recent 60 lbs of weight loss, I got on a plane and buckled my seatbelt – without even thinking I sat in the middle seat, something I could never do as a woman of size. I burst into tears when I realized that my thighs were not invading someone’s personal space. Nothing worse than sharing thunder thighs with a stranger. (I then had to explain to 2 strangers why the heck I was crying.)

Ever go in the Woman’s Plus Department? See anything hip you’d care to wear? See any natural fabrics? Can you say S-T-R-E-T-C-H, synthetic land? Can you see that the #1 color choice is black? Can you imagine the feeling of black synthetic stretchy fabric on a balmy humid summer afternoon? Thunder thighs wrapped in plastic. Lovely huh?

I once had to walk through a crowd. A young man in front of me – a thin young man pushed his way through the crowd shouting “WIDE LOAD coming through”
WIDE LOAD. I thought I would simply die.

How bad does it have to get to shift from hefty to healthy? How horrible did it have to be?

For me, I got scared. I also got embarrassed. I looked in the mirror. I faced my skepticism, took on some products that helped the process, but mostly I allowed myself room for being real. What monster had I created and was I willing to look at that creep face to face.

5 things made a difference for me

Not rocket science and not something that everyone doesn’t already know.

I had 2 immediate goals. Kick the 200 lb mark, and get out of the plus department.

I celebrate today my size 16 - ness. (not age 16 goof, SIZE 16!) and officially I am so out of the plus department!

In the world of thin-ness and ultimate BMI I have about 30 lbs to go. I lost 60 lbs in 12 months – slowly and steadily. No up and down yo-yo stuff, and the best part is I feel really swell.

Do we hear weight success stories all the time? Sure. Perhaps you see a bit of yourself in mine. More than anything perhaps you find a bit of inspiration to give yourself that kick in the size ah-hem pants and get on the path to health. Best yet if we all took on weight loss, we’d alter a frightening epidemic issue. One lb at a time.

– Karen Hanrahan

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Thanks, Karen! You’re an inspiration.
We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: One Dollar, One Euro, One Yen at at Time

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 8 Comments

Hey, Erik, How Can We Change the World?

Change the World!
This guest post was contributed by friend, J. Erik Potter. Erik’s post grew out of a conversation at Open Comments Night. He brings thoughts of our daily lives. –ME “Liz” Strauss

One Dollar at a Time

by J. Erik Potter

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.- Sir Winston Churchill

We’ve all heard it before. It’s nothing new really. If everyone would just donate $1 to a cause, we could raise millions for any cause overnight. There have always been two big problems: there wasn’t an easy way to spread the word to these millions of people and there were no means of funneling these millions of $1 donations to a deserving cause effectively. Enter the Internet.

Much like the whole “change the world” phrase appears daunting; the whole “get a million people to donate $1″ appears just as daunting. Or is it?

Through blogs and social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, word can be spread like wild fire. I just signed up for LinkedIn and have a meager 16 connections, yet through the power of the site, my message can be spread to over 77,000 other connections, a 4,800:1
ratio. If this ratio remains constant, I only need to connect directly with 208 people in order to spread my message to the magic million. 208 vs. 1,000,000 . . . that doesn’t sound as frightening. Does it?

The second part of the equation is the collection and funneling of the $1 donations. Sites like SixDegrees.org and Network for Good go a long way towards making the transaction easy. Once you’ve established an account, you can donate to one of over 30,000 charities. Their system even keeps track of your donations throughout the year for tax purposes.

The tools are here. So what’s stopping you from changing the world?
– J. Erik Potter

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Thanks, Erik, for showing us how.
We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: It’s Millionaire Day!

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 6 Comments

Feel Rich and Appreciated

Change the World!

When I lived in Austin, I worked for a company that had a strict matrix for how merit performance increases were allowed. To say that in plain English, in an effort to be fair — or was it to control the budget? — the company had a chart showing how monetary increases would be “done fairly.”

I don’t remember the exact merit increase chart, but the matrix looked something like this.

Salary chart


This chart was problem.

Editors had a lot to say about the words chosen to describe performance. Even more, though, was the problem of an entire team that was performing in an outstanding fashion all being limited to a raise of about 4-5%, when inflation was at least half of that.

So I did what I could to provide other incentives. . . . tweaked the atmosphere, found days they might take off . . . to pay them in other ways.

About a mile from our office was a small store with a glass counter. Behind the glass, the shelves displayed expensive Belgian chocolates. If you’ve a taste for chocolate, if you’re a connoisseur — read that as a chocolate snob — as I am, this 6 foot counter could entertain and amaze for well into an hour. One chocolate, in particular, became a favorite with my team.

This delicacy was made both in milk chocolate and dark chocolate versions, each filled with praline. One piece was 1.25 x .5 x .5 in size and was shaped like a US Dollar sign — $ . That was the hit! A single chocolate dollar sign sold at an exchange rate equivalent to that of the Australian dollar at the time.

I would buy those chocolate dollar signs, and we’d have an emergerency team meeting. An official announcement would state that we had once again become millionaires in the chocolate lottery. Then we’d spend 30 minutes or so eating one luxury chocolate a piece.

It was a ritual. It was a game. It was the best time and a way of saying what needed saying.

And our moods and minds changed. We stood taller, smiled more, and were more generous toward each other We also laughed. We were millionaires for the day. One piece of chocolate made that difference.

I can’t give you the chocolate. So I told you the story.

I hope you can imagine it, because I’m declaring, “We’re All Millionaires Today!”

We have a million in the bank and a few million invested. Millions of friends love each of us, and millions of readers and customers love what we do.

A little millionaire thinking really can make a difference. . . . Will you be a millionaire today?

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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