Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 126 Comments

Everyone Gets the Same 24 Hours

parrots talking to each other

Life — it’s what we do between the time we get here and when we go. We only get one, and despite what other folks might suppose, it’s ours to determine what to do with it.

We don’t measure life in hours and minutes. We measure life in memories and moments.

What do you think of when you read this sentence?


It was the time of my life.

We don’t say that often enough.

The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

Life either happens to us, or we take hold of life and live it. Here are 10 Ways to get a life and start living it.

  1. Give yourself permission to claim your life. That’s right — permission. You’re the only one who can decide you are in charge of your life. Even though it feels like you’re not supposed to do so, turn off the internal editors, the old tape recordings, the “shoulds, have tos, and musts”, and the rules that didn’t come from you.
  2. Define what living means to you. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Just picture yourself at the end of your life looking back. What words would you want to describe how you lived your life and who you are as a person?
  3. Stop living in the future. Every time you think “someday” or “when I have time I will,” stop. Ask yourself, “Why not now?” Think about this sentence, “I always wanted to, but never did.” Start doing the things you always planned to do. Choose your life every morning. Plan one thing you will do that day to feel alive.
  4. Surround yourself with people who enjoy living. They’ve obviously discovered how to have a life and live it. Why not hang with the pros?
  5. Lay down your pain and your anger. Carrying them around makes living harder and less fun. It doesn’t bring anything, and it steals a lot.
  6. Let the losers win. Don’t argue about things that you don’t care about. Unless there’s some real threat, let the folks who have something to prove, prove what they need to. Why waste your living time trying to fix what’s wrong with them?
  7. Create energy. Jump to forgiveness and love, then figure things out. Most conclusions we jump to are not only wrong, they’re negative. Negative conclusions lead us to prepare a defense. Being on the defensive isn’t living. It’s hiding from life.
  8. Learn the physical symptoms of when your head and heart become disconnected. We know when we’re having a knee jerk reaction, when we’re feeling sorry for ourselves, and when we’re being blind to people’s feelings. We can remember how it felt physically while we were behaving badly. Get to know those symptoms, and you can stop the behavior. Living life will feel a whole lot safer because you won’t be in danger of shooting yourself in the foot.
  9. Take small risks that push your boundaries in every way. The joy of life is packed in learning that matches our skill set. When we stretch just a bit intellectually, physically, emotionally, we grow. Living is growing. Even your cells know that.
  10. Value and protect the people and the places you care about. A job isn’t a life. It’s just a part of one. Let the people you care about come first, and let everyone know that you do. Re-read numbers 1 and 2.

We come into life with whatever we’ve got. It’s ours to do with. It took me a while to figure that out — that my life isn’t just what happens to me, that I could take hold of it.


I want to have the time of my life.

You’ve already got a life too. Are you living it?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Cream in My Life

Filed Under Business Life, Successful Blog | 36 Comments

I've been thinking . . .
In the olden days, even before I was short . . . the milkman delivered milk in glass bottles with cardboard caps. The milk was straight from the dairy just outside of town. It wasn’t homogenized. That meant that it would separate. The cream would rise to the top.

The cream is the wonderful part.

One teaspoon of real cream in a cup of coffee is better than any famous coffee shop can offer. I used to drink real cream in my coffee every morning. But now the store where I live doesn’t carry it. I suppose that’s better for my health. I’m not so sure about my well being . . .

Believe it, compared to one teaspoon of real cream, anything at Starbucks is second best. And Starbucks is also a wonderful part of life to me.

This weekend, I’m going to find some cream. Maybe it won’t be the kind that goes in coffee, but it will be cream just the same.

I might just read a novel.

Or I could take two naps on Saturday.

Maybe I’ll sit at the window and watch the lake.

I’ll watch a favorite movie.

I’ll handwrite a letter to a friend I miss.

I’ll do one thing that’s not electronic, something that is in no way related to working or moving a project forward. I’ll so something that is good for my well being — one teaspoon of rich cream.

The cream is the wonderful part. Can’t have a life without that.

Don’t forget the cream this weekend.

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