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Give Yourself Permission to Claim Your Life

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 11 Comments

Top 10 Ways to Live Life Logo

The First Way

In January, I wrote these words.

I want to have
the time of my life.

I wrote ten ways to live your life. The first way was to claim it.

Give Yourself Permission to Claim Your Life

You know you can do this. What is a few minutes in the context of the hundreds of thousands you spend in a life?

  1. Stop what you’re doing.

  2. Sit and breathe in the air a bit.

  3. Notice the feeling that begins to become you.

  4. Keep noticing that feeling until you forget about the breathing, until you are comfortable just being.

  5. Name that being feeling “living.” Don’t try to make it into anything.

  6. When you feel like a human, get up and do something to claim this life you’re living.

Go Out to Claim It

Here are a few ways you might do that, in case this notion is new to you.

  1. See the sun rise. See a beautiful sky. See a smile you put on someone’s face.

  2. Eat something delicious. Share a marvelous meal with a friend.

  3. Send yourself fresh flowers and give one away.

  4. Listen to the sounds of nature that you don’t usually hear.

  5. Take the longest shower or bubble bath in your experience.

  6. Kiss someone you love. Follow that with a hug.

Most folks don’t need ideas to fill our life moments. But we might need an occasional reminder to fill our moments with life.

How will you live the time of your life?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Time for Everything: Letting Go to Find Flow

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Everyone Is Having Marvelous Day

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 16 Comments

Before the Day Is Fully Conscious

When the first bit of morning comes to visit, I’m hardly awake. I walk in the dark to the kitchen. Still, I have an intention, an aspiration ready and waiting. I think about it before I go sleep.

Sunrise before the day is fully conscious

I will have positive things happen. I intend. I mean. Intend to make my a positive life. Positive things make a life light free. I mean to fill my life with them. I see. I will. I see no reason that why I cannot be or do what I set out to be or do. I will be someone who changes the world one person at a time.

The word intention literally means stretching toward. The word aspiration means breathing toward.

I intend to aspire to bend my knee and fly higher. I intend to become more and then imagine even more.

The possibilities are as big as my heart, as unconditional as my love, as generous as the rain. — Aspire

I wish those ideas into my head and my heart even before the day is fully conscious. When I succeed, everyone around me notices they’re having a marvelous day.

What will you stretch toward, breathe toward, today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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Let Go

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 22 Comments

No Strings, No Pain

hand releasing blue balloon

I had this thought.

What if we all let go?

What if we let go

. . . the ribbons and the strings?

What if we laid down

. . . the burdens and the pains?

Then . . . could we hold each others’ hands?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Bad Weather and Mondays Have a Lot in Common

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 16 Comments

Any first grade teacher will tell you. . .

that you can predict the weather by a roomful 6-year-olds. Long before it rains, just when the barometer moves, they’ll start to get agitated and cranky. Long before the first drop ever comes down, they will be bouncing off the walls. They also get difficult.

First grade teachers learn how to recognize that frustrated energy when we see it coming. Terachers also prepare for kids who don’t want to come back to school on Monday mornings. Bad weather and Mondays have a lot in common.

Adults do the same things. Some days it’s in the air. Everyone is 2 1/2 dimensional. Their social affect is off. The energy is down. Folks are a little tense, terse, and temperamental.

A horoscope might say that Mercury is retrograde. But truly, days like those happen more often than Mercury could take credit for causing.

Adults also have trouble getting back into work mode on Mondays. Most of us just don’t want to. Weekends are too short and too busy to get us ready for another week to come.

Bad weather and Mondays, kids and adults, have a lot in common. The impending doom of bad weather and Mondays throws us off our best behavior, or tilts our balance some.

One generous smile can make a magnificent difference on a Monday morning.

Give one away and watch what unfolds. It’s almost magical what can happen. People reframe the week that is starting. Eyes open and brighten. Folks get taller and more engaging. They look up. They smile back. Even the cranky ones take notice.

Any first grade teacher will tell you that.

In some ways, we’re all 6 years old.

Who couldn’t use a generous smile on a Monday morning?

It especially works for the one doing the smiling.

Liz's Signature
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A Walk in the Zen Moonlight

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Writing | 11 Comments

The Moon and the Lake in My Mind

the moonlight

In a week of too many things to do, it’s easy to get lost. It’s even easier not to want to be found. I see lots of folks feeling like that. Not me, no never, never me. Wouldn’t cross my mind. Wouldn’t happen like that.

I don’t get pulled. I don’t get stretched. I can handle the rush. I can handle the push. What else is strength of purpose about? It’s tied up in my need to show up, to find out, to be alive.

Does living mean we need to be strong, noble, and inspired every minute? Sometimes I do my work and think What do I do next? What do I expect of myself?

Then when I’m lucky, I hear music playing in my head. It’s an original melody. I know its movements by now. It’s a full orchestra — brilliant and breathtaking. It also means I’ll soon be going on a Zen walk.

I mentally grab my jacket. I put my wallet and keys in my jeans. It’s a quick good-bye. “Hey, I’m going outside. . . . Yeah, I know it’s raining. That’s okay, I’ve been wet before.”

I’ve no destination beyond the elevator going down. Soon enough, I’m out the glass front doors.

I walk south three city blocks. Three people jog by me on the sidewalk. Two more stroll. An old lady in a walker chair sits in the doorway of a stately building waiting for a ride, maybe her son, to pick her up. There’s a 30-something guy with a shaved head walking his big black dog with the caramel eyes. Lots of cars pass on Lakeshore Drive.

A neighborhood is where I live. I cross under the drive and come out by the lake. All civilization is left behind. Vast space, water and sky refresh my eyes. What a relief.

Sometimes I only need to change what I see.

I lay down my stress and look up at the sky.

The Zen moon in my mind enhances the symphony playing there.

Some folks say they can tell when I write at night. I bet they can.

People get more emotional when the sun has moved on.

I don’t have research to prove that it’s a fact of life.

I don’t need proof.

I have the Zen moon shining in the night sky.

Liz's Signature
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