Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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

Positively Me

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 22 Comments

I've been thinking . . .

about those sentences in our heads.

They were useful once I’m sure — those sentences in our heads that tell us how to act and who we are. But some of them are woefully past their “sell by” date and still they play over and over. It’s time to stop paying attention.

Just because it made sense once to raise my hand before I spoke. . . .
Just because someone had a different idea of what’s beautiful . . .
Just because in the past some kids said I was too smart, too weird, too tall, too something they were not . . .

Do I have to keep listening to those ideas? Do I have to keep believing them?

rainbow flower

I see folks who let one sentence, one event, define their entire life while they sit with the power to set it iaside and chose a new path.

This once-shy child doesn’t have to be a shy adult. I’m not stuck with other folks’ thoughts. Any event is only something that happened. I can paint it, put it on a wall, and call it history.

It’s my life. They’re my thoughts. I’m tossing out the ones I don’t want. I don’t need negatives anymore. It’s the positives that move me forward.

How else will I become positively me?

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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
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A Great Idea Can Be So Simple

Filed Under Great Finds, Successful Blog | 8 Comments

Don’t Reinforce the Negative

Want to make a statement about what you think of negative talk in the blogosphere? Yoav has a simply great idea about what to do.

How to Become a Happier Blogger link

Thank you, Yoav!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 67 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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No Doubt — A Positively Great Day . . . for One Reason

Filed Under Branding, Business Life, Community, Successful Blog | 28 Comments

I've been thinking . . .

I had the pleasure of spending yesterday with SOB, Relationship Geek, and “10 Ways to Make It Great!”man, Phil Gerbyshak.

It was — no doubt — a positively, great day.

All things considered, that’s saying something. Some folks I know could have, would have — no doubt — made that same day into a positively awful drama.

Tiny facts might have thrown folks off track for a moment . . .

You get the picture . . .

Phil’s comments were acknowledgments of help. “You’re the best,” and “Cool.” I heard no negative comment all day.

He said, “I”ll wear the shirt to work tomorrow.”

We had a great lunch, great conversation, and made some great plans. None of which would have happened if those mishaps had become the way we saw the day.

That’s why I started this by saying . . .

I had the pleasure of spending yesterday with Phil Gerbyshak.

It was — no doubt — a positively great day . . . for one reason.

Today, I want to be someone’s reason for having a positively, great day..

Liz's Signature

Related article
Finding Your Frequency in Business and in Life

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