Can You Get The Balloons to Joanna Young?

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Just a Little Monday Creativity

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One of the most exciting things about teaching young children is the creativity they bring to problem solving. It’s almost contagious what they see when you throw out a question that might have an ordinary answer.

Some of it is plain physiology, the abstract-thinking frontal lobe of our brain develops last. So until age 9 or 10, we not adept at separating real from make-believe — our thinking can range wildly through, in, and out partially real, partially fantastic solutions.

After age 10 or so, we understand what can be and what cannot. Some of choose to leave the fantasy far behind at that moment.

That doesn’t mean we’re no longer creative. We still are. Like recapturing another language we used to know, creativity is a skill that we can regain. We can even become highly fluent with a little practice at stretching ideas into new solutions — changing the ordinary answer to something “extra,” extraordinary.

Let’s do that. See these balloons?

balloons

How would this solve problem: You need to get them from Chicago to Joanna Young in Edinburgh by tomorrow.

Can you invent, stretch, or devise an extraordinary solution to the problem?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
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Part of the Problem

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 12 Comments

An Explanation?

Poppy in the wheat

Somewhere on the inside
I always know when
I’m part of the problem.

What I can’t seem to remember
is that the best solutions are
somewhere outside of me.

That could explain how I become
part of the problem
in the first place.

–Me “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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No Worries for You, Me, and Martha . . .

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 71 Comments

I've been thinking . . .

When I worked in publishing, a beautiful young woman named, Martha, worked as the communications coordinator for my department. She is an amazing person, other-centered, gracious, gentle, and soft-spoken.

Martha and I would meet every morning and she was always able to tell me the exact location in the process of any lesson or piece of art across some 10,000 pages. She understood my quirks and habits. I often think on her as St. Martha.

She is such grace. I hear her say “Oh Liz,” and flash a radiant smile — the sort that people remark upon — as she reads that last paragraph. When Martha would get the slightest look of stress, I’d rush to say, “No worries,” and explain the possible worst-case outcome.

One day Martha said that she realized I picked up that phrase, “No worries” when I traveled in Australia. We talked a while about the work I used to do there. She told me she hoped I always used that phrase, “No worries.”

A few years ago, Martha moved to Houston. Gosh, I miss her. . . . This week Martha gave birth to her first born, a son.

So I write this for you, and for me and for Martha.

What ever we’re worrying about right now . . . worrying won’t fix it.

Worrying about it only takes away our brain power. With our worrying, we’re more likely to make our problems worse, not better. Our worries throw off our brain chemistry. They divert our best problem-solving energy. They channel our thoughts to a place where our negative imagining gets in the way of actual progress. We’ve left behind any chance of positive reasoning.

Change one little sound in that word, worrying and we find it’s wearing.. Oh how wearing worrying can be.

When I’m stuck in a loop, in which I can’t seem to stop worrying, I take a walk, fly a kite, clean out my closet –- do something physical that I know I can easily accomplish. I put my thoughts into the world. I get my blood moving into my brain. I let my subconscious work on the problem without my interfering help. It doesn’t need the road blocks my worrying keeps putting in the way.

That break from fretting and over-analyzing my situation brings me new energy and information. I come back refreshed and ready to face the problem minus that stress that I most surely was causing.

New resources show themselves more quickly. New solutions appear on the horizon. I figure out much more easily whether I need to find some help.

Losing my worries for a while always has a positive impact.

No Worries, have a weekend instead.

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Dragonslaying Isn’t Good Leadership

Filed Under Business Life, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

Off I Go to Solve the Problem

kitten

I rememer it clearly. It was my calling as a young manager. A youthful team member would come to me with a problem. Someone in another department was behaving in a manner that wasn’t right or just. I would set off on a quest. I’d be mentally dressed full armor as in a royal fairy tale.

I would be off to slay the dragon. And slay that dragon I often did.

Unfortunately, after I slayed the dragon I would listen to the other side of the story . . .

That’s when I’d see that the dragon I’d just slain was really a kitten.

Over time I learned two things well.

  1. Leadership listens, considers, and seeks out all of the information before taking action.
  2. People are not grateful when you slay their dragons for them.

Now, my response to a similar story is, “Oh, I’m so sorry that happened. Shall we discuss some thing you might do to get the situation back on track again or do you already have an action plan?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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