Successful Blog

SOB Business Cafe 07-20-07

by

SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Performancing has a list that hundreds of readers digg.

Chrisg is offering a chance for us to show off a bit.

Brain Based Biz is explaining our mutliple intellgiences.

Making Life Work for You has an obvious idea.

Circular Communication has introduced the virtual interview.

Jeff Pulver has a new address.

Related ala carte selections include

Inkthinker is doing something we’re all learning to do.

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Turning on the Lights to See

by

I've been thinking . . .

about clutter.

I’ve read papers on psychology that said an extrovert who is put in a position to act as an introvert may interpret his or her feelings as depression. The feeling leads to less interaction and one reinforces the other.

That thought is only somewhat related. . . .

I’m a seer. I need to see the vision I’m going for. When I see it, I can flush out all of the details. I can make path to it’s door. I can walk there, drive there, fly there. I can make every bit happen, because I can see the way from here to there. It’s the 30,000 foot view that gives me the power to make decisions. From there I can go dig through a data set with confidence. From there, I can tackle a task with efficiency.

Until . . .

My life begins to clutter. When I live with clutter, after a time, I begin to interpret it as darkness, chaos. an inability to see.

Things start to collect. It’s note here, a pen there. I set out a document that I’ve received. My husband puts the mail next to my desk, but I’ve no time to get to it. Three comments and two IMs come in at the same time as two emails. A phone call begins. Twitter.

night scene with one street lamp

Each of these events tugs my brain to the ground into the clutter. Chaos.

Details without the 30,000 foot view are flying in the dark. They are information with no context — they’re road names minus a roadmap. They are a computer needing to be defragged. When my desk begins to clutter, that clutter finds it’s way into my head. It’s night inside the clutter.

I’m cleaning off my desk this morning. With every thing I dealt with, dumped, or delegated, I felt lighter. I can see my desk again.

Even better, I can see where I’m going — nothing cluttering my vision.

Liz's Signature

Blogging in a Foreign Language?

by

Beyond Metaphors and Analogies

What’s Your Metaphor?

You might remember back to the Metaphor Project. About that same time Jan Circular Communication, one of the winners of Lorelles’s Book, and I began a dialogue about writing the fact that English is not his first language. I wondered whether he would be interested in writing a blog post about the experience. He agreed with enthusiasm. His blog post came in days.

In a lovely circle of communication, I’m pleased to say that as I put jan’s post up now while he’s running a virtual interview with Lorelle and me on his is blog.

Why On Earth Would You be Blogging in a Foreign Language?

Guest Writer: Jan

As everyone else does, I want somewhere to belong, but my community should not be defined by where I am or by which language is my mother tongue. Since community is about commonality we have to have something in common, but it should be what interests us not geography or language. Communities are (in my opinion) built through communication where language shouldn’t play the main part.

If the community is inviting and including, language will play practically no part as long as we make ourselves understood. However it is a fact that you get what you give, so working on your communication skills, including your language skills, will not only benefit others, but also yourself.

With my native language I only would reach a fraction of the world population. My native language is only spoken in one country and practically unknown outside its borders. Even adding in languages with similarities, my own language it is simply not the best basis for gaining a readership and building community, since the number of blogs would be a whole lot less. It wouldstill be possible to build
a position within that language, but I would be left with the feeling that there was an immense audience out there that could have been mine.

Although you could claim that getting started blogging in itself is like learning a new language, there’s no reason to limit your learning to this aspect. I’m optimistic enough to believe I can learn in at least three areas through my blog: the format, the content and the language.

I started blogging because I wanted to relearn things I learned during my education, but rarely use. I practically lost English because I didn’t use it. I decided to include it in my learning endeavor. So the language and content will mostly be relearning while the blogging will be actual learning.

What I have found so far is reaching out in a foreign language enriches my experiences. I guess you could say that the conversations from which you learn the least are those with yourself — almost as bad are those with people like yourself. Only if you go beyond that will you really add to your learn exponentially more. Besides communicating with people from other countries, not to mention continents, is fascinating.

If you want to interact with your local community you simply go out the door and participate in the activities, but if you want to interact with other cultures around the world blogging is surely the next best thing to actually going there. Besides does one not exclude the other. A number of bloggers travel to come together just as a number of people blog when traveling.

Thankfully is writing in English more a challenge than a struggle for me. Had it been a struggle it would be about trying to string sentences together, finding the right words and making myself understood. The
challenge, on the other hand, consists of bringing in more elements, being more precise and generally taking advantage of the opportunities that English offers to those who seek them. If it was a struggle I would probably have thought twice about it, but since I like challenges I didn’t need to think long before deciding.

If you are unsure whether your language foundation will hold up, I would recommend that you begin reading and commenting on blogs in the language you are considering. This will give you practice and introduce you to what could be possibly be your future blogging community.

Remember that the basic language skills isn’t the goal, but just another stepping stone. Hence I certainly have to keep working on my writing skills as will you. Even if you try adding to your vocabulary, using metaphors, analogies etc. and being as precisely as possible. We probably never learn to write like someone writing in their native language. The fact that we will never reach perfection should never be a reason for giving up though. After all, how many things is it really possible to be perfect at? What counts is the effort you put into it and believe me people recognize effort when they see it. Since you probably will not see your own mistakes there really isn’t any reason to get obsessed with them.

To sum up I think there are compelling reasons to blog in a foreign language. You will learn that language better; you will expand your horizon; and you will get to know people who you would otherwise never know. In order for it to work does it require a little more than the basic language skills, a willingness to continuously work on making it better and first of all a strong desire to reach out.

Jan

____________

Jan Suggested

In the process of putting this together, Jan asked at the beginning if I would edit and send back the article before I posted it. That’s exactly what happened. With his return email, he suggested I might add some end notes about the edits that I made. So here they are.
The edits I made were for clarity or differences in verb construction.

  • Those for language usage. These are mostly to verb forms. The verb construct that is most often a problem is that in which you use “would I” (a form for only questions in English) instead of “I would”. Most English sentences are subject then verb.
  • Deletion of phrases. These are edits for readability, fluency. and a more powerful message. The phrase “not to speak about” became the more common usage “not to mention.”
  • I also broke paragraphs to adjust what is more “print text writing” to “online writing.” Shorter paragraphs on more-focused main ideas work better on the web.

Thanks, Jan, for a great look into a special kind of blogging!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

If You Don't Know What You Love Doing . . .

by

It’s Natural

inside-out thinking

Here’s how it often works. He says. She says.

I say, “Sure you do. You’re just not seeing it.”

If you’re stuck finding out, sorting out, what you love doing, my experience is that what you love doing is so obvious that you can’t believe it is worth counting. Let me tell you about Martha.

Ah Martha, her desk was like it belonged in a magazine. If she wasn’t in her office, folks thought she was out for the day. Everything had its place, and you could bet it was there. Soft-spoken, gracious Martha had a smile that lit up the department of 32 people and thousands of pages she kept track of. Marha was a sea of calm in a world of publishing paper clutter.

For her performance review. I asked Martha to do a self-appraisal. Martha reached outside herself to find many things that she did well and wrote them up in excellent fashion. All of the qualities I described above were missing.

When I asked her about it, she said, “Oh, anyone can do those things.”

I replied, “No, Martha, folks aren’t nearly as organized as you are, nor are they as calm and gracious.” That turned on her room-lighting smile.

I said “You love organizing things and all of us, don’t you?” Her larger smile told the story.

Martha didn’t see what she loved or her most valuable qualities. She discounted them because they were was something that was a natural talent. We tend to discount what comes naturally to us as not as valuable because we didn’t “earn” it. Yet, Martha’s talents were what kept my department working smoothly and without friction. To this day, I miss her.

She didn’t see it because it was obvious and so natural to her.

Yet everyone else knew how valuable her talents were to them.

Look to Your Second Nature

If you don’t know what you love doing, ask those folks who rely on you. Look at what you do as second nature. Think of those defining qualities and the things that you always do and would be nervous or bummed if you could no longer do them. I can’t imagine Martha not being allowed to organize things.

What can you not imagine yourself not being able to do?

Not long ago when talking with the other founders of SOBCon, I said, “I have to be the keeper of the vision.” I explained it in this way, “it’s not ego. It’s not about control or the name of my blog. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at. It’s in my DNA. I can’t NOT do it.”

What’s the thing you can’t NOT do? What’s imprinted on YOUR DNA?

C’mon and say it out loud.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

One Wicked Sentence and One Whole Person

by

You Are . . .

relationships button

Yesterday I met with a new friend. At one point in the conversation, we were talking about that one “wicked sentence.” It’s the sentence that people say about us — an observation that is so off the mark — but it’s one that a whole group believes is true.

For years mine was, “You think you’re always right.”
My answer, “No, I know what’s right for me.”

Hers was, “You’re a phony.”
Her answer, “No, I’m sorry that you feel that way.”

I mentioned a friend who often heard, “You are manipulative.”
I said, “She isn’t at all. She cares about people. She never makes choices for them. She only offers to pass on information they might need. She won’t even gossip.”

My new friend told me, “My daughter came home from school at 5 years old asking whether she’s fat.”
She said, “She’s not, and I told her. I said, ‘You’re beautiful,’ but I knew my daughter would have to get to believing that from inside herself.”

Everyone seems to have at least one “wicked sentence” that people try to hang on them. Mine finally fell off my radar a few years ago. It faded when I learned to show up with more than just my thinking. When I put my heart in it my thoughts, people heard who I am.

That one “wicked sentence” doesn’t stand a chance against a whole person.

What wixked sentence is/was yours? How do/did you answer it?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package Work with Liz!! Liz can unstick you and make your business sticky. You can afford it. Really, You can’t afford not to.