Successful Blog

The Chicago Sun-Times: Welcome, ‘conversation architects’

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This Time It’s the Sun-Times

Artists, mortgage brokers and business coaches were among the attendees from all over North America who converged at the O’Hare Sofitel for a weekend workshop devoted to “successful and outstanding blogging (SOB).”

Successful blogging, according to one speaker, means putting a fork in the term itself. “It is a brand that has a lot of baggage,” said David Armano, an executive with advertising agency Digitas and publisher of Logic + Emotion. “Blogging is a commodity that anyone can do. Don’t be a blogger, be a conversation architect.”

Read the whole feature by Brad Spirrison in today’s Chicago Sun Times by clicking the logo.

It’s about blogging and real life.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Branding: 5 Ways to Help You Find Out Who You Are

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Branding and Relationships

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A few days ago Scot Herrick left a comment on the topic of branding.

Rarely have I seen much on what you need to do to start creating a personal brand. Or, how you go about doing it (although the four steps comes close). —Scot’s comment

Scot’s observation and other conversations have led me to re-explore the idea of branding from the perspective of the relationahips that come together when someone finds a personal brand.

5 Ways to Help You Find Out Who You Are

Our relationships with ourselves are the basis for every relationship we have. That single relationship — me with myself — defines how I see me and how I see every other person I know.

In a real way, every relationship we have is really a relationship in our minds. We decide how we think other folks feel. We decide who we believe, what we perceive, and we make those things into reality.

Scot was responding to where I said Branding is knowing who I am.

Now there’s a BIG sentence.

Who actually knows who they are? I need to explain what I meant.

At best, even the most self-actualizing people among us are only on our way to becoming who we will be. We can only know who we are for a moment at a time. Then, we change and grow a bit more.

Finding a solid brand is understanding who we are right now as well as we can. Of course, knowing ourselves is subjective and fraught with tape recordings of things we’ve learned about relationships since the day we were born. It’s tricky business at best.

How do we know, how do we find out? The only answer is to pay attention.

Here are 5 Ways to Help You Find Out Who You Are.

  1. Pay attention to your history.
    Everyone has lessons we face again and again. Which are yours? Those are your weaknesses. Everyone is called on by friends to help again and again to do the same things. Those are your strengths. Everyone has moments of tragedy — look for what you learned, not for how those events hurt you. Let the pain go. Find the learning. The pain gets between you and who you really are.

  2. Pay attention to your body.
    Learn the physical signs that you are acting out of emotion rather than logic. Learn the physical signs that you are acting unkind toward another human being. When you feel adrenaline, stop to breathe before you act, except when immiment physical danger is involved.

  3. Pay attention to people who care about you.
    Listen when they tell you what they see. Test the information against what you know. Try it on for size and ask others who care if they agree. Get to know yourself as others see you. UPDATE: Look for generous folks who have your interests at heart and who have no other agenda of their own for you. Test their feedback by asking them and yourself how balanced what they see is, and how someone who knows you in another role might respond to what they are suggesting about you.

  4. Pay attention to your inner truth — you have the intuitive detail.
    You are the sum total of everything you have ever done, ever experienced, ever dreamed or thought. Stop to reflect on what your heart says is so about you. Sometimes the voices around us are loud and the negative noises are many. In your heart you know what you are really about. We all do. Hearts speak the truth if we quiet ourselves to listen without letting other voices in.

  5. Pay attention to the positive
    We already are programmed to hear and respond to the negative, because negative things can hurt. Don’t throw the positive away. It’s a valuable source.

When we know who we are, it’s one bit easier for other people to see our value and our values.

Knowing who we are is the logical start.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related
About that Word, Brand, that Keeps Coming Up
Finding Your Frequency in Business and in Life
See the Successful Series page Brand You Series.

What If We’re Supposed to Be Happy?

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Consider this

From one of my all-time favorite books.

It’s the prologue, handwritten on lined paper. Each paragraph is numbered.

24. And hearing, the Master was glad, and gave thanks and came down from the hill top humming a little mechanic’s song. And when the throng pressed him with its woes, beseeching him to heal for it and learn for it and feed it nonstop from his understanding and to entertain it with his wonders he smiled upon the multitude and said pleastantly unto them, “I quit.”

25. For a moment the multitude was stricken dumb with astonishment.

26. And he said unto them, “If a man told God that he wanted most of all to help the suffering world, no matter the price to himself, and God answered and told him what he must do, should the man do as he is told?”

27. “Of course, Master!” cried the many. “It should be pleasure for him to suffer the tortures of hell itself, should God ask it!”

28. “No matter what those tortures, no matter how difficult the task?”

29. “Honor to be hanged, glory to be nailed to a tree and burned, if so be that God has asked,” said they.

30. “And what would you do,” the Master said unto the multitude, “if God spoke directly to your face and said, ‘I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD, AL LONG AS YOU LIVE.’ What would you do then?” —Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Is it easier to be unhappy, downtrodden, beat-up and to have a low opinion of ourselves? What if we’re meant to enjoy the good things, our good friends, and to share without shame the talents that we have? Imagine the ones we haven’t explored.

We could have it all backwards. Ever thought about that?

If we admitted how good we are at doing things, how much more good could we get done?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

The Apology I Hope You’ve Been Waiting for

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I’m Sorry

Do you know the way that we sometimes have conversations in our heads with the people we care about? I’ve been having one with you, who read this blog, for over two months now. It’s a conversation about who we are, who we’ve been, and how much I value you, despite how it might have looked.

Would you listen for a minute while share what that conversation has been about? It’s an apology. It’s also a story. It’s about relationships, responsibilities, and risks.

Here’s what I’d be saying if we sat down across a kitchen table tonight.

I feel badly about how the SOBCon conference took over my blog, and you deserve an explanation about why that happened. Why do I think that? Because it’s not authentically me to choose anything over my readers. But I did.

I wasn’t practicing what I believed . . . wasn’t being true to our relationship. I’m sorry.

I know you see the responsibilities that came with the conference.
I know you see the risks to our friends, the folks who helped make it happen.
I know you see that I had the blog that could make the loudest noise about this first conference.
I chose to put it to work in the hope that conference would make a difference in people’s lives.
I chose to put it to work because five regular people invested their own money to make it happen.

But I didn’t see. I didn’t realize a few things would occur when I did that.

I woke up to find out that I was giving my readers less content, less attention, less of myself. . . . not fair — kind of like shortchanging your family to do a good job at work. Sometimes it has to happen, but it’s never right.

I woke up to find I hadn’t thought about the people who wouldn’t be able to come. That’s the part I am sorriest about. Never in the world would I want someone to feel left out. That breaks my heart. I’m much better than that. I could have found a way to make everyone feel included.

My head and my heart both wanted you to know. As I’ve said, I’ve been having this conversation with you in my head for over two months. I just didn’t know how to fix the situation and needed the train to stop so that I could say what needed saying.

I sincerely hope that you’ve been waiting for this apology, because anything else would be less.

I am sorry for any moment that you might think you weren’t valued. It’s just not true.

Liz's Signature

Thanks to Week 82 SOBs

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muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank every one of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her directly to me. This award comes with a full “Liz said so” guarantee. It is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame. Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss