Liz, Author at Successful Blog Page

The How to Happiness – Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

January 26, 2007 by Liz

(Updated in 2020)

Everyone Gets the Same 24 Hours

“I need to get a life.”
I want to start a new life.”
“Tell me the how to happiness.”

You don’t need to get a life, you’ve already got one.

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.
What would it take for you to live life saying that?
Isn’t that idea the how to happiness?

The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Life

Life either happens to us, or we take hold of life and live it.
Here are the top 10 ways to get a life and start living it.

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 to start a new life every morning. Plan one thing you will do today 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. Choosing what fuels you is how you start over in life.

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.

These are the top 10 ways to start living life.
It’s not starting your life over. It’s claiming the life you have and living it.
It’s claiming the how to happiness.

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 choose to live life saying that …

I have the time of my life.

You’ve already got a life too. Are you living it?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Bloggers and Hippies

January 25, 2007 by Liz

A simple question . . .

Do you think bloggers are the hippies of this decade?
UPDATE: Or are we the pioneers?

Liz's Signature

Change the World: Share a Mini-Vacation at a Favorite Place

January 25, 2007 by Liz

Meet Me in Tuscany — the Restaurant

When I commuted to Massachusetts, I often spent the weekend there. Every Sunday I was there, a couple of friends would plan a drive to show me one of their favorite spots in Maine or New Hampshire. We called it “airing out our minds.”

Last Saturday, I got the chance to do the same with two incredible women and blogger friends, Wendy Piersall and Jessica Duquette. They drove into Chicago, and I got to share a favorite place — a restaurant called Tuscany.

The cool thing about inviting folks to a favorite place, especially if they help choose which one, is that I’m inviting them into a part of my life, and they’re saying they want to come. I get to discover my favorite place again, this time with them and through their eyes.

Jessica and Wendy brought a feeling of family and an anticipation of a night that would be enjoyed. That was perfect because I had done the same. The change of scenery, the fine company, the laughter, the conversation, the food, the wine turned a simple blogger dinner into a mini-vacation.

Three bloggers talked about our blogs, our goals, our lives. We asked questions. We challenged assumptions. We told silly stories and important ones too. I doubt that any one of us could describe the other people in the restaurant — except the lovely lady who was our server. She seemed to understand that something important was happening between close friends. That’s right, we skipped the showier, more surface, poking-around sort of talk that comes before the authentic and real part. Bloggers are good at doing that.

We shared food off common plates while we shared moments of each other’s lives. Jessica and Wendy touched my world and made it better in so many words and smiles that night.

WendyPiersall, Jessica Duquette, Liz Strauss, Chicago 01-20-07

It’s that easy to touch a life.

We can change the world today — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

______________
If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

Wrap-up from Open Mic: Great Places to Visit!

January 24, 2007 by Liz

Wow, we were busy. . .

This week on we talked about great places to visit. Some places mentioned were bareback sailing in the British Virgin Islands, Australia, Quebec City, San Francisco, . . . Ireland, Sydney, Perth, Colorado, Breckenridge, Rocky Mountains, PA, New England mountains, Maine, New Hampshire, . . . boat trips down the Rhine River, Indiana, the Berkshires, . . . Taroko Gorge in Taiwan, Italy, Europe, the Alps, . . . Belarus, Carnival in Trinidad, Umbria, Switzerland, . . . the Bahamas, New England, the Caribbean, Scotland, Venezuela, France, Holland, . . . Aruba, Toronto, Banff, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Florida, Montana, Kansas City, . . . . the Humidity and Mosquito Festival, Central America, South America, Atlanta, Atlantis Resort in Bahamas, . . . Vancouver, Sherman Texas, Bastrop State Park near Austin, . . . the Amazon, Ren Faire in Alabama, Kentucky, Tahiti, . . . Thailand, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Route 66, . . . the Cowboy Hall of Fame, Disney World, England, China, Jamaica, . . . Oklahoma, the Cowboy Hall of Fame in OKC, Osage Hill State Park, Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Cambodia, . . . and Angkor Wat.

There was also mention of hot weather, beaches, cold drinks, cream and coffee, . . .no worries, “sugar pie”, snorkeling, restaurants, diving, underwater photography, . . . horse-drawn carriages, artisans, crayons, . . . Feedburner, CSS files, . . . skiing, condos, lodges, fireplaces, . . . insurance, Eurail passes, WordPress, castles, blizzards, . . . air guitar, boats, Super Bowl, snow, . . . “cocoa locos”, BBQ, fountains, travel agents, art museums, . . . ice hockey, tornadoes, sumo wrestlers, . . . movies, belly button lint, State of the Union speeches, Askimet, lions and tigers, safaris, . . . Tardis, wigwams, good books, passions, . . . cold drinks, birthday parties, iphones, car traveling, . . . ipods, podcasts, lack of sleep, . . . sunscreen, buffalo, camping, itunes, . . . Starbucks, Basil the code writing donkey, . . . and Lyle Lovett.

We shared beverages and snacks, hot cocoa, and Klondike bars.

Here’s some of the links that were shared:

Thanks for the cool links and for being part of the conversation. I wish I could quote you all, but I know you have an idea of how much time it takes to make that long link summary happen each week. I hate to let it go, but I thought you’d understand.

So, for 2007, we’ll just tell the story and share the links that you bring. You can always read the comments – they’re all there.

After all, how DO YOU explain Open Comment Night, if you’ve never experienced it?

See you next Tuesday? We sure hope so. . . .
Boy, that sugar pie sounded good.
–ME “Liz” Strauss and Sandy Renshaw

Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

Business Rule 5: Never Underestimate the Power of a Voice on the Telephone

January 24, 2007 by Liz

What I Learned from the Black Box

I was working for a company just outside of Boston. I was living just outside of Laguna Beach. The job was a great fit. At 13.5 hours door-to-door when the weather gods were on my side, the commute was not.

I was part of a team hell-bent on turning around a company in crisis. They had lost 10% for three years before I got there. About six months earlier, the staff had been cut from 200 people to 40. The culture was hurt. Everyone had ideas about what went wrong, but no one was sure about what to do right. The process models had fallen apart.

ItÃ¢â¬â¢s so easy to talk about negatives in a situation like that.

Because of my circumstances, I attended two executive meetings each month via telephone — a black box on the table. IÃ¢â¬â¢d say hello to the group. TheyÃ¢â¬â¢d place the food of the day near the phone, and the meeting would start. They would forget I was there. I got to be the proverbial fly on the wall.

Three important things happened over that telephone.

Attending the meetings via telephone raised my concentration level. It was almost like eavesdropping. I was less inclined to speak. It required crossing a barrier. I had to feel strongly to add my opinion. Instead, I listened more intently, just to imagine what was happening.
When I did speak, IÃ¢â¬â¢m told, all eyes went to the forgotten box on the tableÃ¢â¬âmy voice got the complete attention of the room. I wasn’t freely spouting information. So when I spoke, they listened.
Like me at the other end, they had to Ã¢â¬ÅworkÃ¢â¬Â to hear the message. They had to rely on interpretting data through only one of their senses and so, it was information they had earned.

It was the absence of the visual that made our words so powerful. We actually heard each other better and valued each other’s words more.

The difference was that we had to listen.

The common wisdom is that we lose more when we lose the visual. In this case we gained. Learning to listen wasn’t the only lesson that I learned that day.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you think Liz can help with your PRM, check out the Perfect Virtual Manager on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.