Successful Blog

The Million-Dollar Imagination

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I've been thinking . . .

a million dollars.

I’ve been imagining that I have a cool million in the bank — well, intelligently invested. It’s out there somewhere doing whatever a million does when it’s working it’s numbers off. It’s somewhere to the right of me, taken care of.

I’ve been watching how a secret million-dollar investment might change me.

em>How would I approach this situation, if I had a cool million I could count on?

Here’s what I see.

My answer is more confident, less needy. I know where I stand. Somehow that million takes away the “I need to . . . ” and turns into “The best choice is . . . ”

It’s relaxing. It’s also attractive. People have been responding. I have too.

My imagined investment brought a greater return on reality than I had imagined.

I like that that thought, that sentence, that beautiful oxymoron.

Imagine a cool million. How might your re-imagine change your reality?

Liz's Signature

Blog Action Day: Personal Environmental Action

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Blog Action Day, October 15, 2007

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Environment
Notes: 1. environment emerged linked with nature, implying ‘natural’ (not human, not cultural) surroundings; ecology emerged as a scientific effort to connect organisms (such as the human) to their environments
2. environment is the area in which something exists or lives; habitat is a the place or type of place where a person or thing is most likely to be found

Source: Roget’s New Millenniumâ„¢ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.3.1) Copyright © 2007 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Please don’t misunderstand. I love the sky and stars, the flowers, the animals and the ocean, the fire that lights and warms, and the rainbow colors that stole my heart when my eyes first opened. They steal my breath. I’m stunned to silence whenever I reflect on life without them.

Yet I wonder whether environmental change has a chance when we focus on their protection. Imagine nurturing what we can. . . . The question tugs at me do have a hope of healing the planet when we’re so woeful at healing ourselves, our missteps, and our own hurt feelings.

What if we healed our personal environment first? What if we brought our whole selves to make a whole Earth? Would doing the first part make the second part happen faster?

Personal Environmental Action

Did you ever love playing in the dirt?

What if we start with us? What if we heal ourselves first?

Inside our heads.
Inside our hearts.
Inside our thoughts and feelings.
About ourselves.
About others.
What if we put away the drama?

Do we love the words that hide inside our heads,
the words that say we don’t deserve
the breath-taking world set before us?
Let’s live self-respect and deserve what we have.

It doesn’t have to hurt.

Do we love the people, who
have taken trust and broken it,
violated and defiled something good?
Let’s shine our hearts on caretakers and caregivers instead.

Did you ever wish upon a star?

Do we love the events in the past,
that strapped the world — its fights and
its hurts — on ou rbacks and shoulders?
Let’s leave yesterday’s battlefield to reach the gold of tomorrow.

We get to pick who we are.

Self-respect and a shining vision on so many hearts,
just might be the gentle rain we need to heal the world
. . . without a word, a law, a cause.

There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer . . . — Emmett Fox

It starts with us . . . and how we love.

Did you ever love playing in the dirt?

Liz's Signature

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Do you suppose if we thought more of ourselves, we would take better care of the planet? Or do you think that the problem is rooted in thinking about ourselves too much already?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Wise Dots

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Connecting dots with The Idea Dude

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It has very little to do with intelligence and everything to do with humanity…

Liz said this when she was wondering a week ago about what it meant to be wise. I thought about how I viewed others as wise. It wasn’t because they knew 1+1=2. That’s because they were smart. It was when they took my problem and helped me look at it in a different way and in so doing showed me the path that was obscured because of me. They didn’t have to have a solution already or have lived that problem before. They simply knew how to look at things a little differently and in doing so taught me more than I could learn alone. They were wise. Liz also said…

Maybe wisdom defined is unconditional love and understanding. . . .

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Chris talked about trust and seeking advice. Mike nailed it in his comment to Chris …to lead us either out of our current situation, or into a better one – they must first come to where we are and take our hand.

Perhaps wisdom is seeking the unknown rather than the known. . . .

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Phil reminds us that wise men ask great questions. The conversations I’ve had with great friends/mentors/advisors were always those where they never stopped asking me questions even though they were uncomfortable ones but always done with heart. They somehow knew that until they understood how I got to where I was and where I wanted to go, they could not help me. But in doing so, we travelled down the path together.

Wisdom comes from unexpected quarters. . . .

Mathew has been a long-time proponent for comments on blogs. He says, . . . I think the “conversation” is part of what makes blogs so powerful (even if it’s more of an argument!) . . . Just as no meal is complete without dessert, no blog entry should be read without the accompanying comments. They add dimension, flavor and dare I say, wisdom.

Wisdom is accumulated over time. . . .

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Jules said it best when she reminisced on when we believed we could fly and we grow wiser over the years. I don’t remember changing, it must have happened when I was asleep.

Since Liz inspired this post, it’s fitting she has the last words. . . .

We can change the world — just like that!

May the dots be with you!

Vern, The Idea Dude

Food, Clothing, Shelter, and . . .

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One More Thing

turtle

A turtle needs food. I carries its shelter. Guess you could say clothing isn’t part of the equation. Turtles seem easy to please.

People have more needs than turtles.
In school, we learn that
people need food, clothing, and shelter.
A while later, we realize that
one more thing is missing from that list.

. . . food, clothing, shelter and . . .

something to look forward to.

If you see someone cranky, maybe he, maybe she, needs something to look forward to. You or I could be that one thing. How cool is that?!!

Liz's Signature

Do You Forget to Be Brilliant?

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I've been thinking . . .

about how brilliant you are.

Starry night

Do you do forget that you’re brilliant?
Do you forget to be a star? People and stars are the same stuff

Sometimes it’s not forgetting. Sometimes it’s letting.

Do you stand back in the dark, letting other folks talk, thinking your thoughts?

Where do those bright ideas go? Do you only let your great ones out at night when you are sleeping?

Do you forget to be brilliant?

The humble star still shines.

Liz's Signature

10 Super Articles that Make Getting New Customers a Whole Lot Easier!

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Advice from 10 of the Best

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Last week, I wrote about

How to Get Customers to Sell Themselves (on You).

For today, I’ve gathered 10 super articles on attracting new clients or customers. I’ve read them all and added a summary to each link so that you can target the ones you’ll find most helpful. So here’s the list.

  1. Why Do People Really Buy? by Mike Sigers at Simplenomics A coaching session about how to understand your business’s sales story from one of the best sales and marketing guys on the Internet.
  2. #5.19: The “Steal From The Best” Issue by Andy Sernovitz for Damn, I Wish I Thought of That! Advice on how to learn from the research and development already done by the big guys.
  3. Features And Benefits And Sales, Oh My! By Diane Helbig for Ezine Articles “Stop talking. Stop thinking. And please, stop selling. Your prospect doesn’t want to listen to you ramble on about things they don’t care about. . . .
    Ask a few questions, listen, and then address only what you hear. Let’s explore this process.” [via The Top 10 Sales Articles ]
  4. Romance Your Customers By Making The Easy Sale First by Evan Carmichael An explanation of the most basic step of permission marketing.
  5. Put Passion into Your Sales by Niche Marketing by Brad Shorr for Word Sell Inc. How to sell more naturally by limiting your market.
  6. Don’t Overlook The Easy Sales from business know how Shows how to tap into the relationships you have to get help with your quest to find new customers who love what you do
  7. Easy Sales: The Trend for Small Business by Jack Yoest at Small Business Trends Here are the questions to ask so that you don’t find yourself investing too much time and too much of yourself in a deal you can’t close.
  8. The Art of Prospecting For Customers by Biz Info Library for SalesMotivation.net How to warm up cold calls.
  9. The Role of Leadership in Selling by Daniel Sitter How to show clients that your motive is provide a solution to their problem.
  10. How to Seize the Phone Even If You Fear Cold Calling by Tammy Stanley for Salesopedia The psychology of getting energized to make cold calls. “You would be hard pressed to find a sales professional who isn’t familiar with those trouble thoughts that talk him out of making calls now and convince him to wait for a better time to make sales calls or cold calls.” [via The Top 10 Sales Articles ]
  11. BONUS! Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques by Brian Clark for Copyblogger To use Brian’s own words, “Persuasion is generally an exercise in creating a win-win situation. You present a case that others find beneficial to agree with. You make them an offer they can’t refuse, but not in the manipulative Godfather sense.”

Selling, like any other new skill, takes practice to become natural. So don’t quit. A friend and her husband made a game of who would get rejected most.

People do say “yes.” If you follow the advice of the experts, folks will say “yes” even faster and more often.

What’s your reason for not telling “your audience” of potential customers about what you have to offer?

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

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