Successful Blog

Same and Different Friends

by

I've been thinking . . .

about same and different.

At the beginning of the month, I spent time working with my friend, Peg. We’ve been friends since 1995.

Peg and I are the same and different.

Most people are taken by the differences.

Ask Char, she met Peg the day Char and I had our first meeting. I think she would tell you that it would be hard to imagine two Caucasian women who seemed more compatibly different.

When Peg and I worked in the same building, people often took one of us aside to ask what our friendship was about. They couldn’t find a place where our two minds might actually meet.

Too funny.

From the second we met Peg and I had a universe to sort out. . . . starting with how kids learn to read.

Imagine a company dinner to introduce three new consultants, one of whom was me. It was the kind of dinner Peg hates to attend. It was the kind of dinner that so appealed to my curiosity. I sat in the middle of the long restaurant table with my newest best friend, the consultant I had met the night before. Peg sat near the end with a long-time friend. I asked and answered questions. I told stories. Peg listened, waiting for dinner to be over.

As we were leaving the restaurant, she came up to me to say, “You’re one different lady. I’m free Saturday. I know you’re staying at the hotel. I’d like to take you to lunch. I’ll buy all of the wine it takes for you to tell me how kids learn to read.” (Peg, Director of Operations, wanted to know how the books her warehouse folks shipped and her customer service folks talked about served children.)

I said, “Sure, I’m Liz.” I thought, she reminds me of me.

This month when I saw Peg, I heard her say something she often says, “Why would I want to have friends with people who are the same as me? That would be redundant?”

I answered, “We meet where we agree.” I was thinking of a Venn diagram.
Peg observed, “I find the ways people are different from me. You find the ways they are the same as you.”

Peg and I are always observing and learning from each other. We’re always there when the other needs something. She still buys the wine. I still tell her how kids learn to read.

Peg and I are the same and different. Not a thing about us is redundant, yet you can bet we know the places and spaces where we are the same.

That’s why we are worth so much to each other.

Do you have a same and different friend?

Liz's Signature

Change the World: Find the Promise

by

Don’t Stop Believing in a Good World

changetheworld8

My friend, Jill, tells this story.

Jill and her daughters were riding the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios in Orlando. Lisa, age 11, sat near her mother. Annie, age 7, sat on the outside.

The ride was a machine that moved and rocked in a totally dark room. As the machine rocked and jolted, three-dimensional creatures of huge proportion — including all of the dinosaurs in the movie — appeared to be coming at Jill and her children. The experience was meant to be scary, multisensory, and thrilling.

For 7-year-old Annie, it was overwhelming and frightening.

Jill tried to talk to Annie, but the noise of the constant roaring swallowed up what Jill was saying. All Jill could do was pass a message. She said to her daughter, Lisa, “Tell Annie to close her eyes and cover her ears.”

Lisa did just as her mom told her. But Annie wouldn’t do it. She was in the dark, unhappy, and wanted none of the situation. She also wasn’t too sure of the messenger . . . anyone with older siblings can understand that.

“You’re trying to trick me,” Annie said to Lisa. “I want to go outside.”

The little girl was afraid to believe. She only saw things getting worse and worse. Lisa was devastated that she couldn’t help her little sister.

When they got outside, Lisa and Annie had a long talk. They promised to keep each other safe always.

We first learn the world by believing what people tell us. We ask questions. Sometimes the answers stay the same. Sometimes the answers match what we see around us. From all of that, we make our own belief of how the world works.

Then one day, the world offers up a Jurassic Park ride, and life gets confusing. We wonder what we should be believing. Could it ever possibly be right to close our eyes and cover our ears? Sometimes maybe it is the right answer.

Every Jurassic Park ride offers a promise.

If we go outside, we find the sky isn’t falling. The ground beneath our feet is steady. With a little love, we can fit that scary bit into our world view without destroying our vision of the universe.

Two little girls did that. Imagine the impact, if we all did the same thing.

We can change the world, just like that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Simple Dots

by

Connecting dots with The Idea Dude

Connecting Dots logo

Life is simple, we make it complex.

dotdoticon-tiny

I took Joel’s advice to forget the sensational and look for the simple pleasures. We look at all the wonderful details of the good moments. We find the intensity in life’s simple moments, and simple pleasures.

This week I breathed pure air on a mountain 7,500 feet high, looked down a gorge 230 feet below, was dwarfed by trees 200 feet high and watched salmon jump upstream.

For me the simple became sensational.

dotdoticon-tiny

Simple things reminded me of what I read earlier today about what life is all about.We tend to forget about others in our pursuit for excellence, knowledge and improving self. Oh, I need to get this certification, I need to do it by this day, I need to …. I forgot that it was summer, I broke the promises, of going for a walk, riding the bike, many many times..

At this point, I decided to stop looking for dots this week, because they were right here next to me all the time and each needed a hug on our last day of vacation.

Must be the full moon this week, I read Liz’s post I’m dying to blog tonight… but I just don’t feel like it. In my case, I’m dying to blog tonight, but if I do, I risk missing my plane back to civilization in 4 hours and I need my sleep.

Sometimes life truly is that simple.

May the dots be with you!

Vern, The Idea Dude

Imagine a Blue Sky, Blissful Weekend

by

Oh my wow! It’s Friday, again! Already!

What did I do this week? What didn’t I get done? What miracles did I make? What wishes didn’t come? What went right? What went wrong? Who were those cranky people I had to calm down? Who were the ones who gave me such support?

Will I spend my weekend reliving my week over and over?

Is that what time is for. Is that what life is about?

No, no. Not my life.

When I’m in that last five minutes of my life and when I’m in the five minutes that come after, I want to be thinking of the time I spent being alive.

I want my life to be about living.

I can imagine a wonderful weekend. I can hang the moon in the daylight sky. I can fill the night with colorful lights and people who have great ideas. I can imagine being with friends who understand that living isn’t always easy, but it’s always about thinking and caring, and remembering to breathe.

I can imagine a blue sky, blissful weekend.

Then I can make it happen.

Storytell Your Life So You Never Forget What You're About

by

I've been thinking . . .

about stories.

I’m remembering a song from my childhood.

“Tell me a story. Tell me a story.
You promised me. You said you would.
You gotta give in, ’cause I’ve been good.
Tell me a story, and then I’ll go to bed.”

The best were the stories my dad told about his life. I’ll never forget those. . . .

My friends used to say that no matter how bad things got, the experience was worth it, if we ended up with a story to tell. That thinking helped us turn the most unpleasant happenings into adventures and quests.

We would sit and swap stories while sipping wine, listening to music, and letting candles burn to set the mood. That wasn’t the only time we told stories though.

Stories were the way that we told each other where we had been and who we were.

As we got to know each other, it seems that we could hardly get near one another without telling a tale of an event in our lives. In the car, on the phone, we were constantly sharing a piece of an epic — all detailed and filled with conversation and setting — as if we were relating a scene from “on the road” movie we had seen at the local theater.

Stories of our lives were how we figured out what was going on.

We don’t do that as much now.

Now the information seems to come fast. The stories are shorter — less detailed, more factual. We relate data. The stories we try to tell aren’t as delicious as they once were. We don’t savor them anymore.

I vote that we slow down and start storytelling our lives again. I promise that if you tell a story rich with the wonder of living, I’ll be here alive with anticipation, ready to listen. Our stories are worth every second we take to pass them on.

The real ones are the best, even the real ones that only happened in our heads.

Let’s storytell our lives so we never forget who we are and what we are about.

Liz's Signature