Successful Blog

Social Networking: How to Keep True Direction Down Trails of Connections

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Passion, Connections, and Directions

The Living Web

When I was a kid, I wasn’t looking for my direction. No one said to follow my passion. I was a kid. I was on a quest to do extraordinary stuff.

When I was a kid, I wasn’t bombarded with information from every dimension. My social circle was small. The proportions between my size and that circle have changed since then. My life is replete with relationships and complex connections. Now I have more social network passwords than the number of friends I had when I was kid.

Conversations bifurcate, trifurcate, and splinter off in bit and pieces. They move like a soccer ball on this field where I hang out. I’m following echoes down weblike trails of plurkshops and twebinars to hear what my friends are saying now.

Underneath all that, the kid I was still has dreams, still wants to do extraordinary stuff. Here’s my recipe for getting back to what I’m about.

  • I turn it off.

In a minute or so, I remember my quest.

Passion needs direction, or it gets lost.

How do you hold onto your true direction?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Buy the ebook and find out the secret.

Catch the Moment

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Beach Notes by Guest Writer Suzie Cheel

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Catch the Moment

Sometimes an moment arises that can create joy, open up a business opportunity, sometimes even change our perception. We can take the moment and embrace it or we can say no not today.

Catching this amazing sunrise on Thursday morning was an instance of this.

Walking on the beach early that morning, I nearly missed the magic moment. We had gone to the beach early thinking we would see a sunrise. We were a little too early so we thought, next time, We walked away from Rainbow Bay  towards Greenmount. I turned around before we headed aroung the rocks and saw the golden light of the sun glistening on top of the clouds. Des said did I want to go back? yes I said. As I saw the red of the sun begin to peep above the horizon, I thought  ” Catch the Moment”, this will be my Beach Note this week. I took this photo and then a series which I am thinking I will turn into a slide show with words, maybe even an e-book.

This then became a positive story I used to illustrate positive vibes on Friday Morning. If  hadn’t turned around at that precise moment  would have missed the joy that seeing the sun rise brings, it warms my soul.

Sunrise

Can you think of time where you have caught the moment and it has been an inspiration or moment of change?

Images: suzie cheel

Critical Skill 10: The 4 Keeper Traits of Productivity — Are YOU the New Killer App?

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Think and DO!!

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

Are you guilty of having too many ideas?
Do people run when you get a brilliant thought?
Been there. The Internet and the innovative offline world are bursting with what ifs and how abouts.

BUT . . .
ideas vaporize when all we do is think about them.

We need to DO something with ideas to make something happen.

The 4 Keeper Traits of Productivity

In this series, I’ve laid out critical thinking skills important to success in a world of thinkers. Each is a way of using our minds to work with information and ideas to solve problems and move actions forward. The first nine skills aren’t much without the ability to manage and to apply them.

Productivity gets noticed because it produces results.

Various Language Products Written or Managed by Liz Strauss

Self-sustaining productivity gets noticed.

Whether it’s millions of books made especially for kids or it’s millions of kids who learned to read, because teachers cared that they did.

Results are the point. What good is all of this critical thinking without something to show for it?

Self-sustaining productivity has four keeper traits.

They all begin with C.

  • Commitment. Keep believing in your goal. Self-sustaining productivity demands that we stick to plan even when something shiny looks attractive right now. Commitment brings our priorities into focus when we’re distracted.
  • Competence. Keep training to achieve it. Without high-end abilities, skills, and experience, it’s hard to produce high-end results. Things move more quickly and with fewer problems when we’re geared for the challenge. It’s hard to be productive, if we don’t know what we’re doing.
  • Consistency. Keep your standard high. Self-sustainining productivity relies on effective and efficient performance.
  • Credibility. Keep your promises. We’re most productive when do what we say we will. Credibility is the trust and confidence that inspires people to help.

Self-sustaining productivity is confidence in relationships on the street, in the workshop, and in the boardroom. It’s confidence in ourselves and confidence that others invest in us.

I wrote this paragraph in the introduction to this series.

Intellectual property–content–is an asset that not only gets produced, but reproduced, reconfigured, and repurposed for variety of media. Those who produce intellectual property are builders of wealth. An original idea that solves a problem or presents an opportunity is worth more now than it ever has been. Those who develop and mold original ideas are the new “killer app.”

Be social. Network all you can. But don’t neglect the time to stretch your mind.

What are you doing to think ideas, solve problems, and make new realities?

Yeah, you. Can you be. . . will you be . . . are you the new killer app?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
The 10 Skills Most Critical to Your Future
Finding Ideas Outside the Box
Personal Branding: Strengths Assessment Tool
Brand YOU–What’s the BIG IDEA?

Social Networking: Make It Imperfectly Human for Me

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New York City, Seth Godin, Ann Michael, and a Paper Flower

Favorite Paper Flower by Liz Strauss

In August 1998, I was wandering the streets in New York City. Later that evening our company sales conference would start. As I turned the corner somewhere near 33rd and Park, I was enjoying the view in a florist window. I walked two stores past. Stopped. Something I’d noticed had taken me. I literally backed up ten paces and went into that flower store. I came out grinning.

What had stopped me were handmade paper flowers — taller than I am. I had found a new friend for my presentation the next day. I left the florist with giant flower with a stem down to my ankles and greeted New York like a giant kid with a huge balloon. The flower has shared my office ever since. On occasion, it even sits in my desk chair.

In 2006, I returned to that same New York neighborhood for a Seth Godin seminar. I met Ann Michael. there for the first time. As we walked around the city, I’m sure I told her the story of that flower and the people who opened doors for me — the strange tall woman with a bag in one hand and unhelpful flower friend in the other.

I keep a white silk flower in a blue glass vase on a shelf in my living room. I bought the vase from a catalog. Then I bought the flower. They look stunning together, but they have no story.

This morning at Seth’s Blog something he said in May made me stop, like I did that day in New York City.

If you want to get noticed, don’t be so polished. . . . When in doubt, scrawl make it human.

White rose in a blue vase by Liz Strauss

I looked around for examples in my life — and I found two flowers . . .

That white rose in the blue vase is elegant, but that that paper flower connects me to people — people who’ve seen it in my office or heard the tale of how it got bought. That paper flower calls up so many stories, it could fuel a blog.

When you make a blog, a social network, or product for me, could you make it imperfectly human? It’s human touch that lingers and connects.

What do you have that’s like my paper flower?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Get your best voice in the conversation. Buy Liz’s eBook., now!

Images: Liz Strauss

Answers that Bore Me and So Much Sky

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I've been thinking . . .

about answers.

When I try to listen too closely, hold too tightly, control things,
I find too much work, too many shiny new things.

I piece together meaningless details into huge twisty ideas. I spend useless time pondering questions . . . wondering . . . observing, . . . sorting messages . . .

reading words . . .
reading pictures . . .
reading every person’s actions . . .
As each moment wears on, it wears on me.
Irrelevant details and made up futures pass by in streams and reels.

The questions get thinner until the answers bore me.
Information and expectations crowd and steal my clear thinking.

Then the upward view rewinds and reminds me . . .

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I run laughing all the way home . . .
all this and so much more is mine . . .
I hear a bell ringing . . .
I see a plane fly by . . .
I see the moon rise . . .

Today’s okay, but I really like tomorrow.
A question filled with possibility
I’ve had enough of answers bore me when there’s so much sky
— Julia Macklin, So Much Sky

How much sky will you give yourself today?

Liz's Signature

Image: LizStrauss

Change the World: Social Media and Time

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Renewable Resources

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This morning I was writing the sentence, “Time is our truly unrenewable resource,” when a Twhirl update popped up in the corner of my screen. I was hard not think about the time so many people spend on Twitter, doing business, being social, letting off steam.

I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if we took a mere 1% of that total time to simply add a comment to this question about using social media?

What Advice Would You Give to Women in Africa About using Web2.0 Tools to Advance their Work?

Speaking as an educational publisher, I know that those of us who have time to live social media could contribute intuitive detail that those who teach don’t always have time to collect.

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