Successful Blog

The Importance of Dots

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Connecting dots with The Idea Dude

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Can you imagine a life without blogs?

Life would go on, there is no doubt but I would imagine it would be with a heart a little less warmer, a mind a little less inspired, a life with one less dimension and a lifetime with one less connection…

It makes us smarter, quicker

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Mike says it makes him smarter – quicker. It amazes me the number of technical issues I have solved in the last 12 months simply because someone else had faced the same struggle and taken the time to share it. The access to collective wisdom has made me smarter, quicker.

Getting to the heart of the onion

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Loz describes reading a personal blog is like being invited into someone’s house. Each post on a blog is another room, and as we read them a little more of the writer is revealed….if we keep going we will one day get to it’s heart.

A lens to another life

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For Sean it is a lens to a world he would not have known, But sometimes blogging exposing me to a world I couldn’t see any other way. And these moments move me and cause me to pause.

The blogosphere is living cosmos

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Kent takes us through the blog lifecycle. He is amazed at how many blogs live and die in a twinkling of an eye. He ends his post with this hope. What I do know is that all legitimate bloggers, regardless of our motivation for blogging, have a vested interest in nurturing the blogosphere and encouraging the creation and continued existence of legitimate blogs by people we don’t know yet who have a lot to say, a lot to share, and a lot to teach us.

It is my hope also.
May the dots be with you!

Vern, The Idea Dude

Free Spirit: Are You One?

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I've been thinking . . .

about spriritual freedom.

Free spirit. What a curious term that is.

free spirit — diver in the air

I suspect it’s like glamour and greener grass, only found where the speaker is not.

I’ve been called a free spirit.

When I hear someone say that, I immediately relate to the spirit . . . I’m still looking for the free.

I can’t think of any free thing that doesn’t come with an investment. Even sitting in the sunshine means I’m not doing something else.

So I’m wondering, this lovely ‘look at the lake” morning” what is it that makes a free spirit truly free?

Liz's Signature

Kite Flying and Nobility

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And I Heard Him Say . . .

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Only four years after college, my mother was diagnosed with only months to live. Then, my father took seriously ill. For a short time, it looked as though he was dying too.

In a restaurant, across the street from a Mayo Clinic hospital, my mother and I became friends with a waiter — a guy who was joyful, unique, and fully alive. His name is Paul. His eyes had depth beyond his twenty-something years.

On the third day we saw him, my mom suggested that I leave the hospitals behind and take him on his offer to see the countryside.

So I did.

Armed with a basket of sandwiches from the restaurant, we got in his jeep and made one stop on the way out of town. . . . at a hobby store.

“I’m taking you kite flying,” he said.

As we watched the kite against the blue sky, Paul used a movie metaphor to talk about life. It’s a natural subject with the newest of friends in a town where “life and death” is a way of life.

“It’s my movie,” he said. “On the last day, when my life flashes before me, I want it be a noble part that I played.”

Character . . . a role in a story, a movie, a play.

Character . . . a one-of-a-kind, remarkable person

Character . . . the moral, ethical essence and nature of a human being.

I’ve been thinking of that “when my life flashes before me” movie — it’s not high drama that defines the character of a life. I’ve been thinking about a guy who made the world safe again using some colorful tissue paper, four sticks, and a ball of string.

Taking a person kite flying can be a most noble act.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Life and the Universe

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I've been thinking . . .

about life and the universe.

I look at the stars. I look at my feet on this planet.

My life. What is it?

Every bit of my singular life stands refusing any label I try to give it.

Those moments where I’ve been . . . they aren’t all of my life, are they? How could my life be what it’s been without the people who went before me, who lived around me, who worked and played beside me in school and every day since then?

Would any business transaction be the same without the trees I climbed and rocks I sat on, without the beaches I walked, the shooting stars I watched falling on a silent night? Could I write the same proposal, if I never saw a rainbow or the color of the water in Sydney Harbor?

Who would I be if I never tasted rock candy, never saw the fireworks like a magical waterfall off the bridge?

What would shift if I didn’t have this slightly messy desk here before me?

Who would recognize me without the instinct, the memories, and the DNA that made me?

Every cell, every atom, every bit on the Internet connects. If I removed even one something would be gone.

With every breath, I change the atmosphere.

With every step, I change the ground we share.

I look at the stars and remember we are made of the same stuff.

Life is so woven into the universe.

How could I ever have felt alone?

Liz's Signature

How Smart People Can Be So Dense, Difficult, and Frustrating

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Thinking about What I Think About

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It was Valeria who challenged me and Joe who challenged her. The challenge was simple enough. Choose something that I have a negative response to and find a way to give my view a new spin . . . think “different” . . . change the way we’ve thought in the past.

When she put forth the challenge, Valeria said,

I tag Liz Strauss at Successful and Outstanding Blog(gers) — because she can think different.

which added a bit to the mix. My natural inclination to make things interesting was — BAM! — kicked up a notched because of what Valeria said.

For a whole day, I walked around
thinking about what I think about
so that I might think about
how I might think about
what I think about in a new and different way.

Naturally, my worry was that if I start out as someone who thinks differently, would my “think different” response end me up an answer that looks the same as most people already think?

Think about it. The question was mathematical. Does different + different = same?

I’ve resolved the issue, I think.

The Rules of the Challenge

Write a new blog post in which you “think different”. Interpret the challenge phrase the way you want. (Thanks, Joe, for letting me borrow yours.)

  1. State that the post is a part of the Think Different Challenge and include a link and/ or trackback to this post so that readers know the rules of the challenge. Feel free to use the above banner (inspired, of course, by Seth Godin).
  2. Include a link and/or trackback to the blogger who tagged you.
  3. At the end of your post, go ahead and tag some fellow bloggers. Don’t forget to email them to let them know they have been tagged.

People Really Do Think Differently

All of that thinking made me realize that I really had only one think different topic that was truly close to my heart . . . we too often forget that, from the very start, people really do think differently.

Let’s think this through . . .

When we solve a problem, make a plan, or try to teach something, we offer our thinking process using the order and logic we find natural. Listeners who can arrange ideas in the same way track what we’re trying to communicate.

Folks who think the same way as we do are smart, savvy, and quick on the uptake. Now, really, wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone was as smart as we are?

Truth is, for all practical purposes, most everyone we meet is smart enough. We’re all just smart in different ways. The difference is in how we construct ideas.

Yep, it’s a fact that different brains construct thoughts in different ways.

  • Some folks have to see things; then they can do things; then they can talk about them.
  • Some folks have to see things; then they can talk about things; then they can do them.
  • Some folks have to do things; then they can see things; then they can talk about them.
  • Some folks have to do things; then they can talk about things; then they can see them.
  • Some folks have to talk about things; then they can do things; then they can see them.
  • Some folks have to talk about things; then they can see things; then they can do them.

Agree on the right order and the communication goes smoothly. Choose an order that’s unnatural to the listener and he or she will have trouble following the ideas.
That person will probably not “get” what we’re saying.

That’s when we start to think something like . . . the listener is . . . um, er . . . dense, or inattentive, or just plain difficult. After all, other folks “get it” when we say what we’ve just said. So it must be the listener not the message — right?

I’ve been “dense, inattentive, and just plain difficult.” So have most of my friends. We know because of inane conversations like this.

“I’m not following you. I don’t understand.”

“You can’t be so smart and not understand. You’re just being difficult.”

“Busted! It’s a plot to frustrate us both to no end.”

“Oh. What part don’t you get?”

By the way, I’ve been on both sides of that conversation. I suppose most folks probably have.

Presenting the information in a different way usually works, especially when the listener gets to ask for the data in the order that he or she constructs ideas.

Think “different” about how people think.

People really do think differently.

Don’t you think?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Change the World: Put Yourself in Your Work

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It Makes a Difference to Know

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Yesterday I was in a business meeting with some spectacular human beings who own a digital animation company. We had reached that point at which our conversation turned to contracts and a formal relationship about the work that we would do together.

As we spoke of who, how, what, and how much, one young man excused him and left. He’d gone to find a single sheet of paper and copied it several times. Upon his return, he handed a copy to each of us still in the room, including members of his own team. This is an excerpt from the letter be brought.

My 71 year old father has stage IV pancreatic cancer . . . He is in his third week of taking part in a clinical trial using Rexin G.

Viewing your animation helped me understand his cancer treatment. . . . I’ve been praying for cures for the many types of cancer for years. I never imagined that my own father would develop the terrible disease. My Dad is hopeful and so am I . . .

Thank you for your part in helping us to understand this complicated treatment.

The letter made us all stop. I think I heard every voice in the room whisper, “Wow!” Each person handled the page with reverence and care for the person who wrote. I’m sure it slightly changed our perspective on what we already knew was a good and right relationship to something more.

The writer had sent a piece of herself in the spaces between her words. She said, “You made a difference in my life.”

That page was proof. One man had put heart in his work and that gift had changed a stranger’s life.

Just the thought is stunning.

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