Successful Blog

Thanks to Week 100 SOBs!!

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her directly to me. This award comes with a full “Liz said so” guarantee. It is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Oh My!! EVEN MORE Brilliant Link Stories!!!

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The Stories Continue . . .

You might remember the A Puzzler for a Fun Post and a Little Labor Day Link Love. I offered you a fill-in-the-blank story and a directory of links with which to complete it. I even wrote one of my own for the fun!

I set up some silly rules and invited you to do the same thing. Then, oh, then I said these fateful words, “I’ll do something creative with the links you leave.” You were fabulous and wrote wonderful tales — each one uniquely belonging in a line with the rest. It was obvious that I had my work cut out for me.

First You Wrote These Stories

You were fabulous and wrote wonderful tales — each one uniquely belonging in a line with the rest. It was obvious that I had my work cut out for me. You might remember I listed them about a week ago.

I was starting to put together a tale from these titles, when more and more started coming in.

Then You Wrote Even More!!

It seems that the idea was a tiny bit contagious. New stories kept showing up at my door. They’re as brilliant and fabulous as the ones the inspired them. So I’m sharing them here too.

Do you think there might be YET AGAIN EVEN MORE?!!!

If you’ve not read any of these, do it now. They are brilliant and fabulous. Really.

Now about that doing something creative part . . . it’s going to take longer than I was ever suspecting.

I’ll be back before the year is out . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related
Liz’s Thematic Links Story: Lorelle’s Blogging Birthday Quest
A List Becomes 301 Links in Story — Chapter 1

SOB Business Cafe 09-21-07

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Chrisg suggests we give ourselves time.

All Things Workplace suggests that we give ourselves a life.

Smart Wealthy Rich suggests that we give ourselves a challenge.

Marketing Profs suggests that we consider the power of video.

Seth’s Blog suggests that we think about how we decide whether we buy in or buy out.

Copyblogger suggests that we think about our anchoring.

Related ala carte selections include

Random Good Stuff suggests that we kick back for a spell.

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Give Yourself Permission to Claim Your Life

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The How to Happiness

In January, I wrote these words.

I want to have the time of my life.

I wrote about the how to happiness and listed out ten ways to live life. The first way was to claim it.

We don’t need to get a life.
We need to own the one we’ve got.
Owning our life is the first step to living life.

Give Yourself Permission to Claim Your Life

After years of school and people telling us what to do, we can find ourselves doing what “comes next” for everyone without ever considering whether that’s what should come next for US. We end up moving through time doing things, but not really living life.

Give yourself permission to claim your life. You know you can do this. What is a few minutes in the context of the hundreds of thousands that you might reignite?

  1. Stop what you’re doing.
    Still yourself, your body, and your mind, completely.
  2. Sit and breathe in deeply.
    Be inside your skin.
  3. Notice the feeling that begins to become you.
    Keep breathing deeply.
  4. Keep with that feeling until you forget about the breathing,
    until you are comfortable feeling the lightness of being.
  5. Name that being feeling “living.”
    Don’t try to make it into anything.
  6. When you feel like a human, get up and do something to claim this life you’re living.

Go Out to Claim It

Here are a few ways you might do that, in case this notion is new to you.

  1. See the sun rise. See a beautiful sky.
    See a smile you put on someone’s face.
  2. Eat something delicious.
    Share a marvelous meal with a friend.
  3. Send yourself fresh flowers.
    Keep some and give some away.
  4. Listen to the sounds of nature that you don’t usually hear.
    Enjoy silence, especially silence share with someone you care about.
  5. Take the longest shower or bubble bath in your experience.
    Buy something soft as cashmere and give it someone who inspires soft thoughts.
  6. Kiss someone you love.
    Follow that with a hug.

Most folks don’t need ideas to fill our life moments. But we might need an occasional reminder to fill our moments with life. Once we start breathing and inhabiting our skin again, the ideas for living life aren’t hard to recognize.

How will give yourself permission to claim your life?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

121: I Knew Everything about Relationships Until an Audience Came

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It’s Not About Thinking

Did you catch Dawud’s Monday installment in our ongoing conversation? He deftly answered What Do You Do When A Commenter Just Isn’t Hearing You? Dawud described a gracious way to respond and reminded us that we’re always talking to another person, not just words in a box. Then, he followed with a question for me — Liz, the relationship blogger.

How has your blog changed the way you think about relationships?

Ah Dawud, what a question.

The short answer is completely.

I Knew Everything about Relationships Until an Audience Came

I used to think I knew about relationships. They were an idea, involving people. I thought that relationships were a choice — take part or not. I thought they fell into neat categories like blog posts in my sidebar do — family I claim, family I don’t, friends of my heart, folks at work, folks I’ve known, . . . folks I’ve met — the fiends, the forgiven, the forgotten, and the forgettable.

I used to think I had a big heart, but obviously I was suffering from relationship myopia. It’s a common malady.

Then I got a blog.

I was already a writer. I made a blog place under a white oak on the riverbank. I prepared to write alone. A few friends would be listening — the friends of my heart. They were a handful at most. After all, how many folks want to know what I know, what I think, what I dream, what I remember, what stories I have to tell? That’s what I thought. That’s who I was.

I knew everything about relationships. I was a writer, a manager. I had been there.

Then an audience came, an audience who talked back to me.

I met a fine writer, who blogged the most marvelous stories of his past and present days. I met another who made sense of life in California . . . . and on a lonely Friday night I found someone who reveled in the glory of a weekend with a child, a poet who understood what I meant when we disagreed, and a science fiction artist/writer who virtually visited me when I wrote — I’m still inspired by them.

I met a brilliant scientist . . . moms who shared their families, an artist, a home builder, the small business guy, the crusader, the hero, the leader, the guy in charge. They didn’t fit in categories.

Someone said, “I never expected to care so much about these people who have become so dear to me.” I know exactly what she meant.

That audience, those readers, changed the way that I think and the way that I see.

I don’t think about relationships anymore. I see the people I have relationships with and the incredible differences they make. I see the changes we make in each other.

I got a blog. An audience came and changed everything. It’s still a wonder.
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Now a question back, Dawud.

Do you see a difference between your online relationships and those offline — beyond the obvious physical differences?

If you’re reading this, I’m not just asking Dawud the question, I’d love to hear your answer too, in the comment box below.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

One2One is a cross-blog conversation. Find the answer at dawud miracle on Monday. You can see the entire One-2-One Conversation series on the Successful Series page.
In Case You Missed It: Writing 06-13-07

Everyone Is Having Marvelous Day

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Before the Day Is Fully Conscious

When the first bit of morning comes to visit, I’m hardly awake. I walk in the dark to the kitchen. Still, I have an intention, an aspiration ready and waiting. I think about it before I go sleep.

Sunrise before the day is fully conscious

I will have positive things happen. I intend. I mean. Intend to make my a positive life. Positive things make a life light free. I mean to fill my life with them. I see. I will. I see no reason that why I cannot be or do what I set out to be or do. I will be someone who changes the world one person at a time.

The word intention literally means stretching toward. The word aspiration means breathing toward.

I intend to aspire to bend my knee and fly higher. I intend to become more and then imagine even more.

The possibilities are as big as my heart, as unconditional as my love, as generous as the rain. — Aspire

I wish those ideas into my head and my heart even before the day is fully conscious. When I succeed, everyone around me notices they’re having a marvelous day.

What will you stretch toward, breathe toward, today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!