Successful Blog

What If We’re Supposed to Be Happy?

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Consider this

From one of my all-time favorite books.

It’s the prologue, handwritten on lined paper. Each paragraph is numbered.

24. And hearing, the Master was glad, and gave thanks and came down from the hill top humming a little mechanic’s song. And when the throng pressed him with its woes, beseeching him to heal for it and learn for it and feed it nonstop from his understanding and to entertain it with his wonders he smiled upon the multitude and said pleastantly unto them, “I quit.”

25. For a moment the multitude was stricken dumb with astonishment.

26. And he said unto them, “If a man told God that he wanted most of all to help the suffering world, no matter the price to himself, and God answered and told him what he must do, should the man do as he is told?”

27. “Of course, Master!” cried the many. “It should be pleasure for him to suffer the tortures of hell itself, should God ask it!”

28. “No matter what those tortures, no matter how difficult the task?”

29. “Honor to be hanged, glory to be nailed to a tree and burned, if so be that God has asked,” said they.

30. “And what would you do,” the Master said unto the multitude, “if God spoke directly to your face and said, ‘I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD, AL LONG AS YOU LIVE.’ What would you do then?” —Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Is it easier to be unhappy, downtrodden, beat-up and to have a low opinion of ourselves? What if we’re meant to enjoy the good things, our good friends, and to share without shame the talents that we have? Imagine the ones we haven’t explored.

We could have it all backwards. Ever thought about that?

If we admitted how good we are at doing things, how much more good could we get done?

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

The Apology I Hope You’ve Been Waiting for

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I’m Sorry

Do you know the way that we sometimes have conversations in our heads with the people we care about? I’ve been having one with you, who read this blog, for over two months now. It’s a conversation about who we are, who we’ve been, and how much I value you, despite how it might have looked.

Would you listen for a minute while share what that conversation has been about? It’s an apology. It’s also a story. It’s about relationships, responsibilities, and risks.

Here’s what I’d be saying if we sat down across a kitchen table tonight.

I feel badly about how the SOBCon conference took over my blog, and you deserve an explanation about why that happened. Why do I think that? Because it’s not authentically me to choose anything over my readers. But I did.

I wasn’t practicing what I believed . . . wasn’t being true to our relationship. I’m sorry.

I know you see the responsibilities that came with the conference.
I know you see the risks to our friends, the folks who helped make it happen.
I know you see that I had the blog that could make the loudest noise about this first conference.
I chose to put it to work in the hope that conference would make a difference in people’s lives.
I chose to put it to work because five regular people invested their own money to make it happen.

But I didn’t see. I didn’t realize a few things would occur when I did that.

I woke up to find out that I was giving my readers less content, less attention, less of myself. . . . not fair — kind of like shortchanging your family to do a good job at work. Sometimes it has to happen, but it’s never right.

I woke up to find I hadn’t thought about the people who wouldn’t be able to come. That’s the part I am sorriest about. Never in the world would I want someone to feel left out. That breaks my heart. I’m much better than that. I could have found a way to make everyone feel included.

My head and my heart both wanted you to know. As I’ve said, I’ve been having this conversation with you in my head for over two months. I just didn’t know how to fix the situation and needed the train to stop so that I could say what needed saying.

I sincerely hope that you’ve been waiting for this apology, because anything else would be less.

I am sorry for any moment that you might think you weren’t valued. It’s just not true.

Liz's Signature

What is He Talking About? Chris Cree on Order

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“First things first. But not necessarily in that order.” –Doctor Who

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Liz said something very kind to me the other day.

We were catching up on some post conference details when she said, “Chris, you are a Choreographer of Success. You clear roadblocks so things can get done.”

That’s me. Mr. Snow-Plow.

I clear the way and things happen.

I guess you could say I’m sorta like Doctor Who, but on a much smaller scale.
Doctor Who
I mean the good Doctor seems to chronically stumble onto some sort of doomsday end-of-humanity scenario. Then he’ll figure out exactly what needs to be done (and no more), and get it done just in the nick of time. All with a cheery attitude and a touch of drama (of course). And then he slides off into the Tardis as anonymously as possible.

One of the tricks to being a successful snow plow (a snow plow of success?) is the ability to prioritize well. And that obviously means the ability to put first things first.

Except when it doesn’t.

The thing is we try so hard to formula-ize things like success as though we can follow a recipe or program ourselves like a computer to achieve success. There is a whole industry making a ton of money selling people all kinds of formulas.

Some work better than others, no doubt.

But the truth is success isn’t so much a set of action steps as it is a montage of guiding principles that when collectively applied produce desirable results.

One trick is to know when to keep first things first. And then recognize those times when you will get better results doing something else first. Unfortunately I haven’t found the formula that will tell the difference every time.

Until I come up with one, I’ll just plow on. Like the good Doctor, I’ll keep applying what I know and making the rest up as I go.

And that’s just the Way I C it.

–Chris Cree, SuccessCREEations.

Thanks to Week 82 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 every one 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. Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Graduation . . . The Signs Were All There

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Nerd Family on TV

This post is purely for weekend entertainment. I point you to it at my writing blog to give a peek into the guy who graduates today. This is an excerpt from what I call “The Milk Story.” It’s part of the reason I think of the three of us as Nerd Family on TV.

One thing about three-year-olds is that today they’ll eat any thing. Tomorrow you can offer the very same thing, and they won’t go anywhere near it. Our son had a signal for when he was in the latter mood. He would fill up on milk and ignore his food. That’s exactly what he did to his dad’s highly-prepared meal. The young man of three, drank his milk. Looked at his plate. Looked at his father and with angelic politeness said,

“May I have more milk, please?”

“I think you need to eat first,” his father replied.

Our son politely shifted his position, turning his back to his father his face to me, ignoring his food and his father too. He said, “Mom how do you spell refrigerator? . . . chandelier? . . . calculator? . . . spoon?

If we were talking about my son, it’s often the first story I tell about him. It defines our family perfectly. To read the whole story, click the title below.

Today that three-year-old boy graduates from college. He doesn’t remember that day. His parents won’t forget it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss