Please look at this. It was in my Technorati links.
http://www.gitrsblog.us/?p=563
Jesse didn’t tell me he was going to do this. I’m not asking you to donate, but it would be cool if you pass the word.
Jesse is the guy with CF who wrote the post I Want to Make a Difference too.
That post got 43 comments.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
I remember on my first trip to England, how surprised I was when I got into the countryside. Somehow I had expected, from looking at maps, that the small country compared to my own, would be small everywhere.
It wasn’t.
As my dear friend and I road out over the highway, I saw green rolling hills, villages in the distance, and a view took my eyes all of the way to the horizon. I had long before discovered the value of a visual change as a vacation, but this was much more than that. I was filled with a feeling of belonging.
All that I saw, the trees, grass that covered the low hilly country, the occasional bigger hill, every bit felt right in proportion and distance. I felt room to relax, to let my mind stretch out. This country perfectly suited my sense of space. I even remarked on it.
A sense of space and my place in it had I thought about it before that day? I don’t know. I do know that, when we talked about a sense of space, I was talking about something that always had been a part of me.
This morning I look at the space around me. I realize there isn’t any. I’ve turned my desk into a tiny country, with satellite nations on my file cabinet, the credenza, the table, the box beside it, the floor . . .
If it looks like that around me, I wonder how it must look inside my head?
I’m going to take a half hour to empty some places around here. I know that if I do, my shoulders will relax and I’ll start to sit back. I’d like to see whether being empty-headed might be a really nice feeling.
Space, my frontier. I’d like to explore where it takes me.
I’m going out the door to see wide open space. As soon as I get outside, I’ll be looking at that horizon under a BIG Illinois blue spring sky over Lake Michigan. I won’t be thinking about what I have left behind that needs working on.
Most things I do are not things that involve the question of whether a life begins or ends if I’m not there. The world can turn without me.
I’m going to stare at the horizon while I think about nothing. I’m going to explore space — that frontier of reflection in my mind.
New links connect blogs. New relationships connect people.
New people can add dimension and depth to your thinking and your ideas.
What new friends have you met lately? How have you made getting to know your blog easy for them? Here are three things you might do to get the ball rolling.
New friends who feel at home usually come back to visit again.
UPDATE: I am updating this post as part of my response to comments 11-13. Carma this is a post reference that I am linking back to your blog through a trackback. This should show up in your comments for the post called Make New Friends with Trackback.
This is the URl for that page http://karmasword.blogspot.com/2007/03/make-new-friends-with-trackback.html I got there by clicking the time 9:22A.M. (when you posted that post) under your blog. I copied the URL from my browser’s address bar to use it to make the link in my post here.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Related
For more on how to think like your readers see Customer Think on the Successful Series page.
Watch What You’re Doing.
We all have moments of self-doubt. Maybe not, but I sure know I do. As we get to know ourselves and find our feet, the moments get shorter. I don’t expect they ever disappear completely. The seems a momentary reminder of our fragile humanity.
This week I had a tired moment of self-doubt.
Tariq called at that same time. This lucky girl is getting to feel familiar with that blogger synchronicity, but I’ll never stop being captivated by its joyful and genuine surprise.
While Tariq and I talked about the options that stood before me and the barrier of self-doubt that I was holding up, he said something so simple. These aren’t his words, they’re mine. How could I remember word-for-word? I was listening from inside a box I’d built around me. But what Tariq almost whispered went something like this . . .
Liz, I know you know what to do. . . . . You wrote in a blog post last week. . . You tell other people all of the time. Tell yourself now.
“Act like you know what to do,” was what I answered back.
“That’s it,” he said. “Just do it for you. You do it for everyone.”
Then I saw myself on the other side of that darn barrier. What had been the scary thing that made me think I needed to stop myself from trying?
I did what I had been afraid to do. Nothing could have been so well-received.
Tariq had reminded me to know what I already knew.
It changed my life that day.
Friends do that for each other.
We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
______________
If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.
. Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.
It was a busy night. You can read all about it in the comments section.
Here are some cool links we shared.
Thanks to everyone for the cool links and for being part of the conversation.
See you next Tuesday? I sure hope so.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?
WANT TO GUEST HOST AN OPEN COMMENT NIGHT WITH ME? PICK A THEME AND TELL ME ABOUT IT. C’MON IT’LL BE FUN!
“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” –Howard Aiken
The other day Liz posted about having dreams and how challenging it can sometimes be turning those dreams into reality.
About that same time Chris Brogan tossed out a phrase over at Twitter that caught my attention.
Lots of visionaries and not enough princes of execution
So which is it?
Do we need more dreamers or more doers?
Honestly I think we need more of both.
Too many of us are sitting on the couch, eating Klondike Bars, and watching American Idol. We’d rather complain about how unfair Simon is than allow ourselves to think about possibilities and potentialities.
And God forbid we ever get off our butts and actually start making something happen!
Now don’t get me wrong. Most of you know I’m a huge fan of Klondike Bars. (Mmmmm…)
But the point is this. For far too many of us the idea of dreaming about what could be in the future is too frightening. We let the what ifs overwhelm us without even giving our dream a chance to take root, much less produce any fruit.
What if I fail and am disappointed?
Or worse yet, what if I succeed beyond my capabilities, can’t manage it and then in the end fail in a spectacularly public way?
Would you just take a moment and listen to the junky thoughts you let run through your mind?! If you heard someone else say that sort of stuff out loud you’d be all over them like a baseball manager on a umpire’s bad call.
In our instant gratification, microwave, atm, cell phone society far too many off us have developed an amazingly unhealthy aversion to a little effort.
We’ll drive around the Wal-Mart parking lot for 10 minutes trying to find a parking place up front instead of just parking out a little and walking a few extra steps. Even though deep down we know we’d get in the store faster if we did.
One of the biggest reasons so many of us are unwilling or unable to dream any more is because we think we’ve tried it and it didn’t work out. So we’ve given up.
But the reality is all we did was wish. And that’s not the same thing as dreaming.
A wish is something we think we’d like to have or see but don’t really think will ever happen. To many of us do that and think we are dreaming.
Dreaming is seeing something that isn’t there yet as though it was real already. When we seriously get to dreaming, there will come a moment when action is required to turn that dream into reality. With a wish we never have to worry about that step because we won’t get to it.
Turning our dreams into reality will require us to put down the Klondikes, turn off Idol, and do something.
Here’s the thing about that quote up there at the top. Watching our dreams become reality will require change.
And change? Fohr-ghet-ta-bow-tiht!
If your dream, your big idea, is truly different that what has gone before you won’t have to worry about anyone stealing it. The overwhelming majority of folks out there are so unwilling to change, even when they know the change will be a huge benefit to them.
Don’t believe me? Try to convince a smoker to quit.
Your dream, if it is truly unique to you, is relatively safe. Use appropriate caution and protect yourself wisely. But don’t worry too much.
Most folks aren’t going to be willing to make the changes necessary to steal your dream.
But that’s just the Way I C it.
–Chris Cree, SuccessCREEations.