Successful Blog

Change the World: On and On to Learn

by

I have a Plan

changetheworld8

We learn every day. Big and small things that happen are enough to change us. Each bit of knowledge we helps us frame our world view. That’s an exciting and profound reality of being alive.

Yet most of that learning is passive, a form of response. It comes to us. We don’t seek it out. We might miss it completely as it sits waiting, if we don’t STOP to take notice. When we do, we often need to give it some thought to make what we’ve learned useful, to translate it into a thought that makes sense.

Learning is fundamental to growing.

Growing is fundatmental to life.

Learning with intentionality, actually setting out with a purpose to learn, is the quest of a beginner’s mind. It stretches our thoughts, moves our hearts, and transcends our current existence. Walking into a sunrise with a thought of learning changes who we are by the time we walk out of the sunset that same day.

If I don’t plan my learning, it seems I keep learning the same things . . .

over and over, on and on . . .

on and on until I open my head and heart to learn.

If I don’t plan to learn, how can I grow deep enough to do my part?

What will you make it a point to learn to day?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Believe in a Dream

by

It’s Hard to Believe

Change the World!

I once worked for a woman who believed that if you got great grades at university you went to an easy school.

Every choice she made included taking the hard way. Somewhere in her thinking was a fear of being accused of taking the easy way. Even when the “easy way” was the most efficient, the smartest way, the best ROI for the company, this vice president had to be convinced every way to Sunday that it wasn’t a way to get out of doing the hard work that “should be” done.

This same person didn’t suffer dreamers. Dreams were for sleeping and children playing games of imagination. Sadly, she had been trained as a teacher. She taught me discipline with the details — I’ve lost some of it since. She taught me patience.

She taught me that some people can never make a dream happen. . . . because they think dreams aren’t real and they think being a dreamer is easy.

Dreams, hopes, goals are within our reach.

Why is that so hard for us to believe?

We can believe that the other guy will win, but not us. He will be the President, the rock star, the artist. She will be the CEO, the actor, the international lawyer. But it never crosses our mind to aspire to that path.

Have the big kids taken so much and told so much that they’ve wiped the stars from our eyes?

Believing in a dream is hard. Look at me. Go ahead, tell me I don’t know.

Believing in a dream is hard, because it’s saying out loud, “Here’s what I’m going for.”

Everyone knows it’s way easier to sit right here and say nothing at all.

Unless you just can’t.

People who have dreams. They don’t let go until they make their dreams happen. They fall down, but they get up and they keep right on going. They see that dream as sure as you see these words here.

It’s a little house.

It’s learning to read.

It’s building something that no one has ever seen.

It’s seeing peace in a family.

It’s seeing peace on Earth.

Believe in a dream, please.

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.

Change the World!.

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.