Change-the-World Archives - Page 12 of 14

Change the World: Give When No One Notices

February 19, 2007 by Liz

The Giving Tree

Sometimes we give, and no one seems to notice.

To me, the children’s book, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, is about that. It’s the story of a boy and a tree that is always there for him. Throughout the boy’s life, the boy uses the tree for shade. He climbs it. He eats its fruit. He carves his initials, and those of his sweetheart, into the tree’s trunk. When he wants to make a new life, the boy uses the wood from the tree to build a boat to sail away. Years later, as an old man, the boy returns and sits on the stump of the tree that he had left behind.

In my twenties, I thought this was a beautiful story of unconditional love.

In my thirties, I wasn’t so sure I looked at the boy and saw his selfish taking. The tree began to look like people I knew who became “victims” because they never said “no” to anyone’s request.

I came to realize that the story is perfectly told.

The difference between a victim and a Nelson Mandela is a choice in the mind of the giver.

We choose unconditional love or choose to be a victim. The response of the one who receives doesn’t enter into the decision. Many who were helped by Nelson Mandela showed and felt no response to his gift. Yet he didn’t become the victim.

That one choice by Nelson Mandela so inspires me to make the same kind of choices in my own far less burdensome situations.

Sometimes we give and no one seems to notice. That doesn’t matter. Does it?

We can change the world — just like that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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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.

Change the World: One Touch on a Shoulder

February 17, 2007 by Liz

Skin Hunger

At my mothers’ funeral, I watched my 3-year-old nephew sit beside his father, touch him on the shoulder, and say “There, there, Daddy.” The words said little. They said, “I love you. I’m here.”

That scene made me watch. I thought of how many ways we touch in times of crisis and high emotion — handshakes, hugs, pats on the back, high fives, even bumping heads and bottoms. Somehow putting ourselves in touch with one another lets us know we’re not alone on this gigantic planet. That’s an important feeling. We have need to be a part of something more than ourselves for our lives to have meaning.

I read about skin hunger — the need to be touched in a caring manner, a touch that is safe and appropriate. We don’t realize how touch is essential to human survival.

One study I read 20 years ago said we need 16 touches every day and that without them we will unconsciously start bumping to people to fulfill the need to satisfy our hunger.

It’s something to think about the next time someone accidentally bumps into me . . . that it was important.

Now, I look for ways to a shake hand or touch a person on the shoulder.

Reach out and touch someone.

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.

Steve Pavlina and Liz on Relationships

February 14, 2007 by Liz

At the end of January, Steve Pavlina published a piece on Human Relationships. His article pointed out something I’ve always believed — that we see in others the traits that we love and dislike most in ourselves. In fact, our relationships with other people are really the same relationships we have within ourselves.

Steve explains it beautifully.

Where do all your relationships exist? They exist in your thoughts. Your relationship with another person is whatever you imagine it to be. Whether you love someone or hate someone, youÃ¢â¬â¢re right. Now the other person may have a completely different relationship to you, but understand that your representation of what someone else thinks of you is also part of your thoughts. So your relationship with someone includes what you think of that person and what you believe s/he thinks of you. You can complicate it further by imagining what the other person thinks you think of him/her, but ultimately those internal representations are all you have.

Now,you might have gotten there on your own, just as I did. It’s a fascinating conundrum that we can never objectively see what objective form our relationships really have. Steve’s post goes in another direction. He gives new meaning to something I’ve thought for the longest time.

The quickest way to change someone’s behavior is change our own.

Steve tells a story about how he wanted to convince his wife to be tidier. Thinking of his internal relationships, he recognized it was really his own issue, not hers. So he decided to become even more tidy than he already was. He points out that with no conversation, as he became tidier, his wife began tidying her office and other spaces around their house. Steve says that as he solves problems he thinks he has with others by working on them within himself, others always have this response.

Steve offers this simple exercise for us to try it out.

Make a list of all the things that bother you about other people. Now re-read that list as if it applies to you. If youÃ¢â¬â¢re honest youÃ¢â¬â¢ll have to admit that all of your complaints about others are really complaints about yourself. For example, if you dislike George Bush because you think heÃ¢â¬â¢s a poor leader, could this be because your own leadership skills are sub par? Then go to work on your own leadership skills, or work on becoming more accepting of your current skill level, and notice how George Bush suddenly seems to be making dramatic improvements in this area.

What a great way to work on self-development!

The Most Likely Reasons This Works

When we have a problem or a conflict, we often find ourselves on opposite sides of a line. The problem defines us as we and them, you and I, hero and villain or so many non-intersecting circles. If we make a sincere change with intent to grow, we have just moved outside of our circle. The person on the other side of that line has a new picture, a new response when he or she communicates. Of course he or she will notice, that alone is a change.

If the person watching sees us do something positive, human nature provides so many reasons that a friend, an enemy, or someone who hardly knows us would want to do the same. Can you think of them?

Now consider one more thing that Steve says; The more we interact with others, the more we know about ourselves.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Let Something Dawn on You

February 10, 2007 by Liz

That Awful, Beautiful Portrait

When I graduated from high school, it was tradition to have photos taken for the school yearbook. A professional photographer was brought in, and appointments were set up. Everyone came away with a selection of quality portraits.

Among those I had to choose from was one that I thought of as a “glamour” shot and another that I called my “holy card” picture because I appeared to be thinking of heaven.

Here comes the part where how we see ourselves affects how we see the world and everything in it.

I was a skeletal, long-haired, gawky teenager. Even the kindest description couldn’t make up for a 6 foot tall, 120-pound stick-person. People knew I was huge on smarts, lightning on wit, and from another planet when it came to social skills . . . in other words, I was totally clueless about how to be cool.

That’s important because it’s context.

If you get labeled “the smartest girl in the room,” you also get labeled a “goody two shoes.” If that happens when you are 6 years old with classmates that stay the same for 12 years, the labels stick. Your environment keeps telling you the same thing. You can’t help but believe that’s who you are.

That makes for a huge information filter — sunglasses that automatically screen out any data that might disagree with the labels you’ve come to believe define who you are.

Well, that’s how it worked for me, anyway. Now back to the two photos.

Anyone who’s been 17 years old knows, that’s the time that the young lions break from the old. We never agree with our parents on anything then.

My mother chose the “glam” shot. I chose the “holy card” picture. My mother, who paid for the photos, let me choose the “holy card” picture. It was the one in the yearbook, the one that was sent to all of the relatives, the one that we bought two hand-colored 8″x10″s to frame for display at home and at my father’s saloon.

But . . .

She also bought one hand-painted 8″x10″ of the glamour shot. You don’t know how much I didn’t like that photo. To me it was everything I was not. And when my mother said, “That’s my daughter saying how beautiful she is.” I was sure it was proof that she had NO IDEA who I was at all.

Then . . .

When the photos came and were framed, she put that photo on display in our living room, where we received visitors. Oh man. The 8″x10″ that I liked was housed in the frame behind it where it couldn’t be seen. (Come back and read this paragraph again later.)

It was two decades later and I had long let go of that filter. My mother had already died and I got to thinking of that picture. That’s when some simple facts dawned on me.

That picture was placed directly opposite my mother’s spot on the living room couch, directly in her line of vision. She put it there the week before I went to college. I remember talking about it, and feeling only slightly mortified. Now I realize what I couldn’t see.

My mother bought that portrait because she liked it, and she liked the person that she saw in it.

I had to drop my sunglasses to let the truth dawn on me. It’s amazing how much my world changed when I did.

What’s that they say about “none so blind as those who won’t see”?

“That’s my daughter saying how beautiful she is.”

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

Change the World: Breaking the Law of My Limits

February 7, 2007 by Liz

What If I Stopped Saying I Can’t?

Those who advise people to follow their passion, no matter where it leads, are believers in intentionality*. Many meditation programs that advise that imagining ‘success’, what one wants to happen, is the first step towards its realization, are believers in intentionality (the second step, they will tell you, is acting in accordance). Those who will tell you that having the courage to ‘real-ize’ what you were always intended to be and do, by living on the Edge beyond the reach of civilization’s safety net, is the only sane way to live, the only hope for us as individuals and as a culture, are believers in intentionality. And so are the ‘power of positive thinking’ and ‘appreciative inquiry’ proponents. . . .

The word intention literally means stretching toward. The word aspiration means breathing toward. — Dave Pollard, How to Save the World

If I say I can’t, you can bet I can’t.
I can argue for my personal limits with a clean, clear case of exactly what I can’t do — certain beyond certain, that I can’t do what I say I can’t. The future is easy to predict when I lay down the law of my personal limits.

Suppose just one time, or maybe once and for all, that instead of the law of my limits, I laid down my can’t do arguments?

I intend to break the law of my limits.
I will do something I once believed I could never do.
I aspire without a care, without fear of failing.
I will stretch toward, breathe toward learning.

If I trip or fall, I’ll simply adjust my steps.
If I get lost, I’ll stop for help.

I don’t need luck, when I can make things happen.

I intend to stop fighting for limits, and start exploring possibilities.

That’s a reality I can make happen.

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

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.

Change the World: That One Person Is Better

February 3, 2007 by Liz

A Writing Contract

People are inspiring, teaching, and reaching each other in positive ways every day. Phil Gerbyshak is smiling, sharing, serving, asking questions, learning and hugging.

Lisa at Design Your Writing Life took a virtual page Content Done Better by Carson Brackney and another from The Write Path by Diane Penna to forge a contract with herself. Lisa’s contract, like the others, is a commitment to “doing the work you love in service to those who love what you do,” as Steve Farber says.

Of course then, Lisa left a message that it was my turn.

Lisa, this is my answer and my contract.

When I was almost 18 years old, at sunrise in the Grand Teton Mountains, a young man asked me an important question about life that I had never been asked before. Somehow I knew the answer. That answer is the basis for my writing contract with myself and the world.

I will be the kind of writer that strives to keep alive the music of the language, to hold head and heart together in the words, and to write with hope and passion that one person is better because he or she read what I wrote.

I told that boy, “I’ll never know for sure. So I’ll always be trying.”

Thank you, Lisa, for asking the question.

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

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.