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My Experience with Cliffs and Decisions

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2016 GeniusShared Read from Liz StraussI’ve been thinking about falling off cliffs.

I’m fairly sure I was born with a fear of heights.

My uncle, the photographer, didn’t have such fear. And as I recall, the rest of my family didn’t either.

And my uncle — the one with all of the expensive photography equipment — would find every opportunity to take pictures that involved standing my cousins and I near dramatic scenery.

I was always the one who ended up on the cliff side. It was always impossible to find my smile.

Even now, I can’t walk up to the edge of a cliff without thinking that the stone will give way. My imagination has me tumbling, down, down, down . . . even though, I’m fairly certain that’s not meant to be a scene in my life.

I used to have the same experience with decisions. Choosing any option would leave wondering whether the choice would fall out from under my feet. Then I realized the only thing between me and every success I every won was a decision that I would succeed.

Maybe it’s the awe inspiring beauty of the world that sets me on my heels.
Maybe it’s the awe inspiring idea that I can determine the course of my life.

I still respect cliffs and decisions, but now I place my feet firmly in where I stand so that down, down, down isn’t on mind.

What Three Values Drive Your Brand?

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(Updated in 2020)

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

10-Point Plan — The Brand Values Baseline Defined

Three Reasons Get Us to the Task at Hand

Now the core team returns to discuss the feedback from the stakeholder leaders who’ve helped them identify the brand values baseline. Review the words each group has returned with and talk through the meaning until the group can roll up the short list to three words that stand for the foundational core values that drive the business. Try one from the head, one from the heart, and one from the long-term vision or meaning.

An example might be these three that drive SOBCon:

Delivering brilliance: We believe in intelligent, elegant connected ideas that raise us up to higher thinking.

Trusting fearlessness: We believe in authentic trust in ourselves and others that has no room for fear as it stand with our intelligent ideas.

Deep Strategic Vision: Our quest and our purpose is to move ourselves, our businesses, and those around us forward with leadership born of strategy and deep meaningful purpose.

Or brilliance, trust, vision. Those three words wrap up the sentences and make the an easy reference for every decision that drives our business. Other people on the core team can choose their synonyms and as long as they mean the same thing, we can trust in the variations and the mutations that will grow from them.

We have our values aligned.

What three values drive your business?

READ the Whole 10-Point Plan Series: On the Successful Series Page.

Sorting Is a Breeze, a Day at the Beach

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Thoughts that Say Easy . . .

I love those idiomatic phrases that mean things are easy …
Easy as pie …
It’s a piece of cake.

My most favorite of them are …
It’s a breeze. . . .
a day at the beach.

I use them when things get stressful or hard, especially when my head gets too filled with details and options.

When I have too many options, those last two idioms help me sort them. A breeze and beach conjure up images that let me sit back for a thought, no matter how busy or anxious for answer the world is.

I imagine a day at the beach where the sand and the sky are big and open. No clocks or buildings interrupt a chance to spread out my thoughts. I need to see the spaces between the options to know what I’ve got and sort them.

A few well-spaced thoughts and I remember that my life is my creation. I’m in charge of valuing the options. I choose the path, the curves, and the interactions. When I listen to what I know, seeing where I am and I’m going is easy. It’s a day at the beach drawing possibilities in the sand.

How do you sort too many thoughts and options?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Image: sxc.hu
Image: sxc.hu
Work with Liz!!

Why It Takes a Personal Plan to Be Outstandingly Successful

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Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan

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The road to success — We’ve all heard of that one. Do the things everyone does and you’ll probably get to something that’s . . . well, . . . not broken. But if you want to be successful and outstanding. Doing what everyone does won’t get you there . . . because to be outstanding, by necessity, you have to be individual.

To do stand and shine as uniquely valuable, a business or an individual needs a road that leads in a singular direction.

Note that I used the word leads.

A Plan to Be Irresistibly, Outstandingly Successful

Any effective, efficient project, business, or life has structure and direction. It starts with a destination — literal or figurative — and then a route to get there. Without a plan, we leave ourselves open to winds that push us toward distractions or detours. A plan, well thought and well provided for is the only way to get where we want to that shining end point.

Have a plan and work the plan is sage advice.

Why It Takes a Personal Plan to Be Outstandingly Successful

Last week we talked about making decisions. Here are the reasons that outstanding success demands a plan.

  1. If we don’t have a plan, we’re just wishing.
  2. If we don’t have a plan, we’re always here and success is always out there.
  3. Without a plan, we have no direction. Any road will take us anywhere, but we won’t end up there.
  4. Without a plan, every decision is likely to have as much power as a whim.
  5. A plan is the only way to benchmark our progress and to build on what we’ve accomplished.
  6. A plan is keeps us focused when other ideas tempt us away from our dreams.

Decide. Plan. Get determined. The plan makes a dream into an outstandingly success. It’s the plan — the decisions and determination — that fuels the reality. Distractions are easier to disregard when we can hold them up to a plan we know we can achieve.

Without a plan, we’re always getting ready to succeed. Christine Kane says it eloquently.

“How will you go the long, long journey,
if you’re always about to begin?” — Christine Kane, Falling in Love with the Wind

If you want to be outstandingly successful, plan for it. Outstanding is a stake in the ground that we keep our eyes on. It’s a path that we plot for the life that we want. It’s as easy as a decision.

Have you planned outstanding success into your life?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Need help deciding? Work with Liz!!
SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

Decision or Choice: Is the Difference Stealing Your Focus and Your Time?

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Possibilities and Direction

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You walk into an ice cream store. So many flavors sit in the case before you. You consider or you know right away. You place your order.

You have a meeting with your boss only to find out that the job you love is likely to be gone in six months. You have an opportunity to take a higher position in another state or you can stay in the city you love with a fair certainty that your job is going away.

One is a choice. The other is a decision.

One is about possibilities. The other is about direction.

Decision or Choice

Whether we’re thinking about sending a child to private school, where to go on holiday, or buying office supplies, every day we opt for one thing over another. Sometimes we’re choosing. Sometimes we’re deciding. Doing one when the other is called for can get in our way.

Do you know the difference between a choice and a decision? Consider what the words mean and how that might apply to your business and your life.

The Definitions [via Answers.com ]

  • A choice is a selection from a number or variety of options.
  • A decision is reaching a conclusion or passing judgment on an issue.

The Etymology — History of the Words [via Merriam-Webster Online,]

  • Choose — Etymology: Middle English chosen, from Old English cÄ“osan; akin to Old High German kiosan to choose, Latin gustare to taste
  • Decide — Middle English, from Latin decidere, literally, to cut off, from de- + caedere to cut

Synonyms [via Thesaurus.com]

  • Choose — (definition select) — accept, adopt, appoint, call for, cast, co-opt, commit oneself, crave, cull, decide on, designate, desire, determine, discriminate between, draw lots, elect, embrace, espouse, excerpt, extract, fancy, favor, finger, fix on, glean, judge, love, make choice, make decision, name, opt for, predestine, prefer, see fit, separate, set aside, settle upon, sift out, single out, slot, sort, tab, tag, take, take up, tap, want, weigh, will, winnow, wish, wish for
  • Decide — (definition determine) adjudge, adjudicate, agree, award, call shots*, choose, cinch, clinch, commit oneself, conclude, conjecture, decree, determine, elect, end, establish, figure, fix upon, form opinion, gather, guess, judge, mediate, opt, pick, poll, purpose, reach decision, resolve, rule, select, set, surmise, tap, vote, will

When we choose, it’s like picking an item from a menu. If we come back the next time, we can make another choice. But a decision, cuts off — kills — other options. By its very definiton a decision is a turning point.

Is the Difference Stealing Your Focus and Your Time?

Decisions and choices build our character, form our life path. They’re the sum and substance of what makes our resume and our business success. Even so, what is a decision or a choice for you, me, or anyone is, in itself, a decision or a choice.

How we handle decisions and choices deeply affects our lives.

  • Do you angst over every choice as a life-changing decision? Take a look at what you’re investing — time, energy, stress — and what you’re investing in.
  • Do you avoid clear decisions by treating them like choices? Take a look at the options you’re holding onto and how they’re holding you in place.

Those two mistakes steal time and focus and often generate stress.

The difference is fairly simple.
A decision marks a direction.
A choice marks an option until we return to choose again.

How will you use this information?

It’s your decision . . . or your choice.

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related:
When Is Being Good Not Good for Business?
7 Ways to Carve a Path to the Future of Your Dreams
How to Know If You’ve Lost Track of Your Vision

Change the World: One Choice Decides

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Go On and Do That

changetheworld8

Ever watch someone building a dream? Ever wonder about building a dream and catch yourself thinking, I wish I was meant to do that?

Why would some people get to have their dreams and other people have to go without?

It can’t be luck. It can’t be money. It sure can’t be smarts. Look around. Those things don’t decide who gets what.

How would a universe choose which stars get to shine and which don’t?

Is it that some people know their dreams? Deep in our hearts, don’t we all? We did when we small enough to still dream big, giant dreams. It’s in ourselves. It’s in our hearts. We know.

Ourselves. What’s so scary about going after a dream? Is it the self in ourselves? Is that the question, the word, that stops us from being who we are? We can’t be ourselves because of our self?

Self-directed doesn’t mean self-serving. Self-determined isn’t self-absorbed. It isn’t selfish or self-centered to be who we are.

Truth is, we give our self to a dream.

What’s the difference between the person who changes a dream into reality and the person who looks on?

One changes the world.

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