Ive-been-thinking Archives - Page 18 of 37

While I'm Gone, I Hope

December 1, 2007 by Liz

what I’d hope you might remember while I’m gone.

You see I’m leaving on a plane tonight, and I’m not taking my computer.

I would hope you’ll still stop to see the surprises I’ve left behind. Several folks have contributed some wonderful writing, and I’ve put together a little some thing too. I hope you’ll share your thoughts in the comments. Though I won’t be here, the sidebar will be fully stocked with beverages and snacks and you can pass on what you like via the “Share This” button at the end of each post.

Hope you’re smiling.
Hope you’re having fun.
Hope you’ve found a way lighten your heart and your load this holiday season.

Meanwhile, I’ll be drumming some work so that I can keep this joint afloat. So keep me in your thoughts . . . and most all, know I hope you’ll be nice.

Positively Me

November 26, 2007 by Liz

about those sentences in our heads.

They were useful once I’m sure — those sentences in our heads that tell us how to act and who we are. But some of them are woefully past their “sell by” date and still they play over and over. It’s time to stop paying attention.

Just because it made sense once to raise my hand before I spoke. . . .
Just because someone had a different idea of what’s beautiful . . .
Just because in the past some kids said I was too smart, too weird, too tall, too something they were not . . .

Do I have to keep listening to those ideas? Do I have to keep believing them?

I see folks who let one sentence, one event, define their entire life while they sit with the power to set it iaside and chose a new path.

This once-shy child doesn’t have to be a shy adult. I’m not stuck with other folks’ thoughts. Any event is only something that happened. I can paint it, put it on a wall, and call it history.

It’s my life. They’re my thoughts. I’m tossing out the ones I don’t want. I don’t need negatives anymore. It’s the positives that move me forward.

How else will I become positively me?

Personal Identity: Who Are You Really?

November 25, 2007 by Liz

I Would Agree

Last night at a gathering, I had a conversation with a woman who had decorated the condo in which we were enjoying the evening.

She said, “My passion is home decorating, but my real job is . . . ”

She saw the smile that crossed my face and asked about it.

I wondered back why she thought about herself and her life that way. I said, “Just because right now you spend more time and make more money doing what you call your ‘real job,’ do you have to let it define who you are?”

The woman leaned forward to listen more closely.

“What I mean is . . . when I came in, I was told you were the decorator who made this room look so beautiful. It was easy to agree that a home decorator is who you are.”

The woman sat visibly taller in her chair and smiled. “I see what you mean.”

I placed a finger of my left hand on the counter in front of us and said, “You are here. This is where you are spending less time at home decorating.” About 10 inches to the right of the first finger, I placed a finger of my right hand. “This is where you will be when you’re a home decorator full time. All you need to do is find the steps from one to the other.”

Her smile grew.

“Yep,” I said. “The whole thing becomes easy now because you can see. Every decision you make either moves you further down that path or moves you away from it. Just remember the path when you decide things and soon enough you’ll find yourself there.”

She was already redefining herself with the next words she used.

We really do get to choose how we define ourselves and how to get there.

Are you satisfied with who you say you are?

Who are you really?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Change the World: Think Our Way Out of the Box

November 23, 2007 by Liz

We Make Our Reality

It’s only sensible that we make our reality. What we perceive comes through the filter of what we have experienced before.

When I used go home to visit my family for holidays, every trip was a stress. I felt they didn’t see me.

Families have a way of bringing us back to our “role” in the group dynamic. I would return telling people how my siblings thought I was still 12 years old. I thought they were self-centered in doing this.

Couldn’t have been me? Could it?

Silly me. It sure was all my own doing. I thought they put me in a box, but I was finding that box and crawling right into all by myself. Sometimes the roles we play in a group dynamic are so comfortable, so much easier than being fully present. We gravitate to old roles without being aware that we’re choosing them, and then we decide that it’s something that other folks are deciding for us.

Head and heart, when all of our parts are connected together. That’s when we really have a soul. That’s when we know how to listen — to ourselves and others. Our cells resonate with the sound of life like drops in that pool.

We imagine other people in our own image and likeness. When we guess what they’re thinking we’re really imagining what we, ourselves, might think were we them.

So why not imagine them thinking we’re a fabulous success? It’s within our power to think our way out of that old box.

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

Working Smart or Working Away the Time of Your Life?

November 21, 2007 by Liz

Whoa! Look around us!

Everyone is so . . . busy. We’re almost can’t see each other.

We’re juggling, talking, typing, scanning instead of reading, talking instead of thinking, putting off time with our family and friends. We all know so much about productivity, goals, keeping connected, and following our passion to build the business that we love. It’s enough to make a brain shut down into auto-mode.

I know I occasionally find myself staring out from a glazed look, walking into walls. How about you?

Being determined, motivated, set on a path with a laser beam focus is a good thing. . . . right? It is, if every now and then, we check that our destination is still where we want to go and that we’re enjoying the ride on the way.

The Going Not the Getting There

I see it in clients. I’ve felt it in my friends. I’ve done it myself. It’s a heads down sort of thing that takes over our thinking. We become so aware of time, so time-managing, that we manage to set aside anything that might, even possibly from far off, appear to be construed as doing nothing.

What’s wrong with doing nothing or better yet doing something just for fun — not balance . . . F-U-N? What’s wrong with enjoying the folks we care about as we move through our lives?

Nature has no straight lines.

Our priorities can get so straight that they become twisted and upside-down. We can get so focused on our destination that we forget to pay attention to the journey and the people who make living our lives magical, meaningful, and worth living.

Way, way back in the olden days, Harry Chapin sang this in a song.

It’s got to be the getting there, not the going that’s good. –Heads and Tales, Greyhound

We’ll never get this moment back . . . oops, it’s already gone!

At the end of my days will I regret the work I didn’t do or the time I didn’t spend with my husband, my son, my dad, my mom, my brothers, my nieces and nephews, my lifelong friends, the new exciting people I’ve just met?

If you knew that your time left was only tonight, what would you do then?

I’m going with Bruce Cockburn’s answer . . .

If it was the last night of the world, I’d have champagne with you. –Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu, Last Night of the World

Yep, that’s what I’d do.

I’m making a sign and putting up right above my monitor.

Will you make a sign too? It’s the time of your life.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Blogger Relationships: A Meeting of the Minds

November 19, 2007 by Liz

about how our minds meet.

This week I met a blogger friend at an event in Chicago. We have a common geography. His thoughts live in places where my thoughts had once had a home, and he went to the same high school my brothers’ kids did. We are the same kind of shy, but I might have talked too much for him to notice.

He told me he tended not to mix at a gathering of strangers. I told him that I usually had the same response and how I found ways to get by. We talked about how meeting folks online was different.

Since that night, I’ve been thinking the bloggers i meet every day in my mind.

I used to be ponder and be relieved by how efficient it is online. I can listen in and if I didn’t fit, I can click away — no one is embarrassed; no painful small talk is required. It’s so much less stressful, so much more efficient, the way we meet and connect with folks of like-mind.

But that’s only the beginning.

We might move up into our heads thinking, as we do any other time. The larger difference comes when, rather than thinking, listening, and speaking simultaneously, we focus on taking thoughts in and moving thoughts out via the keyboard one direction at a time.

The thoughts we exchange are in smaller packages. People are shy about holding the comment box for too many paragraphs. It would be a feat to step on the words while we type. It’s nearly impossible not to attend to the ideas someone offers — we have to read what they write to know what we want to say. Besides, we understand that we have time after we read to compose a thoughtful response.

It’s a respectful way of communicating. No wonder we find our a meaningful conversation right away.

What if we brought that same approach to the listening and speaking we do in the real world, in real time?