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Everyone Is Having Marvelous Day

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Before the Day Is Fully Conscious

When the first bit of morning comes to visit, I’m hardly awake. I walk in the dark to the kitchen. Still, I have an intention, an aspiration ready and waiting. I think about it before I go sleep.

Sunrise before the day is fully conscious

I will have positive things happen. I intend. I mean. Intend to make my a positive life. Positive things make a life light free. I mean to fill my life with them. I see. I will. I see no reason that why I cannot be or do what I set out to be or do. I will be someone who changes the world one person at a time.

The word intention literally means stretching toward. The word aspiration means breathing toward.

I intend to aspire to bend my knee and fly higher. I intend to become more and then imagine even more.

The possibilities are as big as my heart, as unconditional as my love, as generous as the rain. — Aspire

I wish those ideas into my head and my heart even before the day is fully conscious. When I succeed, everyone around me notices they’re having a marvelous day.

What will you stretch toward, breathe toward, today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

The Single W Seal of Approval

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Can we talk about . . .

a seal of approval.

No, I’m not advocating that anyone be a “people pleaser.” For goodness sake, I just wrote yesterday about the incredible influence of being a 65th Crayon.

A comment on the post about saying “thank you” to folks on social networks got me thinking. Here’s the part of the comment that Rob Scott left . . .

Sending thank you notes is a good idea. My grandma would definitely approve too – and there’s not much on the internet that she would approve of!!

It’s not about Rob’s grandma, or my grandma, or that fact that I’m old enough to be someone’s grandma — even though I’m surely not. It’s about how the world has changed since we’ve gone from an alphabet that had one W to addresses that have three — www. It’s also about how, though the world has changed, people have stayed mostly the same.

So I’m thinking about the question and I wonder if you’ll think with me.

Be it my dad (born in 1907) or your grandma, or any hero you know from the era of the Single W . . .

What on the Internet would get your hero’s Single W Seal of Approval?

I’ll go first. You can find my answer in the comment box.

Liz's Signature

Work with Liz!!

Making Up the Answers

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Genius-ry

I've been thinking . . .

about the answers.

When I was a first grade teacher, I thought I’m not going to pretend. Kids have to know that grown-ups don’t have all of the answers.

So, lots of times I said, “I don’t know.”

Then sometimes I said, “But I bet we can figure it out.”

But you know, sometimes the answer didn’t matter, nearly as much as the figuring out did. When that was the case, we would just carefully, thoughtfully, most intelligently make up the answers.

Yep. That’s what we did, and it just worked out.

How many stars does it take to make a sky?

We imagined an answer. Then we tested it to see whether it worked. If it did, we kept it. If it didn’t, we took a new try.

We made up words . . . genius-ry, left-hand leg, beautificent!
Then we drew pictures of them.

We made up a song about sauaage, mashed potatoes, and love.

We sat in a circle on the floor and made up the answers to our problems.

Now I wonder if there are any life answers that are always right for sure.

Maybe all of life is about making it up as I go along.

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I Have an Idea — I Have Lots of Them!

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Any first grade teacher will tell you. . .

some days, some times of the year, what you planned just isn’t working. The kids are one place, and you’re in another one.

Any actor, any writer, any artist who performs for an audience, will tell you the same thing. Parents know it. Managers know it. The folks who care for animals know it too.

Ask any marketer. I bet you’ll hear that customers don’t behave according to plan.

When I used to work in an office, I called certain times of the year “karma-skew,” because they were predictably off. Those were by no means the only ones when it seemed that most folks in the building were, well, . . . a little bit . . . um . . . zany. I only wish. What we really were was bored and cranky.

Since the time that the world began, humans have had our explanations for this phenomena . . . the planets are misaligned. . . . The sun is breaking out in spots.

Any first grade teacher knows it happens before a rainstorm, or when the sky clears, or when there’s going to be a vacation day, or when it’s the first day back, or a special event, or hundred million other everyday catastrophes and celebrations.

Who cares why? It just does. A time comes when we need to change things up.

When it does . . . you set the plan aside, and you say, “I have an idea!”

Actually, I have lots of them. I have ideas about having ideas, about making friends, about being jazzed and productive — all things that are fun!

So let’s put the heavy thinking aside. Here’s a great place to start.

What’dya think? Good idea? Are you ready to come along?

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Same and Different Friends

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I've been thinking . . .

about same and different.

At the beginning of the month, I spent time working with my friend, Peg. We’ve been friends since 1995.

Peg and I are the same and different.

Most people are taken by the differences.

Ask Char, she met Peg the day Char and I had our first meeting. I think she would tell you that it would be hard to imagine two Caucasian women who seemed more compatibly different.

When Peg and I worked in the same building, people often took one of us aside to ask what our friendship was about. They couldn’t find a place where our two minds might actually meet.

Too funny.

From the second we met Peg and I had a universe to sort out. . . . starting with how kids learn to read.

Imagine a company dinner to introduce three new consultants, one of whom was me. It was the kind of dinner Peg hates to attend. It was the kind of dinner that so appealed to my curiosity. I sat in the middle of the long restaurant table with my newest best friend, the consultant I had met the night before. Peg sat near the end with a long-time friend. I asked and answered questions. I told stories. Peg listened, waiting for dinner to be over.

As we were leaving the restaurant, she came up to me to say, “You’re one different lady. I’m free Saturday. I know you’re staying at the hotel. I’d like to take you to lunch. I’ll buy all of the wine it takes for you to tell me how kids learn to read.” (Peg, Director of Operations, wanted to know how the books her warehouse folks shipped and her customer service folks talked about served children.)

I said, “Sure, I’m Liz.” I thought, she reminds me of me.

This month when I saw Peg, I heard her say something she often says, “Why would I want to have friends with people who are the same as me? That would be redundant?”

I answered, “We meet where we agree.” I was thinking of a Venn diagram.
Peg observed, “I find the ways people are different from me. You find the ways they are the same as you.”

Peg and I are always observing and learning from each other. We’re always there when the other needs something. She still buys the wine. I still tell her how kids learn to read.

Peg and I are the same and different. Not a thing about us is redundant, yet you can bet we know the places and spaces where we are the same.

That’s why we are worth so much to each other.

Do you have a same and different friend?

Liz's Signature