Successful Blog

What Juliann Grant Said … About Creating Futures

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A community isn’t built or befriended,
it’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship
that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.

The Faraway Future

We place a goal and set off to our future. But as we travel, questions, roadblocks, and unexpected problems interrupt us. Choices and decisions fork the road, muddle our clear path and diffuse directed our thinking. How do create our futures?

Here’s what Juliann said . . .

. . . somehow I always find the right information from the right person at the right time. Something about being aligned with our purpose, and being a little fearless in our exploration (HT to Richard Reeve) that opens up the right doors. It is very helpful to have a core group of people to trust and get continual feedback on our personal and professional development. What you have laid out is precisely what good leaders must do to build their vision around the future they desire to create.

Juliann Grant from a comment on November 13, 2008

A successful and outstanding blogger said that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

So Tell Me, Are You Feeling Lucky?

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The dictionary says that luck is an outside force Lucky means that we receive good fortune or get hit by adversity.

Around here, we we define it differently.

When we say lucky on this blog, we mean ways we connect … Jannie said:
I feel my gurus thus far are you, Barbara Swafford, Cath Lawson and Vered … I feel awfully lucky.

people who encourage us … Vicky said:
I love Melissa and Life In Perpetual Beta too!
I am so lucky to know both of you personally. You both enrich my life and I believe God sent you both to me. To encourage me to dream big as both of you do and you know I have big plans too!

about making our own dreams … Patricia said:
Sigh. This is my dream, to live near the beach and take long walks on the sand.
So soothing. You must conjure lots of dreams for this community on those beach walks. Lucky for us!

We use lucky to talk about relationships … Writer Dad said:
My son and I wake up before anyone else. Every morning he reminds me how lucky I am.

appreciation and gratitude … Karl said:
I take a second to step back and try to appreciate the spot that I am in. It helps me gain perspective and feel lucky to do whatever it is I’m doing. Even giving a financial literacy talk to a bunch of bored teenagers is enjoyable.

I catch myself doing the same thing.
I’m one very lucky blogger.
Don’t think I don’t know that.

Around here, luck doesn’t happen to us.
We choose it for ourselves — in the people we love and the paths we walk.

Luck is an action, a choice, and a point of view.

So tell me, are you feeling lucky?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Image: sxc.hu
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Find a Moment of Gold

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Put Gold in What You’re Doing Now

Yellow_Lily_by_Liz_Strauss

We’ve all had one — a moment of gold, a moment when the sun shines on us, and we’re something made of success. How we got there was part head, part heart, and a whole lot of determination that knocked down walls as we went.

In a moment of gold, some folks don’t understand what makes that moment so worth celebrating. Ah, to them, what we’ve some seems a small thing, but we know that the distance from point A to point B was not a straight or simple line. Math might always be. Life hardly ever is.

With all of the choices that move us forward, with all of the wishes and plans that our hearts hold, we need to be sure that we savor our accomplishments and celebrate our successes. Those golden moments are what propel us forward to make more spectacular things happen.

Stop a minute. Recall the sunlight. Find a moment of gold from your past.

What can you take from that moment to fuel what you’re doing now?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Social Promotion and a Japanese Maple

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When We’re Fully Expressed . . .

relationships button

The hardest part of any event used to be meeting many new people in a short time. Setting a great first impression in seconds was more than I could get my social skills around. I’d either get too big or too small. I’d never be just right.

Part of my problem was that I put too much value on social promotion. I could never quite meet strangers as simply who I am.

A wise, highly successful friend never seemed to have a problem like mine. So I took to watching him instead. Almost immediately I realized the difference was in the way he looked at himself and what he does.

My friend thinks of what he’s accomplished simply as things he has done and things he does. To him, his work is nothing more than that. As a result, no matter who asks him about it, his answers sounds as if he’s explaining his a day to a curious friend. He doesn’t weigh how what he’s saying might reflect upon another person’s idea of him.

Japanese_maple_by_Liz_Strauss

When we fully accept what we’re good at, we don’t mind talking about what we do. We’re not waiting for others to value it. We don’t get shy standing in the light.

Does that make sense to you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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12 Ways to Use Childhood Wisdom to Start Living Your Life

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Stop Growing Up for a Second

child looking up

Barring catastrophe, it happens that we all become adults. It’s the cycle of life. We find and define our journey. We leave behind our childish habits and ways. That seems the way a life is supposed to unfold.

I wonder whether we ought to reconsider before we put everything from childhood away. Young children seem to do some things far better than adults.

I’ve never met a small child on a search for personal meaning or one who questioned what life is about.

When we leave behind our childish habits, perhaps we should recall of the wisdom that we had back then.

12 Ways to Use the Childhood Wisdom to Start Living Your Life

  1. Live without question. Young children don’t wonder or worry about life’s meaning. Life is. Anxiety is a habit we learn.

  2. Own your life. Kids take for granted who they are. Ask and they’ll tell you their name. They’re on to dreaming about who they’re going to be. It sure seems to save time to do it their way.

  3. Be alive now. Small children see living and breathing as the same thing. They don’t breathe so that they can live some future day. Kids don’t want to miss a minute. How many minutes have you missed while you were working on a future goal?

  4. Have friends. Young children see everyone as a potential friend. Smiles come easily. Imagine how much friendlier the world must be.

  5. Trust today. Kids meet today without worry of what went wrong yesterday. Without thinking, they trust in an abundant and positive universe. I’ve yet to find where a circumstance changed by worrying, but I know plenty changed by belief in a better day.

  6. Have empathy. Young children care about other people, especially when other people are sad. The comfort given by a small child is humanity at its best.

  7. Try. Small children jump in to what they want to do and pull us along by the hand. Trial and error is how we learned to read.

  8. Be determined. Without determination no child would ever learn to walk. It takes a strong and clever grownup to thwart a small child with a goal.

  9. Be silly. Young children make laughter a goal. Ever make faces for the sole purpose of getting someone to laugh?

  10. Give and be fair. Kids know it’s not nice to take more than you give.

  11. Be curious and grow. Small children figure out bits about how the world works every day. Have you learned something lately by watching a bug?

  12. Listen to people who’ve been there. They ask for stories and constantly say, “Why?” Ever heard a kid say, That’s how we’ve always done it. ?

I’m not suggesting that we act immature. I’m suggesting we reclaim our childhood wisdom to be more alive. After all without childhood wisdom, we never would have gotten to be adults.

What childhood wisdom helps you live your life?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life
How to Be Alive and 10 Ways to Celebrate It!
Top 10 Ways to Become a Miserable Blogger
Time for Everything: Letting Go to Find Flow

Business and Life: The Rules of the Road

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Road to Anywhere
I've been thinking . . .

about the rules of the road that make life flow more easily.

I’m not much for rules.

My husband says “Please don’t tell her ‘Don’t touch.’ She’s just like our son — if you do, then she’ll have to.”

But some rules make sense, like those that keep folks safe as we move in traffic. The rules of the road I’ve learned are simple to share, but often hard to remember. I’m thinking I should write some down now. . . . before I forget them again.

Before I set off, it’s good to know my destination or at least what direction I have chosen. I know I’ll constantly be making corrections, be stopping at times to make sure the plan is still a good one.

I need fuel to keep going. . . .

I need to know whether I’m good at mapping the trip, navigating, or making the journey happen. Hardly anyone is good at all of that. That’s why I need a few hearty traveling companions. The joy of sharing the experience, the people we meet, and the stories we make is the return on the investment..

It doesn’t slow me down when I stop to let someone go first. More often than not something good comes of it. I don’t get where I’m going any later.

When I drive extreme, I can’t pay attention to the details on the way there.

When I think I own the road, people act as if they agree, but they don’t. And they don’t see what I want them to see. They see me acting as if I’m important. In other words,

. . . when I think it’s about me, it’s not . . . It’s about them — what they need. Then I think it’s about them causing a problem, it’s not. . . . It’s about me –thinking I’m something special.

I don’t need a car to know the rules of the road — or the value in them. Even crossing the street, I know it’s best to look both ways first and to hold someone’s hand if I can. It makes the trip easier and adds to it.

And the road itself can take me anywhere I want to go.

What do you know about the rules of the road that you’re on? . . .

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