Successful Blog

Do You “Get” How Important Your World View Is?

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What You See Is What You Are

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Once I thought other people had a better view of the world than I ever could …

I suppose that’s reasonable the people around me were worldly, experienced, and smart. I great parents, great teachers, and outstanding friends. When it came to some of my bosses and boyfriends, perhaps I thought ideas through before I bought in.

It was as if he were a prince with insight beyond my own and for a moment I believed in his view of the world.

He always thought that only mountains could be beautiful. I heard him proclaim it. Yes, proclaim is exactly what he did when he spoke of them. He found his own thoughts worthy of public decree. He’d announce that flat lands had their use, but then ask what possible beauty could a man proud as he ever find in a place with flat air?

No matter the metaphor I couldn’t convey the lovely feeling and the wide open space of the grassland without trees only blue skies above it. The green is so green and blue so blue, that the clouds must show off for fear of being thought to be boring.

A sky like this, with no mountain in view, would mean nothing to him.

So today as I look out over the lake as wide as the world, I watch the cloud ballet and think of the adventures, of the characters we might have invented had we been here when we were kids.

I watch the changes, breathing in every minute. I drink in gratitude for a world that is made like this. I’m particularly glad I had the good sense to quit dating that proclaiming brat before I left college. I can’t imagine what a different person I would have become if I’d adopted a world view like his.

No one guy’s view is better, further, or more beautiful than my own.

Do you “get” how important your world view is?
The way you define your world reflects how you define yourself.
In business and in life, what you see is what you get and we slowly become what we look at most.
Surround yourself with colleagues, friends, family — worldmates — who share your view. Fill your life, your heart, and your mind with images and ideas that define what you love and admire.

Don’t take my point of view … “get” your own.

The succcess of your business and your life depend on it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Living Life: The Problem Isn’t Not Knowing What You Want to Do …

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(Updated in 2020)

Photo by MI PHAM on Unsplash

Do You Have It Backwards?

Every day we wake up to the time of our lives.

When life is going well, it’s easy to take the day with a flying start. But that second that the ground starts to freeze over. The bed starts to seem warmer and our feet can get a little cold. That’s when we need to be invested. We need a meaningful reason to get up and make progress.

It takes a strategy to live a life that isn’t just passing time.

  • Don’t try to rule the climate, but use the opportunities it holds. Enjoy when the sun is warm. Fill your sails when the wind is going your way.
  • Study the terrain to choose the most efficient, least dangerous roads. Highways weren’t made for bikes. Cars don’t belong on train tracks.
  • Enlist help and advice from those who have gone before us. Ask the people who’ve been where you’re going.
  • Employ systems that keep things going without reinventing what works. Maintain what supports you.
  • Have a mission to reach a vision on the horizon. Decide where you’re going before you go.

The last one is critical to a life strategy.

We live as if at the end of our life, we’ll know …

    • who we are.
    • what we’ll do.
    where we will end up.

Somehow we have it backwards. We’re supposed to decide those things first. Then we can start down our path.

What’s Most Critical to Living Life?

Strategy is a realistic plan to advance by leveraging opportunity over time. In order to advance you have to know who you are where you’re advancing to.
Like any business, a life with a strategy has a better chance to succeed.

What Other People Don’t Know

If you ask opinions about what you should do, other people will have plenty of them. Don’t wait for other people to tell you. They don’t have to live your life. They won’t lose if you waste time chasing down a future that isn’t yours, and they won’t mind if you give up your life living it for them. Even the most well-meaning people run the risk of giving you advice better suited to them than to you.

Who knows more about you than you? Who ever will? You know what you think, dream, desire, and need. You know what you fear. You know what it would take to move you from here to there. Listen to that inner guidance system that tells you when you’re doing well, you’re learning, you’re doing something well. The one person who has a vested interest in how your life turns out is you.

Vision and mission are critical to living life. They are identity, intention, and direction. Without them, how will you wisely invest your time? It’s a shame to waste a whole life.

How do you know? How do you decide?

Rarely is the problem not knowing where we want to be. It’s admitting that we’ll have to make a commitment to get there.

Decide and Commit

Decide. It matters less what you decide than that YOU decide and that you make a commitment to that decision. Listen to the truth you know about yourself, decide what the purpose of your life will be, and know why that’s meaningful to you. Pick a vision the future that would be the best use of what’s been given you — your talents, your skills, your personality. What should you be doing more of to use them well? What life that would use your skills, the problems you can solve, and the value you have always brought to the world? Decide on a future – a vision — and make it your quest — your mission — to get there. In other words, choose to be your best self and make a commitment to that.

You can always decide to adjust your decision.

Vision is who we’ll be and where we want to go. Vision is the context that gives each life decision intention, direction, and identity. Mission is the compelling reason that will get us there. Mission makes every minute and every decision worth getting up and investing in. Vision and mission turn living into a meaningful cause worth a life’s campaign.

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere you never intended to be.
If you don’t know why you’re going, you’ll give up when the smallest obstacle appears.
Set your intention on a vision that describes your best identity — down to your DNA.
Put your head, heart, and feet into your mission. Make it a quest. Nothing will stop you.

Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

Every day, every hour, every minute will keep passing whether you know where you’re going or not. Wouldn’t you rather own the hourglass than sit on the sand as it drops through? You have to live your life. Shouldn’t you be the one who decides what it will be about?

Have you got a strategy to live a life a that isn’t just passing time?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

I was researching in my archives when I came across this post. I thought I’d update it. But it was hours later and I’d almost rewritten it totally. So on that note. I offer you this new, old post — published once, in another form, January 30, 2010.

Make Your Own Opportunities

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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The only way to know for certain that you won’t win the Publisher’s Clearinghouse is to
not enter the sweepstakes.

The same principle applies to just about every opportunity out there. The successful
entrepreneurs, A-list bloggers, and business leaders all made it because of two things:
?rst, they had radar for opportunities, and second, they seized them.

Think about it. What might have passed you by in the last week or so because you
thought it was too dif?cult, you didn’t have time, you didn’t have the skills, or you just
plain thought “I’ll never make it.” Instead, you should be opportunistic in a good way.

Here are some tips:

  • Recognize your little voice – when it starts telling you why you can’t grasp that chance, don’t listen. Tell it to take a break while you submit that guest post inquiry.
  • Train yourself to see opportunities – you need ?nely tuned opportunity radar. Notice the call for speaker submissions and recognize it as a chance for you to shine.
  • Remember that if you don’t ask, you don’t get – the only reason I am blogging here right now is because I summoned up the guts to ask. Take a deep breath and do it.
  • Don’t get discouraged – the other differentiator for successful people is that they use every rejection as a springboard to the next opportunity. They move on quickly to the next one until they are successful.
  • Always have “lines in the ocean” – you can add so much excitement to your life if you have several things out there, waiting for a response. Will you get accepted to that course? Will your panel proposal be accepted for the conference? Will your photograph win the contest? How much fun to go through life waiting for exciting news!

How about an assignment this week? Go right now and ?nd an opportunity, then just go for it without fear. Tell them Rosemary and Liz sent you.
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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Empower Yourself!

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by LaRae Quy

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It’s an Inside Job

Someone needs to tell the political candidates that personal empowerment is not about power over others. Rather, it is understanding that you are in charge of your own life.

People who are personally empowered know that happiness is an inside job. They don’t wait for someone else to make them happy and they can take care of their own needs for affection.

You Are Responsible For Your Own Actions

In other words, there is no finger pointing and blaming others for your lack of performance. You are willing to take responsibility for your actions. OK, so now it’s very obvious that most political candidates have no personal empowerment—they are just power hungry.

I make this distinction between power and personal empowerment because they are two very different things and people often assume that to be empowered is to be powerful.

Wrong.

Empowerment is a process where you do something, reflect on your actions, assess whether you made the right choice—and why—and continue on. This progression is a very important piece of the puzzle because personal empowerment acknowledges complete responsibility for self and the choices that are made. It is strong enough to look at itself and say, “Badly done, Emma. Badly done,” and then move on, taking with it lessons learned from the experience.

Personal empowerment is not for wimps. It takes a strong character to look at oneself with honesty and decide what to keep and what to throw out.

Where To Begin?

Life unfolds in phases. As we look back over time, we can see when we felt empowered and when we did not. Each time period has it’s own characteristics.

We all spent time as students when our lives revolved around classes, teachers, and other students. The academic calendar was central to all of our planning. Life as a student is a unique time.

Similarly, we are always in different phases of life as we mature and circumstances change. Life is a series of interconnecting phases. So when we stop to take that honest look at ourselves, we will be empowered only to the degree to which we understand what phase of life we’re in.

Our life is bigger than a single moment. The things that we cherish, the goals that motivate us, and the issues we wrestle with are connected to the period in which we currently find ourselves.

We feel lack of personal empowerment when we are unable to make choices that are always in our own best interest. Indeed, it is impossible to feel empowered if we cannot identify the issues that hold us back. We feel out of control when we try to live up to the expectations of others. We give power over our life to others when we allow them to define success or achievement.

But when we let others generate ideas and solutions for our issues, we are no longer taking the lead.

We become the ultimate follower when we are no longer the leader of our own life.

Dig Deeper Into the Now

As an FBI counterintelligence agent, the first phase of a recruitment operation was to identify the target. This meant collecting as much information as possible about the target’s past and current situation, as well as aspirations for the future. Every investigation starts with understanding the nature and character of the NOW phase.

Here is a list of typical questions used in FBI recruitment operations to help agents get clarity about the issues and specific needs of the person we’re investigating. These same questions may also help you define the phase of life you are now living in. It is impossible to attain personal empowerment without understanding the nature and character of your current phase of life:

  1. When did this current phase begin? Identify the boundary that separates this phase from previous phases. The boundary may be a transition (a new job, relationship, or a new city), an event (marriage, divorce, death, children), a discovery, or a decision (a different career or going back to school).
  2. Who are the key people in your life during this period? What role does each play? Which relationships are satisfying? Disappointing? Why?
  3. What events characterize this phase? They may be personal or professional events.
  4. What are the major opportunities and responsibilities that characterize this phase? How do you spend your time? What interests you most? Least? What is most creative about your life during this phase? Most demanding?
  5. What characterizes your inner state during this phase? How would you describe your spirituality? Reflections? Feelings? Do you journal?
  6. What is your physical state during this phase? Are you healthy? What are your health challenges?

To attain personal empowerment, it’s important to understand the key issues in your life and decisions you are being asked to make during this phase.

What kinds of thoughts, impressions, experiences, etc. came to you during this exercise? What are some key insights in this phase of your life? How do these empower you?

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Author’s Bio:

Larae Quy

LaRae Quy was an FBI agent, both a counterintelligence and undercover agent, for 25 years. She exposed foreign spies and recruited them to work for the U.S. Government. Now she explores the unknown and discovers the hidden truth via her blog Your Best Adventure. You can find her on Twitter as @LaRaeQuy

Thanks, Larae!

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Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Choosing and Deciding: How Do You Sort a Path to Opportunity?

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Knowing the Right Path

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It’s the end of what’s been not the best year. The economy is still uncertain. History tells us that it’s times like these that great leaders and great business are born. Inside and outside of traditional business, people are finding their path to opportunity, showing up with their skills, and claiming their reward.

Survey the landscape and three groups stand out.

  • People who are following a path to opportunity set out by someone else.
  • People who are forging their own path to opportunity.
  • People who can’t seem to find a path to be on.

Which group describes what you’re doing?
What are the first two groups doing that the third group is not?

Choosing and Deciding: The Key to Sorting a Path to Opportunity

Every change, every cycle, every downturn and upturn in the economy offers opportunity. The question is how do you find the best opportunity for you, your business, and your team? No matter the economy, we see old and new companies succeeding — How did SAS in Cary, NC get to be #1 on CNN’s 100 Best Companies list? How does Zappos keep growing their happiness business? … and individuals who are doing the same thing. — How did Susan Gregg turn her closet into a $50 Million business? How did Michael Mothner turn a tough interview question into a $12-13 Million business?

How did those folks find success how did they figure out where they’re going and stay true to that?

Obviously every business and individual who’s enjoying success has sorted and found their unique path to opportunity.
Key to that success — leveraging opportunity — is understanding the difference between choosing and a deciding and know when do each. What kind of choosing and deciding sorts the world of possibilities so that we can get on to that same sort of success?

When the Possibilities Are Endless You Need to Choose

Naturally the first step is defining and describing our unique version of success. If the possibilities seem endless, then you need to start with choosing.

Choosing allows us to try alternatives. The origins of the word choose are in French and German words that literally mean to taste or to test. A choice is what happens when we survey a box of chocolates knowing that whichever we take now, we’ll return later to take another one. The choice is a selection that resembles a bungie cord – make a choice, enjoy it, and bounce back to make another version of that choice again. We can choose more than one, even if we’re choosing one at a time.

If you’re choosing, do this.

  • Start broad.
  • Look to your past successes. What common threads do you find in all of them?
  • Identify 5 -7 categories, skills, problems you’ve been solving, or topics to focus your quest.
  • Take time to experiment. Mix and match a few ideas that have worked for you in the past.
  • Try out the possibilities to see what fits.
  • Talk to people who know you about the results.
  • Use each test to narrow your options.

As you keep trying on the options, you’ll begin to see what fits your values and your skills (or that of your team/business). Use the choosing to focus in on a clear vision of where you want to go or what you want to do. Brainstorming, ideation, conceiving new products and new initiatives all start with choosing from the wealth of possibilities available to you.

When It’s Time to Move Forward, Decide

Open options work great when we’re testing and trying, but when it comes time to be building and buying too many options paralyze. Moving forward requires commitment to one option, one direction or it will be too easy to get pulled aside.

Deciding allows us to determine a path. Decide literally means to kill off all other options. Deciding is what happens when we face the junction of many roads, knowing that whichever we take we’re moving on a path that means undoing to go back to that juncture again. We can commit to only one decision, but that commitment determines our direction, sets our destination, and fuels our ability to stay on course.

If you’re deciding, do this. Ask and answer 3 questions.

  1. Can you see the destination? Every time you succeeded you could see the finish when you started — the college degree, the thriving business, the trip across country. Define and describe where you are going or you will never get there.
  2. Is your head in it? Have you the skills, the DNA, and the ability to learn what you need to know to do this? The perfect opportunity is at the crossroads of your skills and the challenges that you enjoy most. Boredom comes when things are too easy. Anxiety sets in when things are too hard. Failure is certain when we choose challenges we weren’t built to meet. I’m 6 ft tall, so despite my grace and my 14 years of dance training, I’m never going to be a ballerina. But in my own way, I’ve become an information choreographer.
  3. Is your heart in it? Will you love the going there enough to keep it fun even when it’s not? Your heart has to be the keeper of the vision, the holder of the commitment that you make to yourself and the decision. We call that integrity. Can you trust your heart to be bigger than the fear that is sure to show up?

Knowing when to choose and when to decide is critical to sorting a clear path to your true north. Choose to sort out your best options then decide on which path will be your own.

Do you use choosing and deciding to your best advantage?

Knowing where you’re going is irresistibly attractive.
Who would follow you if you don’t?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Whose Values, Rules and Ideas Are Running Your Life and Your Business?

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Other People’s Values, Rules, and Ideas

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We all grow up to be leaders on someone else’s path.
That’s not a bad thing, but it’s a reality that builds our world view.
We need to learn how the world works … how to stay alive, how to access food, how to win respect, influence, and trust. The first values, rules, and ideas we learn teach us that. They set a foundation for building character, setting boundaries, and making decisions for ourselves.

Our First Values, Rules, and Ideas Come From Our Family

Most of us are born into a top-down organization called a family. Our parents (or older, bigger significant others) teach us about good and bad behavior. At the same time we literally find our hands and our feet. Before we learn to talk, we know some things work and others don’t. We’ve already figured out whether a smile or a crying fit gets us what we want. If we didn’t know that, we’d have died of hunger. As we find our way to standing in the world, values, rules, and ideas help us find the place for our feet.

Family values, rules, and ideas start simple. They come from our caregivers. They sound like “Love your brothers, Don’t take what’s not yours. Don’t hurt other people. Don’t yell indoors. Be nice. Do well by doing good. Think.”

We learn to navigate when those values, rules, and ideas conflict.

When my older, older brother was three, he tried to put his hand in the sugar bowl. My mom reached out to slap his hand.
My dad said, “Wait!” Then he turned to my toddler brother and said, “You won’t do that again, will you?”
My older, older brother agreed. But the very next day, he tried the sugar bowl again and my mother slapped his hand.
He said, “I’m going to tell Daddy you did that!!”
My mother slapped his hand a second time and said, “Now you can tell your Daddy I did it twice.”

We learn early to sort whose values, rules, and ideas are more powerful.
It’s a self-preservation skill.

The Next Values, Rules, and Ideas Come From School

At school, we learn to be a leader on someone else’s path. We learn values, rules, and ideas that engage us in a manageable way. Some kinds of creativity and leadership are rewarded because they help the school run better, faster, easier. They give the school more meaning. They make it more fun. Other forms of leadership and creativity are brought back onto the path, because they make things harder to manage. Some behaviors don’t fit.

Conflicting values, rules, and ideas come from the same source.
Some sorts of curiosity are good. Some sorts are disruptive.
Asking why is eager participation in some situations and defiance in others.
Some sorts of helping others are applauded. Other helping is called cheating.

It’s good to ask what would happen if you don’t brush your teeth.
It’s not so good to ask what would happen if you don’t go to “time out” when the teacher sends you there.

Add the exponential complication of the values, rules, and ideas of our peer group.
The simple values, rules, and ideas require interpretation as we get older.
We learn that some rules interpret our actions by what that action “most often means.”

We graduate and fit ourselves into yet another set of values, rules, and ideas.
The more people we meet, the more complicated the values, rules, and ideas become.

Why We Trust Other People’s Rules

The tricky thing is the way our brains build abstract thought. We construct our understanding of values, rules, and ideas through experience. We construct our world view, our basis for making decisions, the same way we construct the idea of blue — it all starts with someone else’s idea of what blue is. We learned our idea of blue by trial and error.


What color is this?
Blue.
No, honey, it’s red.
What color is this?
Blue.
No, dollface, it’s green.

We learned blue by learning what’s not blue at the same time.

We learn what to do by learning what not to do — by doing things wrong — by finding out that our inclinations and instincts have lead us astray.

We learn to trust other people’s values, rules, and ideas more than our instincts.
That’s a problem.

Most of us don’t realize where doing that.
That’s an even bigger problem.
In fact, it’s dangerous — so dangerous, it can cost us our life.

Whose Ideas, Rules and Values Are Running Your Life and Your Business?

How many of your decisions come from habits set years ago and never challenged. If you’ve been feeling like you’re not on the right path, I’m betting it’s because you’re working under some old rules — rules that don’t fit, rules you don’t need.

What are the values, rules, and ideas that run your life and your business? Who inspired them and are you ready to decide which are your own?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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