Successful Blog

Fast Food, Fine Restaurants, and Extraordinary Details

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In Every Person and Every Moment

The experience of a fast food restaurant doesn’t take much thinking — stand in line, get your food, and then eat. Sometimes we go through that routine without even noticing how the food tastes.

The experience of a fine restaurant is tuned and timed to whet our appetite. The service, presentation, and atmosphere are choreographed in extraordinary detail so that we savor every bit.

Blue rose in detail

Unfortunately, most life experiences don’t come served up like a visit to a fine restaurant. A sunrise, a gorgeous flower, or a new friend enters our life, and it’s up to us to see the extraordinary.

The world serves up beautiful experiences with incredible people — all through our ordinary moments. What waits in them is deeper, richer, and more valuable than a fast-food glance will ever reveal. Every person and every moment offers a wealth of ways to connect, to belong, to make our lives easier, more meaningful, and more fun.

The extraordinary details of life are the fine food experiences that feed our souls.

Where are the extraordinary details in your life?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!
Image source: sxc.hu, standard restrictions

THAT's Reader Appreciation!!

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Not Everyone Would Do This Much

Ronald Huereca, of The Reader Appreciation Project, was in the audience of WordCamp Dallas. This week he posted a 25-page transcript, called Liz Strauss at WordCamp Dallas Transcript. Imagine the incredible work typing and rewinding the video to get 45 minutes into a transcript. Ronald did it so that folks who don’t hear well could participate in the session.

Wow! That’s Reader Appreciation! If you have a minute, click the logo to go over and leave a comment.

Ronald deserves some appreciation for a job well done! He’s an example of everything we like about the blogosphere!

Thank you, Ronald.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Getting Unstuck: Clear Thoughts During Chaos

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Stop, Look, Listen

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Ever felt like your life is about weaving a fabric and events seem to keep unraveling what you just made? To me, that’s the definition of being overwhelmed. The chaos of too much to do in too little time can get us in a frenzy of reacting, rather than being in control.

What to do first is the decision we’re after. Sometimes we decide. Then we decide again.

Later hindsight tells what the decisions should have been. Why is hindsight better?

At times of chaos, we’re off balance. We get stuck in our heads. Our heads and our experience try to interrupt, but they’re more noise in the middle of too much. When the situation is over, hindsight brings all three together to look at what we did. Decisions are clearer when we calmly bring all of ourselves to them.

Getting Unstuck: Clear Thoughts During Chaos

One way to bring calm to chaos is simply getting out of where we’re stuck. I learned this from No Enemies Within, a book by Dawna Markova. (It’s unfortunately out of print. Still if you can find a copy I highly recommend it.)

  • Put the problem, issue, or overwhelming pile of work out of your mind.
  • Get in touch with where you are on the planet. Think about who you are, the geographic location you’re in, the people in your life.
  • If you can move to a place where you can see things not made by people, such as trees and sky, go there. This step is optional, but it adds immeasurably if you can make it happen.
  • Check in with all of your senses in a deliberate way. Take a few minutes to record mentally what each sense is picking up. Go through them one by one exhausting the possible options to fill in each blank.
    • Right now, I can see _____. (the window I’m looking out, the sky, the lake, the harbor, the empty docks, the lights, the trees, the water moving . . .)
    • At this moment, I feel _____. (my feet on the floor, my jeans on my legs, the softness of my sweater, the hair on my face . . . )
    • I can hear _____ . (the cars on the road below, I can hear the blower on the a/c, I can hear, the noise of the chair as I shift my weight . . . )
    • I can taste or almost taste _____. (the coffee I’m drinking, I can almost taste the lake air . . . )
    • I smell _____. (the flowers on the table, the coffee . . . )

    Be sure to consider and explore each of your senses until you’ve really gotten fully back into yourself.

Getting in touch with who we are, where we are, what we’re physically doing gets us back in balance. Stress lifts. Anxiety is relieved by perspective. Noise becomes information or fades away. We’re no longer stuck in one angular view. Empirical data centers us in the universe and in ourselves. We bring a sense of ourselves to sorting chaos . . . head, heart, and purpose focused together.

How do you still yourself so that you can move forward?

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

Have You Felt the Power of Being Fully Present?

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I've been thinking . . .

about the power of being fully present.

I’ve noticed a power that comes from being present. It’s state of mind. It’s a heartfelt state of fact. If I give myself over to what’s happening, I find myself fully alive and able to enter into the moment.

Problems, difficult conversations, and huge misunderstandings take on smaller proportions when I let them have my full attention. It’s the distractions, the noises I let in, that complicate, that cause friction and pain. When only my mind is listening, I can find myself over analyzing or adding false context to a situation. When it’s just my heart, I can be overly generous or getting confused about what I “should be” feeling. When I’m only part there, I’m only getting part of the available information.

When I’m at the head, heart, and purpose of the moment. I’m complete and connected. I’m not looking for something from another person. I can take in all of the information. The integrity of who I am — like the structure of a building — holds me strong and sturdy. I can give attention. I can give and forgive, and understand.

The power of being fully present is that we have nothing missing.
We don’t need anything when we listen.

Have you felt the power of being fully present?

Liz's Signature

SOBCon08 Announcement — Don't Miss It!

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Go Look

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There’s an annoucement about Open Comment Night at SOBCon08 at the SOBCon Blog today . . . Go look!!
I was in the space, walked it, and talked to the people about every detail myself. I’ve even set up something very Open Comments Night Special.

Relationships are everyone’s business
and
everyone’s business is relationships.

I said that over a year ago. Can’t wait to see you all in Chicago.
That will always be true.
Business is best when we learn it together.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!! SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Expert Models, An Actionable Plan, and the Support of a Mastermind Team! Register now!

What Makes a Healthy Investment?

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Understanding Return on Investment

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The hardest part of building a business is the signal to noise ratio. Every second someone offers something to tilt our sails in another direction. What keeps successful business folks unwavering and always on course?

Serious businesses are future oriented. They chose how they will grow and plan a way there. That growth is viewed through a lens of return on investment. The return keeps the path moving forward.

A healthy investment is built on three major parts:

  • a flexible, realistic vision for growth
  • an actionable plan based on tested models that mitigate unnecessary risk
  • a support system, including advisors, to keep the vision and investment on an upward track

It’s easy to throw time and money to the wind, hoping they will grow.
A healthy investment builds in strategic controls that generate a more likely and higher return.

What sort of investment have made in how you want to grow?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!! SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Expert Models, An Actionable Plan, and the Support of a Mastermind Team! Register now!