I’m off today to BlogWorldExpo. It’s well worth the trip to meet up with folks I’ve known almost since my first blog post.
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Internet people have changed my life. How have they changed yours?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
When I was younger, it worked like this . . .
Someone would pose an idea or concept that was foreign to my thinking or my experience. I would have to be convinced.
I would mentally sit back and make the other person prove the validity of what he or she had to say. While I listened, I would analyze and evaluate. It was all clever thinking, helping by shooting holes in an argument.
These days, I go for this . . .
Someone poses an idea or concept that is foreign to my thinking or my experience. I ask him or her to persuade me.
Mentally I move back and forth both trying on and looking at the new idea. Even when I’m not qualified with experience or context, I can evaluate the strength of solid thinking well enough to know who is.
Which method do you use? Are you convinced or persuaded?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
When my dear friend, Keith Dsouza offered to write a guest post profiling a couple of young bloggers, I’m sure he didn’t know what he was about to get himself involved in. Within seconds I started having ideas, and Keith didn’t run fast enough. We were in a discussion about the 108-year-old blogger who just had a birthday, and about how bloggers come in every age from children up to 108 as far as we know.
Introducing Keith Dsouza, who will be writing for Successful Blog.
Do you have an age syndrome with blogging? Do you always think something like I am 32 or I am 58 and I can’t start blogging? Well welcome to a world that is ageless and has no restrictions on what you say. Welcome to blogging.
It’s an ageless project.
Most professions have age restrictions, blogging does not.
If you are 90 years old, you can blog about how your great grandchild plays with you with his toys and how you enjoy it.
If you are a 13 year old, you can tell the world how well you fared at your first baseball game.
If you are a mom or dad, you can write about your child’s growth and after few years, let him read it. You can look back at those cheerful memories again 10 years further down the line.
Age is never a factor for telling people what you love. A blog can get you there.
Blogging can make you friends with someone who you would never have approached in real life. I am 25 but I still have a great friend in Liz who old enough to be my mom. Blogging brought us together breaking the barrier of age, without blogging I wouldn’t have approached a woman of her age to be my friend.
Have you seen the ageless project? We’ll be using it to explore what bloggers of every age are doing. See the gnerations of people there. Then why not add your blog? You can do that by clicking the logo below.
Blogging has no restrictions and with the help of the ageless project, we will find and profile bloggers from a 13 year old to a 93 year old. Blogging is an ageless project. What we’ll be doing here is ageless too — the focus will be on how age isn’t a barrier in sharing your thoughts with the world.
Great thoughts come from every age and all over the planet.
–ME “Liz” Strauss and Keith Dsouza
Work with Liz!!
A week or so ago, I was talking to a brilliant man, David Bullock. I’ve worked with Dave and know him as a friend. He’s a positive force who makes things happen and shines a light on people while he does — which, of course, makes him an attractive person in so many ways. Dave is a brilliant guy — the sort I like to share with my friends.
In fact, that’s what we were talking about . . . I was inviting David to speak at SOBCon08 in the Spring. During that call, Dave made the most profound observation. He said something like this
I woke up this morning, and I realized that people — even the high and mighty — only do two things . . . talk and move. I looked in the mirror and said, “I can do that!”
Boy, did I like that thought!
Boyhowdy, did I like the smile in his voice when I heard that!
He got me smiling and standing taller too. I still am.
So as I head off to BlogWorld Expo, I’m going to talk and move . . . and I’m going to watch what other talkers and movers say and do.
Go ahead talk and move yourself. You already know how.
We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
The interview that RelationSheep Lisa Gates did with Phil Gerbyshak in celebration of Successful Blog’s 2nd Birthday was such a hit that when I realized I would be gone November 6th, they were the natural choice to host Open Comments that night. I asked them before a thought even breezed through my mind. That’s right.
Then we started discussing topics . . . oh my! It’s going to be a free for all. Kids in the backyard. You know Phil’s imagination and Lisa’s sense of humor . . . add in some of the usual Tuesday night group and you can imagine what they’ll come up with.
You know that they’re going to encourage
I’m really sorry, I’m going to miss it. Then, you never know, I just might find a chance to check in.
So start saving your links, or better yet, why not write a post that you can bring a link to?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?
My intent this week was to talk about thinking and finding new thinkers. I asked myself what do thinkers do when they think? Sure, they assimilate a lot of new information from around them and they come up with new ideas. But how do they do that?
I believe a lot starts with a keen sense of possibility. They ask themselves what if? and why not? and in the process a new thought is born. That idea emerges from imagining, not the impossible, but the possible. Watch a child play with Lego blocks and see how things are built as they see it. No-one told them it was impossible so they did it.
To dream is to imagine our own possibilities
So what is dream but an imagination of our future sparked by our sense of possibility. Yet so often, we are stereotyped by those around us, telling us it is foolish to dream and to survive in the real world it is all about execution. But without the dream, there is no vision and without vision, how will your execution get you there?
Dreaming other people’s dreams
Liz asks Why is it so hard for us to believe?We can believe that the other guy will win, but not us. He will be the President, the rock star, the artist. She will be the CEO, the actor, the international lawyer. But it never crosses our mind to aspire to that path.
Are you afraid to dream?
Joel says…what if we started to dream our own dreams? You and I might change beyond all recognition.
Empowered by our imagination
Jennifer asks us if we have a dream within and reminds us that Everything that was ever created by humans was first imagined. What can we imagine?
Keeping the strength to dream
Terry was inspired by a line from an Elvis song. But as long as a man has the strength to dream, he can redeem his soul and fly
Need I say more?
Dream on.
May the dots be with you!
