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.

A Smile Is a Powerful Tool

If only positive things happened, we have no worries about what other people were thinking, what could go wrong, or what the future might be bringing. We’d also never learn about strength of purpose or facing down adversity. No one has courage every minute, but when we need courage, a smile can be a powerful tool.

Here’s what Glenda said . . .

“What do you do when people are looking at you?” Being in a wheelchair with an obvious physical disability, people look or stare most times I head out my front door. Generally, I take deep breath, hold my head up, slap on a smile and carry on! Most times it works. . . .
Glenda Watson Hyatt from a comment on April 22, 2008

I so believe in the power of positive thinking. Sometimes it does take some effort, like slapping on a smile when I don’t really feel like it. But, when I am truly in the zone of positive thinking and being grateful, amazing things happen!

Glenda Watson Hyatt from a comment on April 20, 2008

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

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Here’s how it works.

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.
The rules are simple — be nice.

There are always first timers and new things to talk about. It’s sort of half “Cheers” part “Friends” and part video game. You don’t know how much fun it is until you try it.

Let Me Call You, TweetHeart

Twitter. Everyone is tweeting — well, almost everyone. Now we have our twitter accessorires. Over 200 applications have been added to the Twitterfield.

• How do you use Twitter?
• Which apps are your favorites?
• What’dya wish for?
• What happens if Twitter starts charging?

And, whatever else comes up, including THE EVER POPULAR, Basil the code-writing donkey . . . and flamenco dancing (because we always get off topic, anyway.)

Oh, and bring example links to share —

–ME “Liz” Strauss
image: AODdesign
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When it comes to raising barns and building bridges can be a major drain. We have to fit our dream inside, beside, and often outside of the work we do to pay our bills. Just when we find the time to put forward on our sweetest idea, we also find that our minds and our creativity have been overspent.

In Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi outlined The 10 Dimensions of Creative Complexity, which I call the Ten Paradoxes of Creativity. Each paradox describes the ability to use a repertoire of thought and actions between two extremes — where most people show a distinct preference highly creative people prefer “both and.”

The first paradox that Dr. C reported is that:

Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, but they also are often quiet and at rest. p.58

What he offered three facts and observations about energy that seem most worth exploring.

• Their high energy due more to their focused minds than their genes.
• They often take rests and sleep a lot.
• Their energy is under their personal control.

Creative individuals learn to manage their energy by trial and error. This highly productive, focus / rest process is something they develop as a strategy to reach their goals.

How to Focus Your Creative Energy to Build that Dream

Managing focus and rest is a high performance skill. Our genes don’t have to align in a certain for us to master it. We start by raising our awareness, seeing the times when our creative energy naturally runs high and when we’re drawn to “a little down time.” Imagine how much more productive we’d be if we got in sync with our personal creative energy?

Here’s some things we might do . . .

• Pay attention to the ebb and the flow.
  Granted we don’t have perfect control over our schedules. Still, we often fit ourselves to the work rather than find our most productive times for the kind of work we’re doing.

  Are you more creative at night or in the early hours? It’s worth it to get up early to take advantage of what you’ll accomplish if you do.

  Watch what you do every day and especially on the weekends. When do you naturally rest and when do you naturally play?

  Are you checking email when your best ideas could be coming? Save the boring stuff for when your creative energy is lower.

  Do you do better if you put your meetings and phone calls in the morning or the afternoon?

  Play with the order of what you do until you find you’re breezing through the tasks that wear you out the most.

• When energy gets low, stop for fuel.
  When you feel your energy draining, take a break, power nap, or walk around. Plodding on only moves forward more slowly with less efficiency.
  How often do you stop for refueling? A few minutes refueling makes the time that follows more productive.

  What sorts of activities recharge your brain? A well chosen activity can supercharge our brains, our creativity, and our resolve. We recover the time away in higher performance when we return.

  If you’ve working on the computer with words or spreadsheets, you might do something colorful that requires not words or numbers.

  If you’ve been doing design work, you might stop to do a crossword or read a magazine article. Using the other side of our brain can be the best way to refuel.

• Leave your work at an inviting unfinished place. At the end of a work session, we often hurry or push through to finish up something. Try this instead. Choose a point in the work where a part of the project will be “almost finished, but not quite.” When you return, you’ll finish it quickly and move forward with the extra charge of that accomplishment.
• Plan to be creative.
  When a project inspires you, plan large blocks of uninterrupted time to devote as much energy as you want. Keep your creativity climbing faster by making sure you don’t have to stop just when the going is good.

  Eat well and sleep well before you start.

  Set up the atmosphere with minimal distractions.

  Make creative work an occasion worth planning.

• Hang with high energy folks..
  Spend time with people who energize you. Schedule your “catch up” phone conversations with upbeat friends during hours when you’re mind is lagging.
  Ask them about their creative projects. Creativity is contagious. Take advantage of that.

Highly productive creative people focus like a laser beam when they’re working and they take energy from being fully engaged. (See Flow, also by Dr. C.) As soon as they’re not, they rest. That’s how they harness their creativity to produce their dreams.

We can do it too.

When does your energy rise and fall? What strategies can you offer to help us channel our creative energy?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Work with Liz!!

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JOIN US TONIGHT AT 7PM

Let Me Call You Tweetheart

Over 200 Twitter Apps!!

Oh, and bring example links.

The rules are simple — be nice.

Do be nice.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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The folks on the Motrin team are suffering from a sefl-induced headache today. It was caused by being focused on the wrong things in their “WE FEEL YOUR PAIN” AD CAMPAIGN.

Now they’re at a crossroads where the social media sphere is watching for how they’ll respond. Will they apologize, explain, and move on? Will they love their ideas or love learning about their customers? Were I the healthcare practioner on this case, I’d suggest that they take two …

1. Step away from the the clever ideas — build relationships not campaigns. Send out an actual human being to talk with your customers. They’re your heroes.
2. Trust that human being, trust your customers, and give people every reason to trust you. Trust is the currency of lasting relationships.

Don’t wait until morning.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Motrinmoms: The Spectacular Opportunity to Rise from a Colossal Mistake

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Anyone in social media can tell you the power of networking for individuals and businesses. Social networks can fuel personal growth and business development.

From Linkedin and Facebook to Twitter and Ning, the quality social networks that we build can guide us, protect us, and help us stay our course … if we let them know how.

We have the networks already or already started. Now we need to engage in open, equal, and active relationships that move us all toward success.

5 Doorways to the Power of Social Networks

One bane of small and solo business is the isolation that can be part of our business life. We can hire lawyers and accountants, trainers and guides, marketers and sales folks … well, maybe not all at one time. Even if we can outsource in every direction, we need to know that what folks are suggesting is right.

We’re building communities and networks that have the experience and expertise we need. The key is to get our networks working with us. Here are 5 ways to do just that.

• Listen for doorways being opened.
  Rather than trying to pry new doors open, find the doors that people are holding open for you. Social media folks and great networkers are always opening doors. We ask what they need or what they they’re working on. Sometimes it’s a simple, “How’s business?” Sometimes it’s a more direct, “What can I do for you?” Once I started listening for open doors, I realized folks were opening doors for me every day.
• Value compliments.
  Compliments are a way that people reach out in good faith. Accepting a compliment elevates you and your relationship with the person who gave it. You show that you value the giver and the information. Compliments open doorways to find out what people perceive as your strengths. Think about them dispassionately. Be sure you know what a compliment means. Follow up later to ask if you don’t.
• Talk about what you’re doing.
  Listen first, but let people know your quest. Open a doorway to let people know what you’re doing, especially what you’re trying for the first time. This week I’ve told everyone about my goal for 2009 — to find ways to get people working again. I’m glad and grateful that Gail jumped in with both feet to help. I might never have know that she had something similar on her mind.
• Ask for help.
  Be a learner not a hunter. Open multiple doorways for people to let people see you learn. Most people rise to an occasion to help. Invite your network to be teachers, removed from the role of potential clients. When we start with “Would you help? My ideal client would look a lot like you, would you have five minutes to offer me advice?”
• Turn interest into a way to invest.
  When someone likes your work, offer a doorway to a partnership. Sit on the same side of the table and enlist that client or friend in your quest. Too often we see ourselves as “less.” Yet, that person has something to teach us and we have something to offer in return. Ask about his or her goals and find how they align with yours. Use what you learn to follow Steve Farber’s advice. “Do what you love in service to the people who love what you do.”

Doorways connect.

We’ve invested in the network of people we call friends and colleagues — the people we respect and are happy to help. Why wouldn’t we offer them doorways to do the same?

How do you open doorways to enlist the power of your network? How else might we engage them in open, equal, and active relationships so that our barns and bridges are well built and successful?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you think Liz can help you find focus or direction, check out the Work with Liz!!

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Tonight, a corporation made a colossal mistake. Motrin put up this ad.

The ad was meant to tell Moms with new babies that Motrin understood their pain. Except, in the process of building their campaign and that ad, they forgot to get in touch with new Moms and their pain.

I’m hoping this won’t scare off other corporations looking to enter the social media sphere. What happened here was problem with a team that didn’t do it’s job on two fronts.

Motrin didn’t do what they claimed. They also didn’t know the media in which they placed the ad. Savvy companies don’t have to make the same mistakes.

What Motrin Didn’t “Get” about New Moms

Some folks are saying that Motrin needs to understand social media. I’m with that. They blew it big. But social media only speaks to the size, speed, and volume of the response to their collosal mistake.

A company that claims WE FEEL YOUR PAIN. Better know what they’re talking about long before they get to the social web.

WE FEEL YOUR PAIN?
Motrin made it obvious that they don’t.

If you felt the pain of new mothers, then you’d realize that it’s off to use high heels and carrying a feverish child in the same sentence as examples of feeling underappreciated.

If you felt the pain of new mothers, then you’d see that the “fashion” of baby slings is a luxury very few new mothers think about. New mothers — with and without baby slings — are worried about things other than that.

If you felt the pain of new mothers, then you’d understand that it’s not the ache in their back or in their head that makes them cry or say “what about me?”

The pain of new mothers is people who make light of their feelings. It’s the hope that they’ll measure up and the worry that they won’t. It the folks who offer advice as if they know more than the new mom about what’s best for her child. It’s the people who say “Here, take a couple of headache pills and you’ll feel better after that.” It’s people who claim they feel her pain and don’t bother to find out what her pain is really like.

That’s the part that Motrin didn’t get about new moms.

What Motrin Didn’t “Get” About Social Media

The fundamental problem with the ad is that the “unique pain of baby sling” isn’t one of fashion or feeling underappreciated. The fundamental pain of a baby sling isn’t much more than “ouch, my back,” and then, only when the sling doesn’t fit.

That’s the kind of pain Motrin can fix. That story isn’t as glitzy or clever, but it is authentic.

Do you like the woman in the ad?

Was she joking? Do new moms say stuff like that? Maybe they do or say something similar — with their friends — not with strangers. Friends can say things because they already know that I love my kid no matter how I joke. Strangers can’t because they don’t.

Here’s where social media savvy comes in. A company has to be a friend before it can communicate with customers like they’re friends. THAT’s the part about social media that Motrin didn’t get.

The Spectacular Opportunity

What would I advise the Motrin team to do? Get over being clever and get serious about learning. Here’s a short action plan.

• Read enough to understand the mistake. A wise, open-mind doesn’t have to read long to see what went wrong.
• Admit the mistake and apologize. Say thank you.
• Read everything — every tweet, post, conversation about it. I’d put several folks on knowing every blog and blogger, every tweet and tweeter. Respond with appropriate apologies and an beginner’s mind.
• Listen. Listen. Listen. Say thank you.
• Ask for help. Offer new moms a chance to make their version of what the ad should have been. Put resources at their disposal. Participate. Don’t just throw money at them.
• Use as many of what they make as you can. Feature them on your site as big as your own.

It’s a spectacular opportunity to learn social media and to turn critics into heroes. A company that does that with everyone watchng could win over the social web.

Got more ideas for how Motrin might recover this?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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I love those idiomatic phrases that mean things are easy …
Easy as pie …
It’s a piece of cake.

My most favorite of them are …
It’s a breeze. . . .
a day at the beach.

I use them when things get stressful or hard, especially when my head gets too filled with details and options.

When I have too many options, those last two idioms help me sort them. A breeze and beach conjure up images that let me sit back for a thought, no matter how busy or anxious for answer the world is.

I imagine a day at the beach where the sand and the sky are big and open. No clocks or buildings interrupt a chance to spread out my thoughts. I need to see the spaces between the options to know what I’ve got and sort them.

A few well-spaced thoughts and I remember that my life is my creation. I’m in charge of valuing the options. I choose the path, the curves, and the interactions. When I listen to what I know, seeing where I am and I’m going is easy. It’s a day at the beach drawing possibilities in the sand.

How do you sort too many thoughts and options?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Image: sxc.hu
Image: sxc.hu
Work with Liz!!

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and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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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.

Does It Matter that We’re Here?

So many people are in the world. So many problems large and small. We watch and maybe wonder where we fit, what we might do. So many days it can seem that any effort is sure to fail. How could one person possibly make a difference in the world?

Here’s what Chris Cree said . . .

My suggestion is to start where you are and do what you can.

I’m reminded of the story of the grandfather walking the beach where thousands of starfish had been stranded by the tide. As he walked along he would reach down grab a starfish and toss it back into the sea.

His grandson asked him why he bothered. With all those stranded starfish there was no way he could really make a difference.

As he held up the next starfish the grandfather responded, “To this one starfish I can make all the difference in the world.”

comment on December 27, 2006

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

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