Hi all. You haven’t heard from me for a while. No new PowerPhrases or Poison Phrases to noodle and apply. That may change soon. I continue to enjoy retirement and I also have felt posts percolating inside me. I don’t know when posts will be ripe for SpeakStrong prime time. Currently my website is a bit of a mess and my blog subscription service is ending as of today. There is creative and technical work to be done – while I’m enjoying retirement and want to keep life mellow. 

I am developing a new site and will have a blog broadcast service when the blog is up and running. I don’t know what migration for subscribers will look like, so watch for notification from me. I may need you to confirm your subscription. I have no forecast of when that might be.

The New SpeakStrong will be a fresh look at Speaking Strong with a focus on soul-level communication. There will be stories and tales of PowerPhrases in interpersonal relationships where intimacy and connection matter as much or more as getting the concrete results you seek. It will be an exploration that will evolve along the way informed by life experiences and conversations. 

So thanks for being part of my community and stay tuned.

Warmly,

Meryl

My shopping cart and email service are up for renewal so it was decision time. I hadn’t sent out a newsletter in over two years, and my orders weren’t covering my costs. I hesitated to close it out because I kept thinking I’d be shifting focus back to my business any day now, and I’d want the resource. 

I weighed the options and possibilities and decided to close my bookstore and newsletter down. I have 8,000 newsletter subscribers, and only about 400 blog subscribers, so I composed a parting email to my newsletter list, encouraging them to subscribe to my blog.

As I ran my test emails, I remembered that one of the reasons I had waited to close things down was because I wanted to make some special offers before I give up the store. I hadn’t run any specials or even emailed a hello because my attention was consumed by my health and Lean2Life clearing, and filling orders seemed like a distraction. Yesterday I decided I was ready.

I got a flood of orders and some wonderful notes of appreciation from old SpeakStrong friends who hadn’t found the blog yet.

So here’s the offer. My cart will close on Friday the 14th. Today and tomorrow, as long as my store is up, I am giving away a free copy of SpeakStrong or PowerPhrases for ANY book order.

Go to my bookstore and place an order for any book that suits your fancy. Then, scroll down to the comments/special instructions and tell me which book you prefer.

http://www.speakstrong.com/store/books

Then, picture me going into the shed where I keep my inventory in the 5 degree weather we are enjoying today. 😉 

Happy to do it! This really is a great offer. 

 

 

There is magic all around if you can see it. I am grateful for the times that I can.

Saturday, a gathering of wonderful women blessed me for my birthday. It wasn’t a party, it was a rite of passage into elderhood. When my husband came home and asked me about it, I found it tough to describe what happened. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts, and the parts were pretty impressive!

Then, my friend Teryl sent me a poem about the event. It was perfect.

Teryl’s writing inspired my voice. Not just for the celebration, but also for my journaling as a practice for my 52 SpeakStrong Empowerments. 

If Teryl had critiqued my writing, it wouldn’t have had nearly as much influence on me as reading her poem did. Hearing her poetic voice describe something so meaningful to me, inspired my authentic voice. My writing oozed depth, meaning and inspiration. You can read it if you join us once the Empowerment eAdventure launches. 

Thanks to Teryl, to the women who came Saturday, and to you for being part of my increcible journey. Life is sooo good.

And thanks to my hubby who just now thanked ME when I told him I was going to do an extra meditation today. He says it helps us both. I know that, but isn’t it fabulous that he knows it, too?

This picture is Pippi the SpeakStrong Giraffe. She became an elder this week, too. A wise one, she is!

I’m beside and above myself with excitement today. I’ve been revising the landing pages for my communication style quiz, and it’s been tremendously enlivening. My first revision was for The Visionary style, and reflecting on it has energized The Visionary in me.

I was up in the night, singing, chanting and dancing, connecting with “Star” – that aspirational aspect of my being. It was a lovely interplay, and I woke this morning feeling the barriers to effectively communicating what I know about intra-style communication had dissolved.

My style quiz is different from any other that I know of. If you haven’t taken it, wait. I’ll link to it when it’s ready in its new glory. I wanted to share my joy with you today.  

 

If you’re local, I’d love for you to come hear me talk Sunday at Unity in the Rockies in Colorado Springs. There is a 9 AM and an 11 AM service. I’ll be talking about “A Sense of Place Between Worlds” and the art of living, loving, dancing and working in and between diverse worlds. I’ll focus on the lost art of direct experience, illumination from deep meditation, upliftment from ecstatic dancing, the calm that comes from authentic communication and a sense of place garnered from the subtle guiding whispers of nature.

And much more – in my 20 minutes.

If you’ve been to my site, you probably already know, I’ve been hacked. It’s taking a long time to get it fixed, partly because I’m across the country helping my folks make tough decisions, and helping to get my mom into skilled nursing and my dad into assisted living. I assume if you’re reading this, it’s via feedburner and you should be fine.

It is a powerful and tender time, and the way the family is pulling as a team is wonderfully inspiring. My mom’s first remark after waking from her coma was to tell everyone to go home because they looked tired.

The only graceful way through these challenges is in speaking the truth in a kind and loving way. And that’s what’s happening. We all feel good about the decisions that are being made.

Wishing you all grace through your challenges.

Join me for these upcoming events!

FREE WEBINAR: 12 Administrative Assistant and Office Pro  Roadblocks and Remedies

I’m offering a free webinar Wed, Oct 17th,  at 11:15 am MDT, which is 1:15 EDT. It’s called The 12 Administrative Assistant and Office Pro  Roadblocks and Remedies. It’s a dual-purpose webinar – to give you quick tools to deal with your office challenges and to provide a preview into some of the areas we’ll tackle at : The Executive Administrative Professional Online Training Camp. Check it out and register here.

FYI, I plan to start a paid webinar series with limited registration. This may be my last free webinar for a while.

The Executive Administrative Professional Online Training Camp

This is the online version of executive assistant training that used to be only available onsite. Develop your skills at home or in your office: Tuesdays, Nov. 13 – Dec. 4, 2012 1-4pm ET. Learn more and register here. (Click the Virtual Training tab at the top.)

Mid-Atlantic Lean Conference

I’m presenting at Mid-Atlantic Lean Conference November 7th. We’ll be talking about Communication Kata and taking a Kata Quest to improve processes. Join us. More info here.

There’s a story behind Tuesday’s upcoming webinar with Diane Windingland. The short version is: we know each other because she reached out to me. In other words, she networked for effective engagement. She’ll share that story during the webinar, but I do want to say now that I’m really glad she did reach out. She’s a key member of my community – someone I love to share ideas with.

Yesterday we talked about how we like to work. She made a very succinct statement that stuck with me. She said:

• You don’t have to know everything to find success.
• You do have to act.

I’m tempted to say more, but I’ll just invite you to register now for the webinar instead.

Sometimes feedback is very matter of fact. I need Angela to correct my typos.

Other times, situations call for feedback as a mirror. If I have a big new idea, it helps me to have my ideas refelcted back to me. Great feedback does that.

Sometimes we’re bigger than anyone can see. That makes it hard for people to reflect back bigness.

Other times we’re bigger than we can see. The best coaches reflect that back. I love it when I share myself and see in someone’s response that I’m bigger than I knew. Now, that’s a gift! 

We put a lid on our emotion when Mike died. We tentatively shared emotion when Emily died. We shared heart when Warren died.

I used to hide emotions. Part of the reason was I had so many emotions jumbled together that any attempt to express them came out so rough and raw that no one knew how to respond. I choked on my words, and that was awkward for myself and others. If I started to talk about emotions, I was afraid I’d not be able to stop.

I don’t feel the need to hide emotion much anymore. So why wasn’t I sharing emotion at Warren’s funeral?

It took a while, and then it dawned on me. We were sharing heart. And I could tell that the words that flowed from my heart were helpful and healing.

How did I/does someone go from choking on emotions to gracefully sharing heart at times of great sadness and loss? For me, it was years of finding places where I could say what I thought, felt and wanted, however rough and raw.That opened blocked communication channels.

I returned from the family funeral in awe, not pain. We get to the awe from experiencing the pain. Doubtless will make that journey again in our future. The words are smoother now, and the trip from pain to awe is smoother, too. That gives heart.