December 3rd, 2009] [
Today I present to you the four ladies of personal development of the blogosphere! They each have their own unique life experiences and lessons to share with the rest of us.
I have personally learned many important things from the each of them. However, the most important thing that I’ve learned from them is the importance of supporting and helping others. I think it’s fantastic what these ladies are doing – sharing their life knowledge with a passion for helping people.
Therefore, I have invited the four of them and their wise voices to hopefully broaden our perspective of life.
The guests will appear in the following order:
1. Annabel – www.getinthehotspot.com
2. Lisis – www.questforbalance.com
3. Lori – www.janebenimble.com
4. Zeenat – zeenatsyal.wordpress.com
Guest 1
Annabel’s site is for people with dreams or goals, it’s for anyone who wants to live the best life they can, and be surrounded by positive people. Check her out.
What would you like to do or what are you doing with your opportunity of life?
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I’d like to write, travel, learn stuff every day, laugh more and help other people get what they want in life. My childhood dream was to be married with kids, travel, live in a hot place near the sea and write.
I feel so lucky I’ve got the life I wanted and think everyone deserves to live their dream. I’m always looking forward to more travel adventures.
There are heaps of places I haven’t been to yet but would love to when the time is right and some old favorites to revisit.
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What do you think the most important aspect of life is?
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Your personal definition of “happiness”.
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Happiness means loving yourself, your life and the people around you.
Without happiness there is no life.
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What sort of ideas would you like to leave for this world and it’s people after you’ve passed on?
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I just want people to know that the human condition is hard but it’s normal to find it hard. We all have tough times.
We all have periods of suffering, depression, fear, guilt or hardship. But these things pass. No one is alone and the best way to deal with these things is by hearing from other people who’ve gone through the same thing.
I want people to know that happiness and success don’t just happen to lucky people.
You have to work on it. I want people to know that their personal happiness is really the most important part of their life.
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What would you say to someone who is unhappy with themselves and their lives right now?
It’s perfectly normal and nothing to be ashamed of! There are a lot of other people who feel the same way.
Talk to other people. Try not to spend time with other people complaining and focusing on the bad things. Be grateful for what you
have right now.
Make plans, write down your dreams and goals. Vow to make them happen. Seek people who can help you achieve what you want. Look for positive role models, mentors and teachers. Not everyone will help you but some
will.
Change is scary but it will come. Persevere. You can make it happen.
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Guest 2
Lisis’ blog is about her personal quest to find the balance between the things she needs to do and the things she wants to do… or finding happiness amidst the challenges of life. Check her out.
What would you like to do or what are you doing with your opportunity of life?
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I would like to do more than I am currently doing. I spent the first 25 years in the pursuit of selfish endeavors, living FOR the moment
and constantly seeking instant gratification. In my current phase,
I live IN the moment, making the most of my time at home with my son… trying to be the best wife, mother, and role model I can be.
For my next phase (when the homeschooling mommy gig is up) I’d like to do something profound, that helps lots of people now and
in the future.
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What do you think the most important aspect of life is?
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Your personal definition of “happiness”.
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Happiness is when your authentic self matches the persona that others see… when you don’t feel a need to hide anything about yourself, or pretend to be something you are not.
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What sort of ideas would you like to leave for this world and it’s people after you’ve passed on?
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I would love to successfully communicate the idea that we are all more alike than we are different. Governments, religions, schools, and other
institutions thrive on making us feel separate and at odds with each other, when really, we all want the same things.
It’s the lesson of the Dr. Seuss story, The Sneetches.
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What would you say to someone who is unhappy with themselves and their lives right now?
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It will get better, I promise. I have experienced profound unhappiness on many levels, the kind that leaves you feeling completely despondent and without hope, wishing you would just not wake up again so that you wouldn’t have to feel anything at all.
But, with time, and some dedicated effort, all challenges can be overcome.
There is always hope.
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Guest 3
Lori posts an abundance of brilliant and thoughtful posts on the topics of Nature, Science & Society, Inspiration, Mind, Body, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship. She posts in a nimble 
Check her out
What would you like to do or what are you doing with your opportunity of life?
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Living the best way I can with what I have.
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What do you think the most important aspect of life is?
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Your personal definition of “happiness”.
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Happiness means freedom to me – freedom given equally to all, freedom to roam, and freedom of will.
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What sort of ideas would you like to leave for this world and it’s people after you’ve passed on?
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I’d like to help spread the idea that helping others and sharing (wealth, property, time, etc.) with others does not take anything away from the person giving.
The effect is actually quite the opposite – and makes a better world for everyone.
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What would you say to someone who is unhappy with themselves and their lives right now?
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Help someone else. Shift the focus from you to a stranger or someone who needs help more than you.
I can guarantee there’s always someone whose problems are much deeper than yours, so pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and help the person less fortunate than yourself.
You’ll be helping yourself in the process!
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Guest 4
Zeenat says: “My aim in life is “To ease human suffering“.In whatever way i possibly can. I want to be remembered as a person who shed light & made a positive impact on the lives of others.” Check her out.
What would you like to do or what are you doing with your opportunity of life?
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I consider my opportunity in life to be a person who is of service to others. I say its my opportunity because its a gift I understood sooner than later. Today, my most satisfying moments in life are the ones where I have helped someone, in any way possible.
Be it morally or physically by being helpful in their daily activities or plain just being there for someone….the ways are endless, but the purpose “to be of service/help to another human being.
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What do you think the most important aspect of life is?
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Your personal definition of “happiness”.
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A subjective state of euphoria that comes from overcoming the hallucinations of the separate self. Happiness, that has reason, is usually a form of misery as the reason can be taken away from you at anytime.
I am a happy person because my life has meaning and purpose.
To be blissfully happy at all times is to risk senility. We need a little “divine discontent” for a creative impulse.
In simple terms-Happiness means bliss in all aspects and walks of life.
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What sort of ideas would you like to leave for this world and it’s people after you’ve passed on?
The gift of true divine Love, Lasting happiness and hunger for Knowledge. If a person realizes the bliss that comes from all these three put together, he would never complain of boredom, anger, sadness or loneliness and would excel in any and every aspect of his life. I hope that with my work, my attitude and hopefully my blog, I can leave these three legacies behind.
Considering my work is what will live forever not me! I like the idea that my blog might roam cyber space long after I have gone 
I also love to Help People find their Smile. If my work(blog, seminars, counseling sessions, writings) can help even one person, and that person shares that with another, and then with another, and that idea is passed down from generation to generation, I would like think that would indeed be a true legacy.
Something through which you can live forever.
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What would you say to someone who is unhappy with themselves and their lives right now?
Find a satisfactory Purpose In Life. Life is too short, and too beautiful to waste sulking or regretting what you don’t have or couldn’t do.
You rather spend this life trying to enjoy the immense beauty inside and outside of you. Yes, nothing is full proof and there is risk. But, without
experiencing a low how will you know the immense joy of a High?
And there is always a high after a low just like there is a sunrise after the dark night. Every time you look at nature (birds, animal, flowers bees etc.)
you can see how they live and breathe with immense joy and color.
We need to learn to enjoy the subtle things in life and find purpose in order to truly be happy inside out. Find your purpose and you will BE happy.
Always remember happiness cannot be found, because its right inside of YOU. You just need to find purpose in order to rediscover that happiness.
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THANK YOU GUESTS
I give my thanks to Annabel, Lisis, Lori, and Zeenat for wanting to contribute to my interviews! I hope you all liked how you look as stick-figures, I tried my best to have them look like you all xD.
PS: To my lady interviewees, it took me a long time to upload this because my internet just couldn’t work with wordpress. The uploading wouldn’t work and it just kept on erasing my texts and files. I was going to eventually e-mail all of you my problems but my e-mail always fails to send. Twitter wouldn’t work either. So basically I was cut off from all communication with any of you until today…
Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed this post, and sorry about the lagged time.
Steven
DO YOU WANT AN INTERVIEW?
I would be absolutely delighted to learn different answers and philosophies from many more unique individuals!
Therefore, if you have a blog and want to be interviewed and see what you look like as a stick-figure too (BEST REASON! 
), don’t hesitate to contact me.
Dearest Mr. Hoot,
Yay! And youve made allt he gals exactly like they would be in real life…now thats art mR…
The internet and all technology considered can be very unpredictable at times…it all turned out fine now na….thats important.
Such awesome gals( excluding me ofcourse;) )
I am so happy that lisis and I both have atleast 1 answer in common LOVE
Me is so happy with this..so so happy
I love it so so much. Thank you so much fro asking such wonderful questions…and for being the awesome Guy you are
You are brilliant..and I am cute and pink..me love it…oh i already said that
And dont worry about the delay…the longer you take the better we look
Lots of love
Z
Zeenat{Positive Provocations}´s last blog ..RAOKA:Beauty-The Beautiful Smile Experiment
Hey Zeenat!! Thanks for contributing to the interview!
Yes, it’s great that you guys have the same answers…it’s more popular among the gals
I’m glad you love it so much haha, and thanks so much for putting it up on your site, I appreciate it!
Ha! These are awesome! I just want to point out that I look pretty tough in comparison to these pink, flowery, blondie girls. That makes me the “Josh” of the gals series! You girls better straighten up, ’cause my stick figure is one tough momma!
I’m also thrilled that Zeenat and I both answered “Love”. I was surprised that up to this point each one-word answer had been different… it’s interesting, really. When I came to Z, my long lost twin, I was not surprised at all to find we chose the same thing: Love, Love Love (as Lady Gaga would say).
Thanks!!!!
Hey Lisis,
Yes you do look pretty tough lol. Did you want to look cute too like Zeenat? xD It’s alright, you are the unique one amongst the cute crowd, with that awesome plane on your shirt, nothing can stop you now!
Steven,
I have to give it to you, these are awesome. I didn’t realize you were actually drawing alot of this stuff yourself, but that definitely adds some personality to your blog and makes me want to ready your writing on a more regular basis.
Srinivas Rao´s last blog ..The side of sucess that you don’t see
Hey Srinivas!
Yeah, I was drawing all of em…I wanted to add some spice into the posts. Thanks for visiting man, hope you come here for often, maybe even for an interview
Hey Steven,
These interviews prove that the quality of the ideas you get depends a lot on the people who give them, but also on the questions you ask to get them. Nice job
Ideas With A Kick´s last blog ..Personal development ideas I can do without
Thanks Eduard for reading
I’ll send you the questions soon.
Steven!
You wascly wabbit! These are awesome and I’m so honored to be in such inspiring company! WOW!
I have to admit, I love the double-helix (DNA) you drew on my skirt – how cool is that? My Ph.D. adviser would be impressed, I’ll have to send your blog link to him (ha).
Hey, no worries about the lag time. Thanks for letting me know, though.
Look at these lovely women – so pink (Zeenat), F-22 tough (Lisis) and flowery (Annabel). We all have such great legs, too!
On a more serious note, the questions you asked were really great (I agree with Eduard). They really made me think and got to the core of who I am in addition to allowing me to see deeper into the hearts of your other interviewees. Great gals (and guys at your last post!).
I know this took a lot of time, Steven, so I appreciate it very much. Your comics are superb!
~xo
Lori
Lori´s last blog ..Front Porch: George and the Power of the Human Spirit
hahaha! I KNEW YOU’D LOVE IT! That double helix is the one of the trickiest thing i’ve ever made. But I’m glad you love it xD
Thanks about the compliment on the questions. I am just sincerely curious about the personal philosophies of pretty much everyone. Everybody is a unique book of their own, and it is absolutely fascinating and fantastic that they’ve gotten their own side of stories to tell.
I think we can learn a little snippets of life from everybody, and I am looking forward to accomplishing that with these interviews.
Anyway, thanks for contributing Lori!
What a lovely surprise for me this morning. Thanks so much Stephen, I’m glad you’re back in the land of the wired and thanks so much for including me in this sisterhood.
What a team! You made us all look so gorgeous and happy. I love the drawings.
Now, since 2 people agree the meaning of life is happiness was that the right answer? Does the majority rule?! Evolution was a great one too. I’m sure the lads had some interesting theories too:)
Anyway, must dash. I need to go and tweet this, stick it on my Facebook page and will definitely be mentioning it on my blog too.
Thank you, merci, danke, gracias, kop khun ka. I think this is one of the loveliest things anyone has ever done for me:)
Hey Annabel!
No problem about including you. I admire your philosophies just as I admire others. I have learned from your blogs just as I have from others. And it was absolutely my honor to have included you in this interview, because these four blogs have taught me many things from life to even blogging.
Thanks for wanting to spread this! I appreciate it
wow it’s awesome that you’d think this is one of the loveliest things!
Lets do a another collab in the future and raise the standards lol
I agree with Annabel: This has got to be one of the nicest, most beautiful things anyone has ever done for me! That you took the time to get to know me enough to make a comic of me is actually very cool.
THANK YOU, AGAIN, STEVEN!
~xo
Hey Lori! No problem at all!
See I am just completely drawn into inspirational people like you and Annabel and Lisis and Zeenat. The comics part was fun, but your answers were truly the ingredients to substance.
So thanks again
I would first like to start by thanking Annabel for inviting me to this blog in order to experience such a WONDERFUL message from four incredible women. I admire the time, energy, and effort to make this blog PERFECT! Everyone captured my attention because of the passion they displayed for everything that they are doing right now. I so resonate with the answers to the question, WHAT IS LIFE ALL ABOUT? Because LOVE, EVOLUTION, and FUN are three words which can be used to DEFINE living a life to one’s full potential. Unfortunately, not everyone is blessed with these components and instead live an empty existence. But it is critically important to realize that CHANGE starts from within and once you make the commitment to make tomorrow better than you could have ever imagined, followed by consistent action, and PASSION…your world will be a noticeably different place to LIVE.
Great job to all of you and thank you for spreading a message that NEEDS to echo in the minds of everyone in the world!!!!
Hey Jared,
I agree with you. They are all four incredible women, with their individual passions and goals in life. They seem driven and compassionate, which are the two most important factors for happiness in life.
And you are right that change starts from within – as many of these ladies have mentioned. That is why I asked them that question, because I knew that everyone’s answer would provide a sort of universal consistency of meaning to it. That it takes consistency and change to actually start livin’.
Thanks for visiting Jared, I hope you’ll enjoy your stay here in the future again.
Great interviews and great pictures but I have to ask, Why am I not in the post eh?
- Did my comment go through?
Haha Jonny, you want one?!? Bring it!
Hey, Steven… afterthought here…
I recently read a post by Seth Godin, in which he made it clear that there is SO much information out there now, that the way to add value is to consolidate it into useful, easy to manage chunks (his words were much fancier).
Anyway, I think that’s what you are doing here. There are SO many bloggers now, it’s getting hard to keep track of who is who. Barbara (at Blogging Without a Blog) already established that we recognize avatars before blog names because the visual connection helps.
You have the ability to distinguish personalities with these interviews and stick figures… to make each person more memorable. It really is an honor to be included in this experiment, and I can’t wait to see more!
Hey Lisis,
You are right. That is what I’ve realized before I started this blog. I knew I wanted to do something different, and I knew that visual language always established the connection faster than text (at least for me).
That is why I incorporate certain comics into posts, because I want to add personality and mood to each one.
I hope you liked the way you look xD because all I see is a black haired girl with an airplane on her shirt whenever you comment here.
I love my stick figure. I’ve only looked better one other time, and that was when my son made me into a LEGO minifig.
Lisis´s last blog ..Net Worth vs Self Worth: The Passion Paradox
Steven:
Great job with this!! You asked some great questions and did an awesome job creating stick figure versions of some people “in my neighborhood.” I really enjoyed this!!
Tim´s last blog ..Weekend Video Diversion: Ken Nordine
Hey Tim,
thanks for visiting man. I will keep asking the same questions to people and see what kind of answers I get for life questions. It is truly fascinating to see all the different sides to it.:)
[...] I’ve been turned into a stick figure by the lovely, talented and zany Stephen Zhao at Human Explosion. If you’re suffering from middle-aged spread, probably caused by too much time on the computer, this is the best, indeed maybe, the only way to fix it, and since it’s free there’s no silly money-back guarantee either. [...]
I recently came across your blog, and like what I’m reading so far =). I LOVED reading about these wonderful women. Their ideas are both similar and unique, just like we are in the world. Thanks so much for sharing and cartooning.
Dian Reid´s last blog ..Honor Your Effort
Hey Dian! Thanks for visiting my blog, I’m very glad that you like it so far!
I agree with you. These ladies all have extraordinary philosophies of life in which we can all learn from. Very different however the same in the form that they all just want to help others.
[...] This post was Twitted by haydentompkins [...]
[...] simple comics always send a quiet punchline message. He recently did a couple of interview posts with 8 other writers, and the amount of detail he put into the imagery, along with the layout and [...]
[...] Being transformed into a comic/stick figure by a world-class comic. (Steven, can you sign my stick legs?): Look at the DNA logo on my skirt! [...]