If you want to get some shoe tips on what to wear or not for that all too important job interview? Check out the blog by Designers Shoes. They will share their point-of-view of hot styles and great deals; they will even answer your shoe questions.

Visit ASK THE SHOE LADY for answers to women’s most important question – how to find a shoe that fits!

Free your mind and do something new

In your mind, what is the relationship between freedom and commitment? For many people, those ideas exist on opposite ends of the spectrum of life.  But what if I told you that true freedom is only possible through commitment?  It make sound crazy, but so many freedoms have opened up in my life, and it’s all thanks to a committed practice that has benefited me in countless ways.

It sounds simple on the surface: my husband David and I have a regular practice of connecting with our inner voice, of listening to our true selves and following the wisdom within.  We like to refer to this as our practice of “self-inquiry,” and it’s one of the things in our lives that we’re absolutely and wholeheartedly dedicated to.  But it’s so much more complex than it sounds.  Through this seemingly simple practice, we are able to open up possibilities that in the past we wouldn’t have even been aware of.  This is where the freedom comes in – when you make the commitment to connect with who you really are, all that is possible
suddenly becomes available to you.

David and I had planned a trip.  Travel is such a big deal, especially if you’re flying, and there’s a lot of effort that goes into the preparation.  Packing, housesitters, making sure everything continues to run smoothly while you’re gone – it all takes a huge amount of coordination.  When you set the wheel in motion, it gets up such a momentum that if it all came to a screeching halt, you’d expect the worst to happen.

So there we were, riding along to the airport, all our plans rushing ahead at full speed.  There was nothing that was going to stop us… and then I checked my phone, only because I’d had a strong feeling that I needed to.  Because of my self-inquiry practice, I’ve learned to trust that feeling implicitly, and as usual it was right – there had been several calls.  People were trying to reach me urgently, which only confirmed for me that intuition never lies.

Next thing we knew we were heading back to the house, but the strangest feeling had settled over me: excitement.  Where I had expected to feel disappointment, annoyance, resentment, or even anger at this sudden change of plans, I felt like the wheel was still turning with its full force, only now it had veered off its original path and was taking us somewhere new and unexpected.  I liked the thought of that, actually, and I started thinking about all the wonderful things that might happen to us now that our original plans had been taken out of the picture.

When we got home, we spend a few quiet moments in meditation.  Then my intuition kicked in again, and its message was clear: pick a direction.  I announced these instructions out loud, and without missing a beat, my husband suddenly chimed in and said, “I think north sounds right.”

So north we went.  We ended up at the most charming little boutique hotel you can imagine, and our stay there was made possible only by the fact that they’d had a last-minute cancelation – just our luck.  And that “luck” continued throughout the weekend, with event after event falling perfectly into place.

This is what can be possible when one makes the commitment to letting the inner voice speak.  All I have to do is stay on my true path of commitment to my daily practice, and the resulting freedoms simply present themselves. I can let go of control issues and worry and anxiety, and stop limiting myself with things like blame and resentment.  These are the gifts of freedom that come with commitment.  What a fantastic way to roll!

Learn to celebrate yourself with Maryanne’s video webinar series, teaching you how to ask the right questions of potential dates BEFORE you agree to a relationship—honor yourself and what you deserve!

Never be afraid to go for it!

One thing I’ve seen a lot of over the years is that so many of us spend time pursuing situations that don’t suit us, and then we wonder why it so often ends in heartache.  If we took that time instead to learn about ourselves and what we really want, we might instead find ourselves reflecting our true natures and energies back to the world, and then the chance of attracting someone with those same energies increases exponentially.

Here’s an example from my childhood to show you what I mean.  Like many kids, I used to make mud pies with dirt and water.  But instead of making them for myself, I used to sneak over to my neighbors’ doorsteps, and leave the pies there for them to find.  This was my way of testing the waters, to see who would have a sense of humor about it and accept the pie, versus who would be annoyed or not understand the humor in it.  In the cases where someone wouldn’t accept the pie, I didn’t call them and try to explain myself, stalk them, make a scene about it, or cry into my pillow.  I just made another pie and tried another house.  If someone doesn’t get you, there’s no point in wasting time trying to make them get you.  There are plenty of other doorsteps.

But when we take our mud—pie exercise into adulthood, neurosis creeps in and we tend to try to force our pies on people who don’t want them, or try to make our pie into one that they might want.  But there’s an alternative to this, a way to stop feeling pie-challenged or neurotic.  It involves looking at who people really are, and using that information to steer clear of unnecessary heartache.

Going back to my childhood for a minute, I remember the first time my mother shushed me for trying to speak to a stranger.  Her argument was that I shouldn’t be talking to people I don’t know, and in any case, it was rude to ask people personal questions.  I remember not understanding how this logic worked—if you never talk to people you don’t know, then how will you ever get to know anyone?  Although I had a healthy desire to avoid a spanking, my mother’s threat of punishment couldn’t really stop my curious nature, and my desire to talk to just about everyone who came within three feet of me.  These days, of course, talking to people is a huge part of what I do as a relationship expert, and this adult version of digging in the dirt is exactly what I want to teach you to do!  I want you to embrace the impulses you had as a kid to find things out, and to use that information to help you.

But the point is not to learn a few clever communication tricks so that you can decipher the opposite sex and instantly have all the answers. Rather, I want to encourage you to develop the most powerful power tool in your relationship tool belt: the ability to inner-view successfully.

I know it can feel like great relationships only happen to other people, and even then not very often.  Depending on your experiences, maybe you feel like they never happen at all.  But I’m here to tell you, great relationships ARE possible for you!  The hardest part is working on your own side of the equation – learning who you are and what you want, and making a plan to help you succeed in relationships and increase the likelihood of your relationship being a great one.

The good news is, setting yourself up for a great relationship is not all that hard.  When we want someone to take notice of us, we offer the adult version of a mud pie: a smile, a friendly introduction, or a telling glance.  Then we see how the pie is received, and use our intuition (that wonderfully infallible navigation system) to decide what, if anything, the next move should be.  If everything feels open and right, we can choose to advance or engage with this person in some way.  This system of taking little steps forward and using our intuition before every step is powerful, and my goal for you is to be able to know yourself well enough that you can harness this power and use it wisely as you set off to find your next great relationship!

Share your Stories as a Blogger for Tall Expression

Tall Expression has been trying to figure out how to showcase the lives of tall women around the world, their stories, and how they fit inside a world where everything is designed for women who are 5’6.’ How can we capture the spirit of every voice as unique and diverse as ours—and yet, showcase a personal point-of-view? We can’t. Meaning one person, one company can’t do all these things; you need a collective voice, story and/or point-of-view to tell a unique blend of our daily lives. So Tall Expression will be changing to meet these needs.

Share Your Story

If you want to tell a unique adventure when it comes to women’s lives, and being tall, we want you to Blog with us. You are the masters of your stories. It’s all about you! Tell us your day, how you grow up in a short world, or just rant about home life, your kids, husband, partner or whatever in between. We want to share in your uniqueness, your lives, and your adventure.

Sign up to our website here, and get started, you will have the tools to Blog what’s on your mind. Don’t be shy, this isn’t about us, it’s about you! You want to rant about not finding the perfect jeans because they are too short, or not big enough? Do it on Tall Expression. Want to tell us about a great fashion store you spotted riding your bike in your neighborhood, share it with us?

Blogging can seem scary, but its fun once you get the hang of it, and Tall Expression will share fun tips on how to write the best stories. Oh, nothing too big, just how to write for the Web, using AP Styles tools like Dates, Proper names, etc. But, mainly it’s all about the uniqueness of you! What are you waiting for? Get started sharing ideas!

Adrienne Williams
Founder & Web Producer
Tall Expression eMagazine

Height Goddess Jeans

Check out HEIGHT GODDESS on Good Morning Texas, early in the year. I swear I thought I added this link on our site? Oh well, here’s the video. Enjoy!

Lameka Weeks, has some of the best denim fitted jeans around. If you are tall and curvy, check out her website.

(Photo by Getty/Alberto E. Rodriguez) Christina_Hendricks

Christina Hendricks, star of Mad Men gets nods for another Emmy on the hit TV show about an advertising agency in the 1960′s. Actress Christina Hendricks arrives to the season 4 premiere of AMC’s “Mad Men” on July 20, 2010.

Get in Shape!

As a tall woman that is getting older, now is the time where keeping in shape is starting get a lot more complicated, then when you were 21 years-old. What better way, than to showcase some helpful videos that can get you in the mood—to lose a few pounds and get active. Tall Expression will start to feature eHow.com videos on the best way to keep in shape.

Note: I also write for eHow.com, so check out my article on dating younger men online.

How to Get a Flat Tummy — powered by eHow.com

(MorgueFile.com/ppdigital) How to listen to your gut

Within your body (as opposed to your mind), you have a powerful internal system for finding out who people are. This “belly brain” or “intuition” is a pre-cognitive filter for more than 90 percent of the information that comes in from new people you meet. Your senses and your intuition work together to measure things like body language, posture, tone of voice, and eye movements in order to make a judgment call about whether or not you are in a safe situation, and to what degree you should allow yourself to open up to this person, or close yourself off. I’m sure you’ve had many experiences before where you met someone for the first time, and instantly you felt your body either opening or closing toward them, depending on what your intuition told you. It’s a very powerful and very accurate tool to determine just how safe or dangerous a situation is, and what sort of person you have standing before you. This initial filtering process happens very quickly, and within a few seconds you will probably already know everything you need to know, if you are paying attention.

But this is not where the information processing stops. After the intuition has done its thing, the information makes its way to the brain, where a secondary filtering occurs.  Most of what goes on during this process is pattern recognition based on historical data. In other words, you have a huge database in your mind of past experiences, pattern recognition, and so forth, and when you meet a new person, your brain compares their incoming data against what you already know, and it places the new person into a category you can easily understand and respond to. Your body, in turn, will either expand or contract.

This is where the real trouble happens. Your brain’s database is filled not only with your experiences, but also with beliefs it has inherited or learned, and stories that it has been told. Women who wear short skirts and have tattoos are trashy and uneducated. Men with scruffy hair and beards are lazy, unemployed losers. Our brains are littered with all sorts of information like this—some of it accurate, some of it not. While this second phase of filtering does help us, if we let it override our true instinct and don’t cross-check, that’s when [can] we set ourselves up for danger down the road.

I’m sure you’ve had situations where you broke up with someone, and then looked back and said, “I knew it, I had a feeling things weren’t right.” Because you did know it!  But the brain sees pain coming in the short term, and steps in to keep you from making a smart decision that would be better for you in the long term. Because that’s what the brain does—it is a pain and pleasure center, a receptor rather than a generator. In other words, it is a great servant, but a terrible master. Your intuition, on the other hand, never lies to you. Unlike the brain, the body is incapable of sending you a message it doesn’t actually believe. It is connected to the larger sense of truth, and I would urge you to relearn how to connect with this truth, rather than relying solely on the brain’s second-hand information—which as you have seen in your own experiences, hasn’t always led you to good places.

So why on earth would we allow our flawless intuition to take a back seat, when it is the best tool we have to steer us away from the darkness and into greener pastures?  Well, this has been a hot topic among philosophers, psychologists, and novelists for centuries—the terrible, ongoing death of the divine feminine in each of us.  In order to stop putting ourselves in danger, it is essential that we reawaken our intuition, and learn to reconnect with our BIG brain.

You can see for yourself how your body is smarter than your brain—sit down with a pen and paper and make a chart of all the times your body has been right, over the times your brain has [told you something different]. Which comes out ahead? Next week in Part Two, we’ll learn how to get back in touch with our intuition and regain the ability to be heart-smart! Stay tuned…

Maryanne will be teaching a live video webinar on how to “inner-view” potential dates or mates BEFORE you agree to a date or relationship. She’ll be featuring a very eligible bachelor and showing participants the best questions to ask and how to respond, live, on the fly, in real time! Sign up here.

(iStock.com/Spanic) Releasing what's holding you back

Here’s a challenge—get rid of all your attachments. I don’t mean you should quit your job or disown your family or move to another country for a fresh start. There’s a much easier way to do it, though convincing yourself can be quite difficult. All you have to do is let go. Let it all go—your ideas about things, your perceptions of others, your perceptions of yourself.  It sounds easy on the surface, but attachments are everywhere, in every aspect of your being. Here are just a few of the things you’d have to watch fade into nothing—if you really want to practice letting go:

• Your past, your stories about how great or how awful your childhood was.  Your ideas about whether or not your parents did a good job of raising their kids.  Your ideas about whether your teachers at school helped you become the person you are, or held you back from becoming the person you could have been.  Your most embarrassing moment, your proudest moment, your saddest moment, your most frightened moment.  Let them all go.
• Your ideas about who you are – your personality, your zodiac sign, your marital status.  Your IQ, your job title, your highest level of education.  Your job history, your job prospects.  Whether you’re a leader, a team player, a scientist, an artist.  That you think you’ve gotten so far because you’re lucky, or that you’ve gotten so far in spite of being unlucky.  That you’re a success, or that you haven’t found success yet.  That you even know how success could be measured.  Let all those ideas and attachments go.  All of them.
• Your preferences and opinions. Your favorite restaurant, the best place to get your oil changed, the fastest way to get from the office to your house.  That the person you see in the mirror is not tall enough or thin enough or young enough.  That being nice to people will make them like you, or that being aloof will make you mysterious and attractive.  That your political party is a better choice than the others.  That God will take care of you before others because you pray harder than they do.  Let it all go.
• Your ideas about the world. That money makes the world go round. That money is the root of all evil. That love is all you need. That it makes a difference whether you have love or money.  That there’s a soul mate out there for you.  That there are places you have to see, things you have to do, and people you need to meet. That you have plenty of time. That time is running out. That things are looking up for everyone. That things are going to spiral out of control.  That global warming is going to be the end of us, if the terrorists don’t kill us all first.  Gather up all your ideas about the world, and let them go.
• That you need to hurry up and start getting on with your life before it passes you by.  That you need to slow down and take things easy and enjoy your life.  That eventually you’ll find the person out there who will complete you, and that you won’t be complete without them.  That you’ll drive them away if you don’t do the things they want.  That nothing is as good as it used to be.  That everything is better than it used to be.  All these fears and hopes and worries and expectations… let them all go.

Then, once you have nothing else to let go of—let that go too.  So what’s left, who would you be then?  Fantastic!  Now, let that go!  Get the picture?  Now, let that go, too…

Want to learn more about what to know BEFORE you get into a relationship? Go “In the Ring With Maryanne!” In this upcoming video webinar, Maryanne will be interviewing an eligible bachelor live, on the fly, to teach you what types of questions YOU should be asking before you agree to a date or relationship. Sign up here.

So I set about to try to suppress my big nature, to be more emotionally conservative and appealing to a wider range of people. And in the end, that’s exactly what I attracted: a wide range of people who weren’t at all right for me. I found chemistry with some of them, but the compatibility just wasn’t there, mostly because I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Inevitably, my true big self would slip out more and more frequently, and my emotionally conservative friends and dates would not know what to make of it, or would take it as a sign that something was wrong with me.

One day, many years ago, I was in the car with my boyfriend at the time, and while we were stopped at a light he turned to me and asked, “why do you have to be so dramatic all the time?” That was the final straw for me, and I went completely nuts. I told him that yes, I do experience emotions deeply and intensely, and I express them just as intensely, whether they’re emotions he likes dealing with or not. If he found that kind of “drama” unpleasant, then why was he with me? I told him he must like it, or we wouldn’t be dating.

He sat there and stared blankly at me. He probably didn’t even really hear what I said, except for the part where I kept ranting on and vaguely blaming him for not “getting it.”

This was a perfect example of a relationship where there was plenty of chemistry, but no compatibility. I thought I could be more appealing if I could pretend to be less high-maintenance, more easygoing and less expressive of my emotions. In the end, though, the real me finally won over, and I was less appealing than ever because I was all over the place.

This taught me one of the most important lessons ever. I stopped trying to hide and suppress my real nature, and I stopped dumbing it down in an effort to please others. Instead, I decided to concentrate my efforts on attracting someone who would appreciate and love me for who I really am, including the big gestures, passionate emotions, and assertive expressions. I didn’t want to have to fight myself anymore, nor fight the people I was with. Opposites can attract, but in my case I was attracting situations where the combination of me and them brought out the worst in both of us, mostly because I was starting from a place of spite and resentment.

Once I decided to attract a relationship with someone who would love me with all my big, intense passion, things changed. When my husband showed up, I finally found the perfect fit, because I had become a magnet from a place of self-acceptance, not from a place of self-loathing. Because in the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re dramatic or laid back, or whether you and your partner have similar personalities. What matters is that you’re both being true to yourselves, and that you’ve come to each other by being the magnets that are attracting what you really want. After all, Great Relationships Begin Within!

The magnet is the second tool in my relationship tool belt. Get a copy of Hindsight: What You Need to Know Before You Drop Your Drawers! at www.maryannelive.com