“The true harvest of my life is intangible – a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

“There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?” ~ Woody Allen

Ahh, the paradox between poetry and practicality, art and accounting, beauty and bottom line, meaning and metrics. Especially in this results-oriented, materially-focused, high-powered metropolis that is New York, it’s often challenging to communicate the value of things we are unable to touch, see, or can be precisely measured.

After assigning some journaling to a client recently, she seemed perplexed and not too happy about it.  When inquiring what was the problem, her concern she said, was because as graduate of MIT, it would be difficult without having any sort of metrics or immediate tangible outcome to guide her or let her know  she was doing it ‘correctly’, which her perfectionist self needed in order to be validated in the exercise.  She was not the first to be challenged by or question the effectiveness of the solution I offered, just the first to articulate it so well!

This type of scenario has been the bane of my existence, as the world of the intangible has been my field of expertise and the ‘meat’ of my work for most of my professional life – teaching  or speaking, creating programs that promote intercultural understanding and women’s empowerment, individual and group coaching, even writing these posts.  Most everything  I do is impactful on an internal level, enabling shifts in perception and healing to take place, so my challenge has always been how to grade, evaluate, measure or assure the merit of such things; how do you quantify understanding, inspiration, identity, and transformation?  

With flowers and trees now blooming all around us, remember that they didn’t just magically appear overnight – there was an unseen force at work during the barren winter months – the result is tangible, but the process itself is a thing, too.  Fertile soil, sunshine, water, time and nature’s mysterious special sauce work consistently in harmony behind the scenes, making it all come together for us to once again enjoy the gorgeous potpourri of colors and shapes.

Feeling like your Spring needs to be sprung?  You might just need a little professional tending to your garden along with some Xray vision, so give me a buzz – I’ll bring on the blossom and have Everything Coming Up Roses for you again!

Kristina is taking a break from her Personal Growth Gab duties today, but you can still get your weekly dose of unique insights and inspiration by checking out her posts from this time last year:  

 Tiptoe Through the Tulips 

The Passion of Passover 

Polar Shift 

  You can also check out the articles she was recently featured in:

Are Benders Part of Finding Balance?

Stop the Tsunami in Your Life 

 Happy Spring, Passover, Easter, Earth Day and anything else you feel like celebrating!   See you next week…

Last week I saw the Broadway show Born Yesterday, a remake of the movie originally made in 1950. The revival could not be more timely with its themes of corporate and government greed, the corruption between the two, and the price one is willing to pay for a glamorous life in lieu of an honorable one.   

I also recently attended a seminar on negotiation, where the very credentialed professor asked us to assign monetary values to almost everything we do in order to come to an optimal decision in any scenario, i.e. leaving our significant other for an opportunity or moving to an undesirable location for a job. I found the exercise to be an interesting one that I didn’t totally agree with, but the point he was trying to make is that everyone has their price.

With the government narrowly avoiding a shutdown over budget issues, there was much back and forth about which party was going to concede what to keep our country functioning.  In these times of uncertainty, especially if you are in career transition, we must ask ourselves what am I willing sacrifice in order to get what I want and make ends meet?     

The world must transform its values from profit to purpose and it’s up to us to demand it. Traditionally our culture has made it difficult; in some ways it’s getting more so; on the other hand things are beginning to change as people are becoming more unsatisfied and searching for a life of meaning, and corporations are responding to the public’s desire for their dollars to do double duty via cause related marketing, corporate social responsibility initiatives and social entrepreneurship in general.     

The tide is slowly turning, but in the meantime you may feel caught between in a rock and a hard place trying to do something in line with your authentic self that earns a decent living. But if you are in a job for the paycheck only, you might want to analyze what it is costing your health, your relationships, and your peace of mind to be in that position.  Just like everyone has their price, everything comes with a price.

The ultimate goal is to have a prosperous life that comes from a place of principles and to have quality over quantity; one does not have to be mutually exclusive of the other, but it is a journey that requires commitment, time and patience.

We all have a little Material Girl or guy in us, but there’s no reason for you to be any version of Lady Marmelade, Roxanne or Just a Gigolo. So [insert your name here] , come on down and I will help you discover how your goods can serve others and yourself without selling out, and create a win-win situation in every area of your life!

Synergy – the bonus that is achieved when things work together harmoniously. ~ Mark Twain

I find it curious that the words desperate and disparate sound so similar; and although their meanings are distinct and technically have nothing to do with each other, I think there is a correlation.

A well known strategy used by one group to influence power over another is to ‘divide and conquer’; to keep people, things, countries, ideas, religions, and feelings separate and often opposed to one another.  This way they are unable to come together as a unified force and therefore have strength to accomplish their goals and objectives, which dis-empowers them. Regardless of whether the power desired or deserved outcome on either end is good or bad, it is a tactic that is extremely effective.

The most obvious place to observe this happening is in the military and political arenas, but there are more subtle ways that this truth can affect us in our everyday lives – within our families, at our jobs, in our neighborhoods, in the media and entertainment we consume  and often, within ourselves.

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of folks are feeling disjointed, fragmented and compartmentalized at best; discombobulated or defeated at worst.  Everywhere we turn there seems to be  a sledgehammer creating wedges and a myriad of distractions coming at us from all sides: it’s us against them, head against heart, black vs. white, profit versus purpose, logic battling intuition, young vs. old;  material values vs. spiritual ones, mental vs. emotional health vs. physical health.

As the saying goes, we can’t serve two masters – we must be unified in that which we revere and honor, integrate our disparate parts and connect to who we are, so that we can connect to others for the greater good.  Because when we don’t, we  feel lost and alone, which when not addressed, can lead to feeling desperate. And that is never a good place to be – because decisions made from fear and desperation are never the best choices.

So if you’re having a little trouble synthesizing your yin with your yang, make sure you take some quality time with yourself and/or give me a buzz; just like Stevie and Paul’s piano, I’ll help arrange all your internal and external parts in a way that you, too, can live with yourself, and others, in perfect harmony.