stonetosser.com

I sit here on the eve of a new decade in what, to the unenlightened eye would appear to be a total disaster of a room. My office - workplace, spiritual space, relaxation space, writing space - is getting a to-the-bones cleansing this weekend. I'm hardly a hoarder, tossing stuff easily and frequently, but this week I've gone deeper and scoured through every shelf and drawer to recycle a decade of unnecessary stuff and on the first weekend of 2010 I will paint it a soothing but vibrant green to frame it's large windows to nature and my husband and sons (bless their souls) will lay in a new hardwood floor. They are also refinishing and building some new furniture for me and infusing their love into the very skeleton of my little room. By next week I plan to be organized, decluttered and happily re-ensconced in my space. I can't wait; tiny as it is, it's my sanctuary.

But right now, on December 31 with the boxes piled high and the mess of it all around me, I am deeply unsettled.

Clearing out the Old Ways

In part, my disquiet reflects the upheaval of order in that place where I go to make sense of the chaos of daily life. But as I pack up my prayer altar, throw away a decade of files and give away over 100 pounds of books to the library, I'm realizing there is more to it than just some temporarily disturbed spacial energy. This cleansing of my premises is not what it's about at all, rather it's a reflection of a deeper declutter in my soul. You see, I've been spending the entirety of December (if not most of this Fall) clearing. I've been clearing myself creatively as I integrate my mini jewelry business into my life and identity; I've been clearing myself professionally as I get ready to embark on some new business directions in the two thousand teens; and I've been clearing myself spiritually as I recommit to meditation, self care and staying connected to my higher self in all my daily interactions.

Getting clear of old stuff is so great; it makes me feel so good and it opens my life up to new possibilities. I totally believe in what Shannon Kinney-Dūh says about decluttering , about how everything has its time and place and when it’s time to let it go, it’s an opportunity for personal growth. I’m joining Shannon in her 2010 declutter journey in an effort to continue what I’ve started this month so that it becomes an even more ingrained habit in me to let go, move forward and live in the present moment.

I don't know if I'm completely "clear" yet, or if I ever will be, but I do know that letting go of so much is not only invigorating but a bit frightening at the same time. All those old things and old ways I'm throwing out may be holding me back or getting in my way on some level or another, but at least I understand them. I know them. I know how they work and what to expect from them. I've developed habits around them and they mean something or I wouldn't have hung onto them.

I don't know what's coming. I believe it will be wonderful, I trust in the Universe, but the soft animal of my body isn't so sure. And so I meet myself in the crux of the human condition, strung out between hope for the future and cynicism informed by the past; courage to launch into the unknown and fear of what I cannot see; delight in the new and sadness as the present transforms into the past…

My New Strategy

Standing on the brink of this new cycle I am committed to focusing on the hope and the courage and the delight, but I am more mindful than ever that this will require a new level of strength inside me as new stuff comes at me, seeking to lodge itself inside my space and become one of my new habits. How will I keep from simply recreating all the old stuff and ways I'm scouring out of me?

I don't really know, but I do have a new strategy which is to let love guide me. Not love in the traditional romantic sense, but love in the universal sense. On the edge of every choice, of word or deed, holding love in my heart moves me in a better direction. Love helps me see past people's masks into their core being and speak to their gentle soul, it helps me sense the best outcome even when all options require sacrifice and it focuses me on what matters most to my benefit and to the benefit of those around me.

Trite as it sounds, love works.

So, despite my body's trepidation in the midst of the chaos of cleaning the known to make room for the unknown, my spirit is excited and happy that a new decade comes upon us. I breathe in the anticipation and wonder of all new beginnings and set my intention to help make 2010 the best year ever - for me and everyone my actions touch.

I sit with love in my heart and wish it for you, too, that your year be blessed and bring us together in ways we both grow from. I don’t ask that it be easy, only that we grow our souls, find comfort in our sadness and celebrate our success.

Love, Light and Blessings to you my friend.

Happy New Year!

I just back from my grandfather’s funeral. It was a very nice ceremony, simple and heartfelt; an unassuming event to honor an unassuming man. And his life was worth honoring; he lived a full life of 94 years and along the way did phenomenal service for our country and touched so many people with compassion, discipline and strength that I doubt anyone could have kept count. He died on Thanksgiving day, appropriately for those of us called to give thanks for his life. Of course there was sadness and we all cried when the Air Force honor guard played taps over his grave, but those were passing tears to recognize the gap in our lives where Grandpa had always sat, now the residence of memory. They were not tears for his death.

As I listened to his life remembered, I was so thankful that in our family’s story - like my Grandmother and Father-in-law - Grandpa had left in the gentle way, the natural way that a life disengages from the earth when its body no longer serves it here.  He struggled in his final years with Alzheimer’s and was blessed with a loving wife and extended family to ease his passage, but it was clear that his time here was simply over. And when it’s time to move on, on any portion of a soul’s journey, it is simply time to go.

I believe this is true for any kind of death because I believe our souls don’t wink out when our life does.

Written this way, it all sounds very spiritual and gentle and easy, and in the natural death of older people it is a little easier. It’s easier for us to let them go because we can see evidence in their frail bodies that to keep them here would be little more than a selfish act. It’s easier for us to be unselfish for them.

The death of younger people is a harder shock to absorb. There is a special tragedy to overcome when children die or people with full lives yet to live leave us behind. Because I have no other way to understand it, I choose to believe that when this happens - as it has with my father and my Sister-in-law - the same principles are at work though their bodies do not appear to have failed as naturally. I choose to believe that their souls must no longer find this life on earth their best way forward.

It’s the rest of us that have trouble letting go, because it’s not our journey.

This belief comforts me as I read on the devastation of wars around the world, freak accidents, horrible diseases and violent outbursts that take young and old alike before their bodies have the chance to fail them naturally. In this sense, when I fall back on my beliefs to help me comprehend the incomprehensible I reinvent the purpose of spirituality since the beginning of time, praying along with the billions of souls that have gone before me and live along side me that our souls’ journey’s make sense on the cosmic level when they appear completely nonsensical from down here.

And so I come back from this reverie to look on my Grandfather’s death with awe and gratitude for the full life he lived and for the fact that his soul chose to be with us as long as it could have been. Selfishly, I hope that everyone else I love chooses to stay as long, but unselfishly I try to be prepared to let them go if they day comes that it simply can’t be.

Thanks for staying so long, Grandpa. I miss you, but I’m so very grateful for your memory and all the lives you touched while you were here. Be well “up there” and I look forward to the day we are reunited again on some other adventure.

Photo Credit: This picture of the White Light often reported from near death experiences is from a fascinating near death experience article at How Stuff Works: Has Science Explained Life After Death? Make sure to read the second page.

As I sit by the fire on Thanksgiving Eve with oh, so much to be thankful for, I find myself reflecting on the bounty in my life a little differently than usual. I thought I'd try to write it out in an effort to understand how giving thanks feels different than it used to.

Sometime in my young adulthood I realized that despite "earning" a lot of my luck, it wasn't all "mine." So I started giving thanks, when prompted at times like this wonderful holiday, and in other more spontaneous ways. The older I got the more I gave thanks, I guess because I'd just gathered up so many more special moments and people over the years.

Until very recently, my thanks were tossed out of me, like little stones into a pond.

Thanks for my family. Plop. Thanks for my friends. Plop. Thanks for a good job and house. Plop. Thanks for the opportunity to live a fulfilling life. Plop.

Some time ago, I started imagining each little Plop to send ripples out into - what? A sortof universal pool of good will among humans, I thought. This image delighted me and encouraged me to toss more Plops. Tossing gratitude became a little game I played silently in those moments where I felt truly lucky, and even in those moments I didn't but "knew" that I was and wanted the discipline of the gratitude practice to reprogram my more cynical thoughts. It worked and gratitude is now something I feel often. Carrying my little bag of gratitude stones has made my world brighter and me happier.

But it turns out gratitude isn't just a little game. It's not something that I just "do". Like living in Presence, Gratitude has changed me.

Tossing out little Thanks Plops feels good. I like it. I do it. But now when I stop and really focus on what I'm grateful for, something else entirely happens. Instead of tossing the thanks out of me into some nameless pool in "the Universe", I pull what I'm thankful for inside and hold it.

You see, it turns out that the deep pool of gratitude lives within me.

And so the process of giving thanks is different now. I don't feel right listing off a long line of "things out there" that make my life so nice. I don't "give" thanks anymore. I AM thanks, and I invite what is outside in. All the people, spirits and circumstances that make my life so joyful are welcomed inside me to be with me in my pool of gratitude. Together we send out calm ripples of love everywhere and we are all the more powerful a force for good in the world because of it.

And so tonight in my thankful heart I hold my family, my friends, and the angels on earth and elsewhere that fill my life with magic and help me grow my soul while fueling the growth of others; I hold all of nature, seen and unseen that fills my lungs and my tummy and that I rest on, move through and dream about. In my thankful heart I hold God and am held in return.

And if you are reading this, I hold you, too. Thanks to you, beautiful soul, for being here with me.

Photocredit: I don't know, but I hold them in my heart too.

In a recent post I talked about how wonderful it was to finally be free of the debilitating worries, guilts and anxieties of that past and future, allowing my energy to be present to the joy and occasional pain of my daily life. Living in the Present really has become a great survival tactic when fears encroach on my happiness. I recommend it highly, but learning to Live in the Moment didn’t just free me from fear, it changed me in other, even more profound ways; it turned me into an emotional adult.

You knew it, didn’t you? There’s always a catch!

You remember that I said that Living in the Moment didn’t necessarily make all my problems go away? Well it’s true that being more Present actually made some parts of my life more complicated. Let's start with my primary modern survival technique - multitasking. How would I survive without the ability to monitor client email, text my kids, maintain many many friendships via Twitter, Facebook, IM, email etc and run a household and a couple of businesses all while playing with stones and jotting out posts like this that feed my soul? I admit to walking the edge on this issue more than any other, my attention always a bit fragmented. For a while when I first began being conscious of the benefits of Presence, I took it too far the other way - using meditation to help calm my mind and then concentrating so much on one thing at a time – being uber-Present as though I was on some mountaintop with the monks - that I made modern mistakes. I remember distinctly being so into the Present Moment on a lunch date that I completely forgot to pick my kids up from school. "Oops. Guess I need to be simultaneously Present to the calendar so the future doesn’t bonk me in the head!" I said to my extremely smug Guilt Imp as we raced to the school.

The calendar became my savior, however, as I stopped trying to carry the future in my head and put it in my phone so I refer to it when I needed - at that moment - to make a decision about how to spend my energy over the next unit of time - whether it was a few minutes (e.g., whether to try to run to the grocery before or after a meeting) or a few months (e.g., whether to take on a new project). I’ve recognized that – to a point - I am capable of multitasking in the Present to the extent it helps me manage my life and still remain Present to all the parts of my life that I love. I do turn off the multitasking sometimes, but I do more than unplug my technology, I put my Worry Imps to bed too, asking some to leave forever and others to wait for me at my desk the next day or week when I will have the ability to deal with them. Yes, I talk to my Worry Gremlins. Why not? They tend to leave more readily when I address them directly. Call me crazy but it works.

But conscious multitasking took me deeper into myself and made me aware that living in the Present Moment required a lot of energy management. I used to think of this as time management, but being Present to the relatively subtle fluxuations of my physical and mental energy levels has made me aware that while I have little control over the steady march of time, I have a lot more influence over HOW I spend my time to get the most of the energy that flows through me. For example, due to biorhythms, hormones or sun spots (I suspect they’re all in cahoots anyway) I find that at some points in time my energy is simply more capable of doing some things than at others. I know I’m useless when I wake up, creative until two, mentally scattered again until five, mentally productive until eight and tired after nine. Knowing my energy patterns is great for living in the Present because I now know how best to get through my task lists, making the most of my Present energy. But wait. Dang. I keep forgetting that I don't really control that old Time Demon – my schedule - which is dictated by kids, clients and the various construction crews that have been banging in and around my home/office for the last 3 years. Shoot.

Let me tell you, managing the demands of my life while being present to my energy cycles is a real pain. It’s not so much about Monsters and Imps as it is about being hyper conscious of the constant choices I’m making – and I mean constant choices on a minute-by-minute basis sometimes – about what is most important to me and how I spend my energy. After all, when I’m Present to all the decisions leading up that moment when I face a client deadline in the midst of a major energy low, I can’t bitch about their stupid deadlines or the unfairness of the Universe for putting me in this situation, I know it was my choices – on what to sign up for, what values to uphold and how to manage my energy leading up to that moment - that put me in this position.

And this is how I came to realize that I’d grown up emotionally because being Present gave me emotional responsibility for my life. Being Present to each moment makes me hyper-aware of the choices I make on how I spend my time and energy, and very conscious of the power I give each little Gremlin and Imp that scampers (or I accidently invite) into my life. All this knowledge makes it virtually impossible for me to blame others for my reality. I’ve successfully put myself in control of my Present Moment which means – yipes! – that I’m in control of it! This is a classic case of “be careful what you wish for” because when things go well I can give myself great kudos, but when things go not-so-great I take that rap too. Inconvenient as this knowledge is sometimes, it’s also empowering because over time it’s helped me make more and more good decisions, letting go of people and behaviors that just brought more little Demon-wanna-bes to my life. But notice I said “more” good decisions, not “only” good decisions. I still screw up.

So that I don’t let that load of past Regret Gremlins and Guilt Imps gang up on me again, I have to deal with the negative in the real-time Present Moment, apologizing when I’ve wronged someone and doing what I can to make things right when 20-20 hindsight shows me the results of my boneheaded decisions. Sure, I do blame the Universe for stuff, but as a way of not accepting responsibility for things truly out of my control, like illnesses and tragedy, decisions other people make (after all, my own Presence isn’t the only Moment that matters) and world events I didn’t vote for. I don’t take personal responsibility for these things because, I mean, why invite a little Demon-wannabe to move into your basement if he’s got a perfectly good home elsewhere? (Note: I’m not completely dismissing the theory that those other things outside myself are affected by my decisions, but I don’t take personal responsibility for them all and I’m not going to address the nuances of this complicated issue in this post.)

So somewhere midway through my Life’s Journey, I’m happy to say I’ve used the Be Here Now strategy to ungang my Gremlins so they can’t paralyze me anymore, even though they are still with me toddling down the Path. Presence has given me more than just more manageable problems, though, it’s taken away my excuses. I know now that I have the power to make myself happy and when I’m not, it’s up to me to fix it. As I work with this reality in my minute-by-minute Present Moment, this reality takes me deeper into the choices I make, the benefits and prices I pay with each decision; it continues to mature me.

Part of me hopes that as I age I can live a simpler life and make the minute-by-minute struggle a little less exhausting, but another part of me is joyfully aware that this is just another Future Worry in the guise of a hope. Because the real future Present Moment, when I get there, will be full of choices and good things and not so good things, too. I remind myself that the energy of the Present, when fully experienced and savored, is always more enriching than a mere hope. And so I use hope as a guiding star, steering my myriad of Present decisions like a herd of cats in the general direction of wonderfulness.

More of designing my future in another post, I hope. For the moment, however, it’s time to put my technology away and succumb to uselessness for a bit. With this post I let these thoughts go and pass them on - to you. May they enhance your Present Moment just a little before you pass them on - elsewhere.

Love, Light and Joy

I sat at a restaurant today, waiting for a new friend. While sitting, I witnessed a wonderful act of self-serving love that I want to pass on. I've never seen this before and I watched in wonder as an anonymous woman made an anonymous baby happy so that she could take a phone call. This post is my hug to her for demonstrating how love can be the solution to so many more "problems" than we give it credit for. But it was more than the baby who was happy when she was done; all who witnessed it were happy in that baby's happy glow.

The restaurant is a lovely place, old worldly with fresh vaulted ceilings and windows to let the cool November light stream in. It's painted and decorated to feel like a french country kitchen, big unfinished butcher block tables and chairs create a calm, soothing atmosphere. This is something of a veneer, however, because the daubed, milky-toned ocher paint effects mask the concrete walls and columns of the steel-hearted office building overhead. I would have completely accepted the peacefull illusions painted over the bones of modernity were it not for the acoustics of the place, which were harsh to the ear. Even at 20% seating capacity it was noisy as the sounds of eating and normal conversation zinged up into the high ceiling, accelerating off the hard, cold surfaces to clang into each other.

This cacophonous juxtaposition of auditory and visual reality didn't bother me until the shriek of a little two year old four tables over split through the already harsh sounds bouncing above my head, doubling the jangling-nerve effect of the ambient noise. Poor little tyke had been trying to move her stroller when the nasty thing fell on her. The terror on her face bespoke of a monstrous demon crashing her to the earth, pinning her in it's gray and black plastic arms and burying her in inky fabric folds to block out her view of the light until her mother could rush around to pull the beast off her and scoop her into loving, warm only-like-mommy-has arms. But the loving embrace could not quell the cries and horror-stricken tears from gushing down her little pink cheeks.

I was slightly annoyed but sent forgiving love to her and her mom because, well, I've been there (on both sides). There's just no getting around the fact that babies get scared a lot, and cry and... well this is how they learn that monstrous strollers really aren't so monsterous after all. Breathing deeply, I looked around to see if others were sending over empathy or stabbingly angry looks.

My eyes fixed on a woman dressed in fashionable black tights, a black tight-fitting sweater with a nicely jaunty, off-the-hip belt that - if it wasn't leopard skin, it might as well have been. Her olive skin and perfectly frosted long hair framed large golden hoop earrings. I didn't see whether she had gorgeously painted nails but I bet she had those too. As she got up to paw in her purse her phone rang and I watched, mesmerized as she put it to her ear. The place was hard to hold a cell phone conversation in before the little one started yelling and I can only imagine she couldn't hear anything with the squawky little kid at full volume. Nevermind that, the woman - phone to ear - turned and walked over to the miserable little ball of screaming toe-headed imp. My energy was already building to be mad at her for sharply criticizing the sad little human when she picked up a small pumpkin off the table, smiled a stunning smile at the little one and waved, all the while, talking on the phone. The baby abruptly stopped screaming. It was magic. The woman handed the pumpkin to the child and snagged another one as her business transaction came to a close. Handing the now-delighted child the other pumpkin, she closed her phone, gave a little winky smile to the baby and her mother and headed back to gather her things to leave.

Happy two year olds are a joy. I felt it all through the restaurant.

A little while later I was deep in conversation and happened to notice that adorably, bubbing-over-with-happiness child riding in her stroller and clutching two little pumpkins as though they were the Queen's treasures. And they were treasures, her well-earned reward for allowing herself to release her fear and terror and accept the loving gifts of a total stranger who needed to take a phone call.

How many lives would I touch if I confronted every annoyance and angry moment with love and acceptance of what is? How many anxious people could I soothe if I dug deep enough into the well of love living in my heart to dole it out instead of annoying looks and tense shoulders? I don't know, but this woman who had her call and quiet too has challenged me to find out. I cant' wait to find the next crying baby in my life. How about you?

Photo Credit: This is my dad at in his new little cowboy outfit. It's one of the few truly happy photos I have of him as a child. I treasure it for the joy in his heart that day.

Note to readers: My musings seem to be turning inward, perhaps as my travel schedule subsides for now. So don't be surprised if the spiritual and some armchair psychology begins to trump the travel on this blog for a while. Who said life journeys were consistent? I'm just following the path where it leads and exploring what is before me in order to move on.

"Be Here Now. Live in the Present. Live in the Moment." So goes common advice from the life coach, the therapist and the spiritual guide. There really isn't anywhere you can turn anymore without some enlightened someone urging you to put aside worries of tomorrow and yesterday in order to concentrate on making the precious moment in time you occupy RIGHT NOW full and completely experienced. The theory is that when your mind and heart are in the present moment – even the painful moment - you are not wasting energy on things you can't control. And by achieving emotional and psychic energy efficiency – mindful of the present at the expense of the past and the future - you will live a fulfilled and happy life.

Riiiiight.

Who are these people? Don’t’ they battle all the Past and Future Stress Monsters of the modern world? Don’t they struggle to pay down credit thrown at them in past times of economic "abundance" and which threatens their future? Aren't they distracted by anxiety over whether they’ll ever meet Mr./Ms. Right tomorrow or in another decade? Don’t they have children to worry about getting into college? Aren’t they anxious about our soldiers and how many more must die? Don’t they have illnesses or know people with horrible diseases eating them alive and who may never even have a future? Do they even live in the world or are they all just closet monks? Oh, please! This philosophy seems like it was developed on an ancient Buddhist mountaintop far removed from our modern reality.

Well, even though it’s very possible this philosophy was dreamed in some quiet temple - sans kids running around or cell phones ringing - through personal trial and error I have come to believe that Living in the Present is not only possible in the modern chaos of worries, but necessary.

My journey into the Present started many years ago. It wasn’t so much an event that awoke me as it was a realization that I had achieved everything I’d set out to achieve – a good career, a wonderful family, a nice house etc., but I wasn’t happy. There was always something ‘wrong,’ some problem, something keeping me from just enjoying a Moment in Time. It occurred to me that if all those achievements I’d sacrificed the Present Moment for all those years couldn’t make me happy, perhaps I wasn’t capable of happiness. And this idea scared the bejezzus out of me. I realized that if I didn't find a way to be happy in the Moment, I was going to lose the Moment entirely, and take my family down with me or drive them away.

The good news was that this scared me into starting my journey to wholeness; the bad news is that when I awoke to this new path, I found myself smack in the middle of the Forest of Emotional Instability, surround by EmoMonsters of many shapes and sizes. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Presence would become my best Monster defense and ultimately my way out of the Forest entirely.

One of my fairy godparents appeared in the guise of a corporate trainer who gave a room full of us Fortune 100 employees a ballpoint pen and a group exercise called “Be Here Now.” I would have dismissed the message completely (see above cynical rant) if it hadn't been for the gentle soul who delivered it. Learning more about how he struggled with "issues" in his life and yet still managed to pass on wisdom and peace to people he met on his journey made me look more seriously at his message of Presence.

And I’m so glad I did because a little farther into my quest I ran up against debilitating fears, doubts, worries and insecurities that attacked me like slatheringly ferocious beasts, all ganging up into one big Gigantic Monster sucking at my confidence and drive. Even though these frightening demons eventually turned out to be a large gang of annoying little gremlins and imps, in the middle of these beastly battles being Present in the Moment became my Monster Spray. On days when the Fear Demon tried to paralyze me with every imaginable concern for what had gone wrong in the past and might go wrong in the future, I found that if I sprayed myself with Presence - focusing on only those things that might go wrong in the Moment - I could focus enough to make sure the things that HAD to go right, did so. Covered in Presence I could function as a mom, wife and employee because I’d sapped energy from the Monster’s scariest weapon – overwhelming worries over things I couldn’t control.

But it turned out that Presence had only weakened the beasties, not gotten rid of them altogether. I still had to let them go. This was a bit confusing for me until I succumbed to the logic of my inability to “fix” them and simply gave them up. I let all the things I could not control go, handing them off to - other things.
    
Expunging the energy I was sending into worrying about the past, I wrote over 100 apology letters and angry rants (which I didn't send) just to purge those old wounds and gremlins out of me. Then I gave my worries about the future to God, angels, and myself in my future state. I gave the future back to the future, sending it forward in time and out of me.

With every letter-to-put-the-past-to-rest and every worry-i sent-forward, the DemonBeast before me shrank. Once I’d fully defused the Fear Demon’s past-and-future-worry-power, the stupid git had shrunk down to gremlin size and started kicking my shins. It was then I realized that by living in the Present Moment, unparalyzed by the weight of things that were inherently unmanageable, I could function better emotionally and take on the little bite-sized Gremlin Fears and Worry Imps one-by-one as they appeared as Present Problems. And so I emerged from the Forest of Emotional Instability and began my true journey to wholeness.

Today, I live a great life with plenty of things to worry about that I don't spend too much energy on. Living in the Present has made me happier and wholer and given me protection against the most terrifying of Demons, but it hasn't gotten rid of all of my problems. Life is full of Monsters and my job is to simply deal with them one at a time as they sneak up behind me, inside me and/or blocking my path. And Monsters or not, life is still an ongoing balance of the happiest of Moments and the saddest as well.

There’s more to this story, though. Having found my way out of the Forest of Emo-Monsters and armed with my new Monster Spray of Presence, I realize that learning to Be Here Now has actually changed me in some other – extremely fundamental ways. I’ll elaborate in my next post, but in some ways these other changes may have been more frightening to me than the Fear Demons that came lunging out of the dark. It occurs to me that the Worry Monsters may actually have been protecting me from what I feared the most, from the thing that Living in the Present transformed me into.

(to be continued...)

Web Site Strategy ~ $25,000

Happy Board of Directors ~ $100,000+

Ah-ha! Moment ~ Priceless






I'm a business person. A marketer. I have always believed - even taught - that price should be set according to value. Value, of course, is a very relative concept but this has never stopped me from managing the economics of it, evaluating costs vs. benefits to set prices. This methodology has helped me put a monetary value on all sorts of things, including my own consulting services. It's how the business world works. And it has worked well for me, until one day I evoked in a client something truly priceless - a genuine, eyes-wide, heart-opening, spontaneously smiling, world-view-shifting, light-bulb shining, Ah-ha! Moment.

Oops.

That sound you hear is my brain breaking.

Why? Because my client's Ah-ha! Moment - spurred by something I'd done - occurred within a nanosecond of time and had impossible-to-measure-in-the-moment consequences, and yet the expression on their faces made it clear that there was a lot of value in that nanosecond's insight that hadn't yet proven its worth. Because I couldn't ascribe a "price" based on resources (i.e., time, materials, effort etc.) and results (i.e., profit, savings, capacity etc.) - the two primary units of value -  to something so clearly valuable, my brain really has to bend a bit to think about how to "price" what is "priceless". Being a pragmatic businesswoman, I quickly turned my ability to evoke Ah-ha! Moments into part of my value equation as a rationale for charging reasonably high fees (though not as high as many.) Incorporating Ah-ha! skills, my business objective, became to "under-promise and over-deliver" by promising a strategy and delivering a strategy+Ah-ha! Moment.

But here's my Ah-ha! Moment after working this way for a while: sure, my clients value the Ah-has! But I'm learning that I value them at least as much, if not more. I value my ability to produce income which helps me feed and care for my body and family, but when I tap a creative place in myself to help produce an Ah-ha! Moment, it soothes and delights my spirit. If money feeds my body, then Ah-has! feed my soul.

Soul-feeding is not something we usually discuss in business circles, but it should be. Business Schools crank out capable managers who can monitor and moderate resource expenditures against objectives and plans. All good, except that truly outstanding businesses employ and nurture other qualities as well, including creativity and values. Business types call creativity "out-of-the-box thinking," but that's a bunch of hooey.

Creativity, so key to excellent businesses and happy souls, is not a "thinking thing," it's a "spirit thing," which is also rarely discussed in the Board Room. By "spirit" I mean that ethereal connection between the mind, heart and outside world that isn't entirely your brain or your body or "the Universe", but an ongoing conversation between them that you are only just barely aware that you are participating in. Listening in on that dialog - and participating more consciously - allows we humans to bring creativity and fresh approaches into our world, the world we shape and measure and value. But the ability to work creatively so that it enhances the business value of our output still challenges traditional economics, because creativity is simply not an economically measurable activity.

This is my second Ah-ha! There ARE no economics for the creative act itself.

Yes, that is my brain still breaking.

Those who create for a living - artists, designers and writers - know this challenge well and have found various business models to capitalize on their creative skills. These typically involve work-for-hire scenarios which are dollars-per-hour based or (maybe more often) purely results-oriented, putting a market-based price tag on something regardless of how much time and effort it took to create.

Making jewelry is my first experience with the latter business model. When I went to price my first set of earrings, I did my traditional business math and immediately blanched. No WAY could i charge for my time - working on-and-off for days to arrange little sparkly stones until they came into the perfect alignment to make me (and others, I hoped) happy. I realized, doing a quick market survey of my earring-buying life experience, that I would be lucky to be able to cover the price of my materials. As the economics of my situation became clear, I briefly contemplated simply not making and selling jewelry, but something stopped me.

And this was my third Ah-Ha! The money didn't matter as much as the joy I took in creating beauty, and sometimes seeing that joy in the faces of others who also found it beautiful.

It was at that moment that I truly understood how important it was for me to engage in a creative act that fed my spirit - acknowledged my soul's connection to that barely-perceived dialog with the Universe. More than just acknowledging the connection, my decision to keep investing in my own creativity opened me up to more spiritual connection, allowing my soul to draw upon it, flowing it's energy into me and fueling ongoing inspiration on all parts of my life. I became addicted to creativity and am now committed to it regardless of the really bad economics of it. I'm proud of my upside-down jewelry-making business plan (which I've asked my husband to help me invest in for the tax write-off), because it is an ongoing commitment to feeding parts of me that have long gone hungry.

These realizations are why I'm more intrigued with creativity than craft these days, but it has only made me hungrier to find ways to infuse the professional work I do - which does have measurable economic value - with more and more creativity. In my perfect world, I get paid money to engage in spiritually fulfilling, shameless acts of creativity. After all, if creatively derived Ah-ha's! are valuable to me, I bet they're valuable to others - like my clients - as well. I'm still working on that particular business plan, but the relevant Ah-ha! here is that I now know what I want. And, once enlightened as to my objective, I'm usually very good at achieving it.

Stay tuned.

Photocredits: "Aura" Sculpture by Sean Hennessy, (c) 2008 (with permission)
This mixed media art is one of many wonderful pieces on Sean's Etsy site, Scenic Artisans
"Let There Be Light" Quickdraw sketch by Block Party Prints on Etsy.

Warning: Overdone analogy ahead. But it's more fun this way.

Do you know your demons? I do. I know many of them so well that I talk to them, inviting them to tea. We have conversations like old friends.

Until recently, I considered this level of familiarity with my dark side a strength. I mean, by getting to know them, I’ve been able to see them for what they really are – horridly distorted imaginings, most of whom turn out to be silly little creatures camping it up around candles that cast monstrous shadows. One by one I’ve been throwing back the black curtains where they hide to reveal them; and one by one they’ve been turning up as little imps and gremlins and – sometimes the most heartbreakingly wounded parts of me. I’m still finding them hiding in the rafters and walls of my mentally haunted house, but after years of work, I’ve finally got most of them showing up for tea to participate in a slightly more socially constructive activity than trashing my subconscious. (And those that aren’t at the table yet will at least sneak in to steal the cookies.)

But here’s the catch. Even now that they will deign to sit at my knee and sip tea with me - no longer hiding in the dark and building up my fears and anxieties into paralyzing fantasies of doom – I find that some of the little buggers are still working against my interests. That’s my big ah-ha today; they’re smaller and less threatening, but - they’re still here!

For example, I’m no longer afraid of people telling me I’m an idiot. This is not because some people aren’t willing to do so, but I no longer let worry about lack of approval stop me from meeting new people, keep me from speaking my truth or draw me into emotionally abusive relationships (personally, professionally or otherwise). Despite having called my Approval Gremlin out of hiding a few years back, however, I did recently notice an anonymous voice in my head coming up with excuses for me not to make a certain phone call... It was insidiously suggesting that I was, indeed, an idiot. “Maybe they haven’t returned your call because you’re really not all that good. They were just being nice when you met them, and you're a fool to believe otherwise….heh, heh, heh...”

WTF? Where did THAT voice come from? Upon conscious investigation of said little voice, I discovered the Approval Gremlin, sitting at my knee with his tea cup and crumpet raised, sporting the silliest, most conniving and fakingly innocent grin on his face.
 
So, I picked up the phone and made the call. The person took my call, explained why he’d been silent and invited me to call back in a few days. Ha! I’m sticking out my tongue at the little Approval Gremlin with this very blog post! Little bastard.

So anyway, for those of you interested in confronting your demons, I’m putting mine up for adoption. Perhaps you’d like a little Approval Gremlin to scamper into your dark corners and drag out the little creatures you’re trying to scare up? Mine’s available immediately. I’ll give him to you! I’ll even give you his tea cup and half eaten crumpet! Ok. Just kidding, I don’t really want to sic the little beastie on you. (Just imagine if they teamed up!) But I will refer you to a worth-reading blog post last week by Joy Mazzola on Owning Pink about confronting your demons. It’s a great run-down of all the things hiding in our mentally haunted houses, just waiting to sabotage our best efforts at living confidently and with courage. I recommend it especially in the wake of Halloween, after the Monsters have left our streets and come back inside to rest.

Good luck with your demons and may they all turn up to be no more than annoying little buggers by the time you tame them into sitting with you for tea.

PS- I haven’t been posting lately because every time I put pen to paper I end up hacking up a literary hair ball. Pardon the image but trust me, sometimes silence is better.

I just got back from a week in London and Paris. It’s been 17 years since I’ve been to Europe, the last trip being when my oldest son was a bun in the oven. I’ll never forget feeling his first kick while I lay exhausted in a hotel in Beaune, France in July, 1992. His mighty foot felt like a tiny bubble popping against the inside of my five-month pregnant stomach. I laughed out loud because it tickled me – literally – and the delight on my husband’s face is with me to this day. It’s my best memory of France – ever.

This trip, I was older and joyfully sans-teenagers. (Yes! The house is still standing!) Because I could, I pushed myself through practically every room in the British Museum, the Louvre and a few other places… chasing memories of my pre-motherhood days. I didn’t find memories, though. I found a new kind of freedom. I zigged and zagged my way through culture, shopping, café-sitting, a little writing and even made it to an evensong service at Westminster Abbey to sit quietly and listen to angels singing among the ceiling vaults.

I sculpted and morphed my itinerary on the fly. It was fabulous to revel in my constantly changing mind. I flip-flopped back and forth – Dali exhibit or Hyde Park? Grass or Art? Grass won out when I determined last minute that the extra schlepping (and £30) of Dali would wear me down so I turned right instead of left on my walk to the Tube and ditched (amazing, I’m sure) abstract art for the Elfin Oak. I don’t remember ever feeling so unprogrammed.

I wrestled through my long-standing internal debate about classical vs. modern art, but getting hopelessly and happily lost in the eternal halls of the Louvre, and meandering the orderly spaces of the Musee D’Orsay finally settled it. I found myself standing transfixed before elegant bodies sculpted by the ancients but easily moseyed past religion-heavy Renaissance paintings (and I don’t count the Mona Lisa because you can’t even see it for the cell phone clicking hoards.) By contrast, I choked up the moment I entered the van Goch room but found myself trying way too hard to appreciate Degas' and Rodin’s roughened black figures. I am finally able to declare my preferences! I am an unabashed fan of Greek/Roman physical forms and an absolute fangirl for modern painting from Cezanne forward - the more abstract the better (though I do have a very soft heart for 18th Century Kyoto Japanese brushwork as well).

My husband and I had a fabulous time revisiting some old Parisian memories we shared in and around his work meetings. I snuck in texts to stay in tune with the kids and just enough email to keep from being overwhelmed on my return. I went on little hunts for my personal favorites, bypassing  European fashions (which don’t look good on me anyway) for tea, chocolate, beads and fine writing notebooks and pens. I tried to be a happy American and noticed that I got fewer French eyebrow-queries than I recall from years gone by. I don’t think America’s international standing is any greater in the world these days, so I will declare this a personal victory for overcoming my inability to speak their language with friendliness and kindness. (Even the English hotel clerk didn’t understand half of what I said and vice versa. But we did have a fascinating conversation about “underpants”, “trousers” and the Bermuda Triangle.)

The ethnic blending in London especially was amazing and encouraging with respect to the future of the human race. Skin colors blended into beautiful soft brown hues passing me on the streets and in the Tube. Most of them spoke the King’s English and when they didn’t, the happy chatter of many languages turned into a fascinating song of humanity, lilting from French to Romanian (I think) to Japanese to Spanish and on and on and on.

The whole time, I felt so happy to be alive on this earth. With all its strife and war and misunderstanding, there is so much beauty behind us and walking with us every day. And I was happy with me. I arrived home jet lagged and had only enough brain cells to do my laundry (well, get it started anyway), and make a Manga-Me (turns out that making a Manga-Me takes virtually NO brain cells. Who knew?) I tried to make a real me and then for fun made a “wacky me”. Funny, they really don’t look that different. I guess the real me is good enough these days

                    
Perhaps it shouldn’t have taken me a trip half way around the world (ok, not half, but far) to find myself happy in my own walking shoes, but “should’s” feel pretty irrelevant. I was happy to find a little piece of myself I haven’t lost walking with me in the streets of two of the greatest cities on the planet.  And I am happy to be home.

Being on an island, you’re always running into edges, no matter what direction you go, and so on our recent trip to Hawaii I couldn’t stop noticing edges everywhere I turned.

Twenty years ago when I visited Oahu we traced the edge of the island and found – predictably – that the land constantly ran into the sea and there was no escape. I briefly experienced “island fever,” which made me think of island edges as a form of natural containment. Being an explorer at heart I am naturally tempted to push the edges and “back then” this meant getting on a plane after some less-than-stunning snorkeling. But this time we did not stop at Oahu, but pushed on to Kauai. On Kauai the idea of containment is simply ludicrous, despite very stark and stunning edges around every bend.

On Kauai I rediscovered edges.

The Kauaian edges between land and sea are captivating, a fascinating blend of dangerous elemental collisions where the sea pummels unforgiving volcanic residue, the edge of the great blue deep perpetually smashing down on black rocks and then sucking the weaker pebbles, secretly pulling them back below the powerful eddies of its undertow. Sitting on the edge of this ongoing battle is a favorite pastime of mine, and on Kauai I reveled in it, especially on a not-so-hidden, but still-hard-to-reach beach along the Na Pali Coast (Hanakapi'ai). It’s impossible not to be aware of the risky nature of edges when you perch between where the waves break; survival tactics differ so dramatically on either side of you that the importance of staying firmly on one side or the other becomes paramount. This heightened awareness is itself a gift, however, and walking the rooted and rocky cliff path to this beach, exploring its caves and then climbing some of its rocky cliffs focused me on gorgeous detail I might otherwise have missed.

Looking carefully at the micro details of this massive edge transformed it for me - from a containment barrier to an adventure.

I became so conscious of the fact that I was on the edge – in this case between land and sea – that I began to observe my reactions to other edges as we explored the island further. Not all edges are sharp and violent, and many roads and trails we followed along steep cliffs were gentle and curving. Pondering as we traveled I realized that over the last two decades I have come to appreciate edges – even the dangerous ones. I now find them freeing as a delineation between things, the recognition of which offers me choices – to push beyond, to retreat from, and to follow along for the sheer joy of simultaneously living on both sides.

Nowhere has this constant tracing of danger been more evident than in my career, the life of a consultant being a perpetual dance along the edge between wealth and destitution. Wandering the edges in Kauai I realized that I have become comfortable exploring the consulting edge, comfortable to the point of truly enjoying it and perhaps more importantly gaining faith in my ability to navigate its gentle dips and weaves as well as its sheer, heart stopping drop-offs. While I won’t claim that my husband has developed the same love of the consulting edge, my comfort on this edge is giving me the courage to take my practice in new directions and the patience to let parts of these businesses evolve, to explore their natural contour as the waves of client need pound out weaker spots to reveal firm and solid capability at the core of me.

I found other edges in our island explorations surprisingly interesting, uncovering little treasures in bead stores, for example. Though not particularly “edgy” from the outside, once they got inside me, some of these little bits of bone and stone probed my relationship to beauty, pushing against a containment barrier I hadn’t known was there. Compelled to buy certain baubles because they were simply lovely, and despite the fact that I couldn’t imagine wearing them myself, I realized that my creativity has developed a habit of bumping up against my own consumer mentality, reflecting a moderated and practical aesthetic. Would it go in my house? Does it go with my wardrobe? Is it a good value for my money? These questions assume an economically necessary, but still narcissistic edge - a constraint around my own perception of beauty that is not necessarily even there in any ultimate sense.

The beauty of a lavender jade Chinese bead and a dragon carved bone pendant in particular challenged me to unleash my creative energy in new ways and explore their edges for the simple joy of doing so, absent the pragmatic question of whether I or anyone else I knew might wear them. After all, other people’s houses are different than mine, as are their wardrobes and value equations. What I if I lifted my personal limitations on which kinds of beauty I pursued? What if I followed the edges suggested by a lovely piece simply for the joy of it? What might I create then? I suppose these questions demonstrate that I’m learning to explore the edges of my pear.

In the end, our trip to Kauai, while offering the boyz many waterlogged hours of body surfing, gave me a new chance to explore the edges of things. In fact, I’m well over the edge in a few areas of my life and my consciousness about just how far I’ve come since their crossing is now a little sharper. This excites me and my commitment to explore these new territories leaves me eager to find the new edges ahead.
 
Life is truly a journey and I am truly an explorer. With a little luck and a little skill I hope to keep finding edges to plunge beyond and to dance along. Want to join me?

Photo credits: Me! (well, except for the pic of me, which is hubby’s handywork.) The pic of the boy is my eldest son, and adventurer in his own right.