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Happy June 1!
In honor of "hump month"
we're
taking a vigilante look at self care. As you'll see below,
over the past month we've experienced countless
reminders that ultimately, we have to learn to be our
own best care takers. Lending new meaning to
mayday or m'aidez (french for "help me!"), the call to
responsibility seems to be everywhere.
As we reflect on our year, we're thrilled to report that
we have more WE! Clara Hori who started our
presence in Los Angeles two years ago has just
relocated to Montevideo, Uruguay to represent
Balance in Latin America and is already serving
clients! Also driving our global presence, Miami-
based Tom Connelly is joining us to head up Global
Client Development. As a 20 year management
consultant and a visionary in educational executive
travel in SE Asia, we've collaborated with Tom on
countless initiatives and are thrilled to add him to our
team of Corporate Gurus. Reach out to him at
tom@balanceintegration.com to say "Hi"!
If the year has passed as fleetingly for you as it has for
us, it's time for a little time out. Push your
butt back into your seat, lean back and take a breath.
If you're really committed, print this out and go find a
quiet place to sit, read and be. No matter how you
reflect upon it all, we invite you to help yourself by
becoming the master of your own state of being.
Be well,
Tevis Gale
Founder
Balance Integration
| « Lead Better - Joy To You & Me! » |
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Gandhi advised that until you find God in the person in
front of you, you must travel no further. Happening
upon this guy and his fish on a long
drive in the Smoky Mountains, I was reminded that we
also have to look within.
If the G-word is troublesome to you, fill in with another
huge, blank, encompassing concept. One like
kindness, beauty, compassion, wisdom - a word is
beyond analysis. Because it doesn't take images of
the christian Christ, Allah or Yahweh to find a lesson
that resonates. And if you are willing to give Gandhi
the benefit of the doubt, God is always worth
finding.
In this case, we found it driving down a twisty
mountain road just on the boarder between North
Carolina and Tennessee and stopped to observe a
fight for dear life. In this fight the fisherman above had
hooked his catch, and she was fighting for hers. Her
fight was one of those epic struggles. I-got-her, I-lost-
her, I-got-her, I-lost-her ran the comments from the
fisherman. No romance, after more than a half-hour of
drama the fisherman successfully pulled her from the
water and we caught this picture. Happy to see his joy,
the part of me that likes to think meat comes from
packages lamented his success and was quickly
cheered when he put her back in the water to go
FREE.
Within seconds the oddest thing happened...
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| « Think Better - Apocalyptically Happy Now » |
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In a recent study reported by the New York Times
(April 27, 2008), current MBA students ranked their
priorities for work. Surprise: compensation was not
#1. Unlike post-boomer predecessors, millenials
apparently have a different set of appetites. To the new
best and brightest, the most important element of
work is "challenging responsibilities" at 64%, followed
by a closely tied compensation 48% and worklife
balance 45%.
What's happened? Since boomers joined the ranks of
the working public in the 70's and 80's, a lot has
changed in how the
up and coming establishment see and experience the
world, and it's taking some adjustment to make the
two worlds meet rather than collide. Heck, Balance
Integration even wrote an article on exactly that for and
upcoming issue of CIO magazine, offering coaching-
based dialogue models for engagement and
contribution.
But among the BalanceBreak community we can
come clean with a bigger question: who is to say what
ranks as a challenge and what doesn't? Think about
it: isn't it a huge challenge to deal with beauraucracy
or politics? Isn't it a huge responsibility to find
meaning in what can be called the "routine"
or "tedium" of everyday life? Isn't it a challenging
responsibility to turn your life into a meaning filled
experience no matter what's going on or not going on?
Michigan homeboy Francis Ford Coppola (pictured
above) says - forget perfection, any job becomes a job
you hate. As he explored in Apocalypse Now...
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| « Feel Better - Lifeguard On Duty? » |
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If you think self care and worklife balance is for
wussies, we just met with the American Diabetes
Association
and learned some good reasons for you to take
strong action
in support of your well being:
- Every 21 seconds someone is diagnosed with
diabetes in the US.
- Diabetes represents 11% of US healthcare
expenditures, or $174 Billion dollars
- And if you're charged with fiscal fitness in your
organization, it's important to know that the average
employee costs for employees with diabetes are 2.4
times higher than employees without diabetes.
- By the end of this decade, 1 in 3 employees will
have diabetes. If employees are minorities, that
number goes up to 1 in 2.
Type 2 diabetes is the most common in the US and is
a state that emerges when the systems in your body
go out of whack. Basically the sugar in your body
stops responding to insulin, the chemical that
normally breaks it down. It's that simple. When you eat
food, the body breaks down all of the sugars and
starches into glucose, which is the basic fuel for the
cells in the body. Insulin takes the sugar from the
blood into the cells. When glucose builds up in the
blood instead of going into cells, it ...
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| American Diabetes Association/Balance Integration - NYC EVENT |
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Summer ADA Work/Life Event in
NYC!"
GET THE SCOOP IN PERSON! If you're in the New
York area - come to the American Diabetes
Associations's summer work/life wellness
event.
Held in the city on July 16th, Balance Integration will
be there on the panel to discuss ways people and
companies can adopt sustainable success practices
to keep employee and organization functioning!
Call or write Dorothy Harper
dharper@diabetes.org, 212 -725-4925, ext 3414 or
Charnee Skeete , cskeete@diabetes.org, ext. 3416 for
more information.
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| Save The Date - Fall Corporate Yoga Training at Omega! |
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What started out as a simple dream to take yoga's
tools into corporations is now a 6 year old
company with global presence and over over 360
trained teachers serving clients ranging from
American Express to Yahoo.
Whether you'd
like to be a part of the corporate yoga
adventure or just want to learn how you can bring yoga
into your organization, come join us at Omega for a 5
day immersion in Corporate Yoga.
From September 14-19 we'll explore the following:
- The yoga/work connection
- Legalities and liabilities
- Communicating and applying yoga philosophy
and tools on and off the mat
- How the workplace necessitates an adaptive
process to WORK where people WORK
The September dates mean Fall will JUST be getting
under way - a fantastic time to build new skills as a
professional and renew your own sense of connection
between work and life.
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What We Can
On various occasions we've taken groups of
executives over to Myanmar, Cambodia and
Thailand for a first-hand look at culture,
challenges and consciousness. The recent cyclone
and it's damage calls forth countless remembered
experiences of the sweetness of humanity
everywhere. The picture above just one example from
our first trip there in 2002.
Whether you have travelled to these places or simply
feel enrolled by the images of suffering we have seen
so frequently from around the world, please DO
something.
Make a pledge of support to an international
organization; light a candle and say a prayer each
day; or simply allow yourself greater appreciation of all
the forms of goodness in your own life;
whatever you can do, DO it. Do it for your own
recognition and gratitude and do it for all the people
who go without.
I want to DO something!
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