Project Creative Vision

Sen. Harkin: Time to End Discrimination against Alternative Health Care Practices

Practitioners Must Lobby Congress to Make it Happen

By Daphne White, CHTP

Note: This is a guest post that is part of the discussion on the Summit on Integrative Medicine

It was not your usual Senate hearing.  Testifying on behalf of integrative medicine before Senators Harkin, Mikulski and Enzi at the Senate HELP Committee were four leading physicians:  Mehmet Oz, Dean Ornish, Andrew Weil and Mark Hyman.  Testifying on behalf of the status quo was … no one!  That’s an unusual set-up on Capitol Hill, where panels are usually set up to represent “both points of view.”  Lobbyists for the medical establishment were present to watch the proceedings and plot their next steps, but they didn’t have a seat at the table.  Not this time, anyway.

By any measure, it was a watershed week:   the Feb. 26 HELP Committee hearing was the second in four days to focus on integrative medicine.  And the very next day, Sen. Harkin traveled across town to the Institute of Medicine, to address the 500-strong Summit on Integrative Medicine.

“Clearly, the time has come to ‘think anew’ and to ‘disenthrall ourselves’ from the dogmas and biases that have made our current health care system – based overwhelmingly on conventional medicine – in so many ways wasteful and dysfunctional,” Harkin told both groups, borrowing some quotes from President Lincoln’s 1862 address to Congress.

“It is time to end the discrimination against alternative health care practices.  It’s time for America’s health care system to emphasize coordination and continuity of care, patient-centeredness, and prevention.  And it’s time to adopt an integrative approach that takes advantage of the very best scientifically based medicines and therapies, whether conventional or alternative.”

Speaking to the IOM Summit on Monday, Harkin said, “I have just four words for you:  Our time has come!”  He added that IOM visitors to Washington might think “it looks like the same old Washington, but it’s not.” 

Building Sisterhood Conference & Retreat

Next month I will be speaking at an event that I'm really excited about:  Building Sisterhood Conference & Retreat.  The event is hosted by Danette Boone, Founder and CEO of D. Boone & Associates.  I will be speaking on a subject that's become near and dear to my heart: how we can manage our energy - physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual - to take our lives to a whole new level. 

I'm thrilled to be collaborating with Danette, because she and I share a vision of educating, inspiring, and empowering people to live their best, most purposeful lives.  And I'm thrilled about speaking on this particular topic, because it combines my two passions:  holistic health and purposeful living.  

I had a chance to interview Danette recently and encourage you to listen to our conversation.  Danette herself has chosen to follow her passion into the life of entrepreneurship and women's empowerment, rather than following a more stable and predictable career path.  Her story fits perfectly with the theme of this blog.  You can listen to the interview here:

In the interview, Danette talks about how she came to start her company, why she believes it's so important to live on purpose, and how the most lasting change comes from within. 

So take a listen, and do spread the word about the event.  It promises to be truly exciting.  Here are the details:

Building Sisterhood Conference & Retreat

Feburary 20-21, 2009

Sheraton Columbia Town Center Hotel, Columbia MD

Theme:  "Beautiful Sister": Focusing on the Total Woman

My topic:  "Managing Your Energy to Turbo Charge Your Life"

The Chemistry of Careers

Well, it's been a while since I've written here on the blog.  The class I was teaching and the planning and scheming for future workshops took over and now we're here, at the end of November... 

One career-related piece of wisdom that emerged from my recent (and ongoing) excursion into holistic health is that, apparently, a career you detest is as bad for your health, from the biochemical standpoint, as consuming that public enemy number one - refined sugar.  Apparently, negative emotions that result from a job we dislike produce similar chemical reactions in our bodies as acid-ash foods - foods that create an environment that is conducive to inflammation and disease.  In contrast, alkaline foods (and, it turns out, positive emotions) create an environment that is conducive to health and vitality. (For more on the subject, see Dr. Theodore Baroody's classic "Alkalize or Die.") 

I've always felt that when we suppress our natural creativity and true gifts for the sake of a career that leaves us unhappy, we harm our health.  I never realized though that there were actual chemical reactions taking place that were, in fact, ruining our health at the very basic, biochemical level.  Doesn't it kind of put the question of career change in much starker terms?  If you hate your job but keep staying because it provides you with "stability" and "security," you might as well ask yourself:  How much for my health? 

Anyway, have a happy Thanksgiving everyone and see you back here in a few days!

Laid Off from Lehman? Now Is Your Chance

"Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to."- Alan Keightley

With Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch and AIG barely squeaking by, I thought I'd drop a line to the employees of those companies who are now on the outs or are awaiting their fate. 

Believe me, I know what it's like to be part of a collapsing organization.  When you lose your job because the company you've worked for so hard collapses, it may seem as if your world is crashing all around you.  It's worse when it happens because of the dishonesty, greed, and incompetence of the management, whose sole preoccupation in these last moments is saving their own hide.

But here's a small bit of a silver lining:  Even though your job is over, your life isn't.

And here's an even bigger truth:  You are now completely free to do whatever you want with your life.

Natalie Coughlin: "Define Success for You"

Olympians have a lot to teach us in helping us reach for and achieve our dreams.  Their stories are a source not just of inspiration but also of invaluable strategies that are applicable to both our personal and professional lives, no matter what we do in life and what we are trying to achieve.

These strategies are as much about the mind as they are about the body.  The things you say to yourself, your mindset, your ability to focus on that which will give you energy and strength are all key components of your personal success - whatever "success" means to you.   

JoAnn Dahlkoetter, a sports psychologist, has a great book on the subject called "Your Performing Edge," which I expect to be reviewing in the coming weeks.  Meanwhile, as an introduction to the topic, I wanted to pass along a few inspirational quotes from women athletes that landed in my mailbox this morning courtesy Oprah's Spirit Newsletter.

Read them and be inspired - but don't stop there.  Set the intention to read the advice of these athletes and actually take it to heart.  In other words, don't just be inspired.  Be transformed.  This week, choose to pick one thing you could do to bring you closer to your dream.  Do the same next week and the week after, and let momentum develop.

And here's a tip for making this a success.  Imagine that you are on an Olympian's schedule.  Imagine that you only have four years to achieve your goal and that in your entire life, you'll only have 2-3 opportunities (your personal equivalents of the Olympic games) to make your dream come true.  Let that fill you with the sense of urgency needed to finally give your dream a priority. 

With that, here's your Monday morning dose of inspiration.

Finding Clues to What You're Passionate About in Your "Righteous Indignation"

I've been thinking a lot about passion again lately, perhaps because it's a question that's coming up for a lot of my clients, and also because I myself am in the process of incorporating some new things I'm passionate about into my life and work.  At the moment, I have a front-row seat to passion in career, so it's time I shared.

(It's a long post, but that's what happens when you get into a subject you really care about...  Feel free to skip to the end of the post, where I'm offering some questions that may help you figure out how the things that are causing you some "righteous indignation" may provide clues to what you're passionate about.)

I became a career coach because I couldn't believe how many of us wasted our precious lives dying slow deaths at jobs that numbed and drained their spirit.  Once I knew the difference between barely living and being fully alive and inspired by my work, I couldn't believe that everybody else didn't live that way.  Suddenly I was struck by the thought of how different the world could be if everyone channeled their energy into something truly meaningful and purposeful.

Result: My personal frustration with multiple careers that paid the bills and fit conventional notions of success and prestige but did nothing to nourish me and help me fulfill my life's potential transformed into something bigger:  it became a career in itself.

Today, I am still driven by this vision.  And I am also discovering a new source of frustration (read: passion) within me.   

Pangea Day: Making a Difference through the Power of Film

As stories of people following their own unique vision in life go, Jehane Noujaim's Pangea Day was truly inspiring.  As the four-hour event unfolded at the Letelier Theater in Washington, DC, and 1000 other locations around the globe, I found myself riveted by the short films it showcased - windows into human experience, portraits at once intimate, unique, and universal.  There was power in the simultaneous simplicity and depth of the stories.  There was power in the message that no matter how many walls divide us, we are all exactly the same and we are all searching for the same things in life. And there was power in the idea of a young woman making a difference simply by taking the courage to pursue her own path.

All of the film selections are available on the Pangea Day website.  Here are my personal favorites:

Dancing Queen, by Sumit Roy (filmed with a mobile camera)

Walleyball by Brent Hoff

I'll Wait for the Next One, by Philippe Orreindy

Mutual Recognition by Jehane Noujaim

Labor of Love or the Daily Grind?

Roget's Thesaurus offers some 50 synonyms for the word "work," of which most are overwhelmingly negative.  We as a society, apparently, abhor work and consider it to be a punishment.  We live for vacations, and we are obsessed with saving enough money for retirement so that we can spend our golden years, if not playing golf, then, at least, not working.

With all of this, it's hard to remember that work can be something else altogether - that it can be an expression of our essential self and a way for us to feel that we are making a contribution to the world.  We may believe that we'd rather not work, but the actual truth is that we still want to work - just not at the jobs we're at. When I ask my career-transition clients what it is that they are looking for in their new careers, the answer I hear most often is that they want to feel that they are making a difference, that their work is personally meaningful to them. 

And the truth is, those who say that their work gives them a sense of meaning report far greater sense of on-the-job satisfaction than those who don't.  In fact, the greatest levels in work satisfaction are achieved by those who view their work as a calling, rather than just a job or a career.

On Work, Passion, and Life Purpose

I've been bedeviled recently by the question of passion and work. It began with this thread on Lawrence Cheok's website, continued with a comment to this post here, and then spilled over into conversations with family and friends.

Every day I come across stories of people seeking to not just infuse their work with passion but to put passion at the very core of their work life.  But identifying our true passions can be harder than it seems. And what if our passions belong in a realm that can seem hard to integrate with the world of work – such as art or music or trekking in the great outdoors?