1. Arrange all books by the color of their spine [the side of the book] and by size. This works best for those who recall that the book was grey, green, or red and tan. And, it makes for artful display of books. Array the colors as they appear on the color wheel, so they naturally lead one color into the next.

2. With the next method, you number each book and use an Excel spreadsheet to track your books. Enter the number you’ve assigned the book, the book title, author, keywords, and location [i.e., living room book shelves]. As you add books, you add new numbers. If you’ve getting rid of a book, take its number and assign it to a new book. Replace the old book information with the new information on your spreadsheet. Searching for a title, author or keyword is a snap using this method.

3. The third choice is clustering your books like the library does, by topic, author, title, and/or alphabetically.

I encourage people to organize their books that works with their style of thinking. Some people are great at recalling authors, so arranging books by author may be their best solution. Others like the search feature an Excel spreadsheet offers.

Whatever method you select, stick with it, for that’s they key to staying organized.

Download audio file (KMorris021606.mp3)

Live a more contented life.

Know how to take action on what really matters to you.

Express that which is deep and meaningful in your life.

Dates:  8 consecutive Thursdays from April 1^st to May 21^st, 2010

Time:  12:00 PM to 1:30 PM at The Center (corner of Windom Pl.)

Location:    4321Wisconsin Ave, NW    Metro Redline: Tenleytown

The Workshops will enable you to:

Tune into the divine feminine fire - the source of inspiration within

Create a safe, secure haven for creative expression in your home

Bring the feminine into balance in your relationships

Express the feminine through your work and life

The program is being co-taught by Dr. Katherine Morris and Kris O’Shee.

Kris O’Shee, M.A., M.F.A., integrates movement, yoga, depth psychology,

and body-based psychotherapy. She is a licensed massage therapist

and is certified in gestalt psychotherapy. She has served on the faculty

of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine. A lifelong dancer, teacher, and

choreographer she has taught and performed throughout the US and

Europe and has a private practice in Washington, DC.

Class size will be limited. Register today.

Early registration discount:

by March 5th tuition: $120.

Register after March 5th tuition: $135.

The interior of the new location was pleasing enough at first glance. Trouble began when I tried to find the classrooms. There were no signs indicating their whereabouts. I guessed where they might be and eventually found them in a far off corner. My feeling was the store considered the sewing students an afterthought.  Worse yet, the classrooms are situated underneath the men’s weight-lifting area. Right. Imagine sitting at your sewing machine and hearing a 200 pound weight being dropped on the floor above! It required a lot of faith in the integrity of the strength of the floor.

The sewing students [almost all adults] are in the store every week for classes and regularly purchase fabric, sewing machines, and other lessons from the store.  Instead of using their space to cultivate and send a message of appreciation to these regular customers, the message they sent is: we don’t value you.

Sadly, I no longer take sewing classes there.

The Feng Shui 5 elements are the building blocks of the physical world. They are earth, metal, water, wood, and fire. Humans are made up energetically of the qualities/metaphors associated with the five elements and are therefore most comfortable when all five are represented in their environment.

When one element dominates a space literally, an attitude or behavior that correlates with that element will also dominate. For example, perfectionism can be fostered or exacerbated by a home or office that has too much of the metal element. A space which is dominated by the metal element can foster an inflexible attitude, a sharp tongue, an obsession with order, differences, and the need to be right.

The metal element in Feng Shui is found literally in metal objects: stainless steel, marble or stone, metal artwork, chrome, brass, aluminum, the color white, silver, gold, grey, round shapes, shiny fabrics or surfaces. The qualities associated with the literal form of metal – unbending, stiff, rigid, cold, brassy, hard, stony, can be seen in the behaviors or attitude in a person living or working in an overly metallic space.

Before you begin to think metal is a negative element to have around you, let me explain that all elements have positive and negative aspects depending upon how much of an element is in the space, and what other elements are present, and in what proportion. Metal
in the right balance, induces qualities such as concentration, focus, precision, organization, restraint and refinement.

When one element dominates, Feng Shui first suggests reducing the amount of that element in the space. Too much metal? Identify all the metal elements and remove whatever you can. When that is not possible, Feng Shui uses one of the three elemental cycles to diminish the
influence of the dominant element. The cycles are the Creation Cycle, the Reduction Cycle, and the Controlling Cycle. The cycles are based on the relationships each element has with each other element. Each element interacts with one other element to increase, reduce, or control its influence.

In the Creation Cycle each element creates another element: wood feeds fire, fire makes earth, earth creates metal, metal holds water, water feeds wood.

In the Reduction Cycle, elements reduce the strength of another element: fire burns wood, wood absorbs water, water dissolves metal, metal compacts earth, earth smothers fire.

In the Controlling Cycle each element dramatically reduces the influence of a particular element: wood consumes earth, fire melts metal, earth dams water, water puts out fire, and metal chops wood.

To reduce perfectionism at home or at work, remove as much of the physical metal from the space as possible. Next, use the Controlling Cycle to minimize the element’s power.

Fire is the element that melts metal. So, use representations of the fire element to reduce the energetic power of metal. The fire element is expressed in shapes such as triangles, cones, and pyramids, the red spectrum of colors, plants with fire shaped leaves that point upward, art that depicts sunshine, light or fire, candles, lighting, leather, suede, wool, flame stitch of chevron patterns.

Using the Reduction Cycle, metal’s influence can be lessened by the water element dissolving it.

The water element rusts metal and thereby reduces its influence. The water element is expressed by mirrors, glass, the colors dark blue and black, meandering patterns, wavy lines, fish tanks, water scenes in artwork, water fountains, asymmetrical shapes.

Lastly, use the Creation Cycle and reduce the amount of earth elements in the space, because earth creates metal.

Feng Shui offers many ways to address people and space challenges. Isn’t that perfect?

5 Element Creation Cycle

He understood that kids can be frightened when in a doctor’s office. (As can adults.) So, he used kid-centric furniture, color, and pictures to diminish children’s fearfulness and inspire a sense of fun.

I wonder if they make adult-size elephant exam tables?

‘Persona Rooms’ Help Marketers to Understand How Target Drivers Think

By GINA CHON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 4, 2006; Page B9

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Jenny’s living room is the ideal getaway from the busy pace of life of a Jeep Compass owner. Candles flicker on the coffee table, a yoga mat is rolled up in the corner, an Elle magazine is on the couch. “A Sex and the City” DVD plays on TV. A pet fish swims nearby to keep her company.

But Jenny is not a real person and her “living room” is located in the offices here of Organic, an online marketing agency for DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler Group. Organic has created what it calls “persona rooms” for several Jeep, Dodge and Chrysler vehicles that reflect the living spaces of typical target customers. For the Compass, a compact, entry-level Jeep that will be unveiled at the Detroit auto show next week, that “person” is career-oriented Jenny, a pharmaceutical products seller who lives in Atlanta.

Creating fake people to represent typical consumers is not new in the marketing world. Ford Motor Co. does it for every model and other companies, such as Microsoft Corp., have also delved into the psychological profile of customers. But going as far as creating a physical living space for the made up customer is a novel idea.
[The room for fictional 'Jenny,' in the office of Organic, an online marketing agency, features candles, a yoga mat and other trappings of a busy professional.]
The room for fictional ‘Jenny,’ in the office of Organic, an online marketing agency, features candles, a yoga mat and other trappings of a busy professional.

Chrysler and San Francisco-based Organic say the persona rooms have helped them to empathize with their customers and to understand what moves and motivates them.

By creating the persona rooms, Chrysler and Organic say they’ve found a way to work more efficiently and accurately in the splintering media landscape, and to also be more authentic so their marketing has an element of credibility.

“As soon as you see the room, you already have an idea of where we are going,” says Colleen DeCourcy, executive creative director for Organic. “In this marketplace where you have to work harder, faster and with fewer resources, that’s exactly what you want.”

Based on the demographic and psychographic data that marketers typically gather, Organic begins by putting together a personal story for the target customer. For Jenny, because of her busy life and hectic career, two important themes emerged: her need for sanctuary and her “metrospirituality,” a sort of stylish, kind-to-the-earth search for deeper meaning that has become a popular theme with marketers. As a result, to make Jenny’s room, the Organic team wanted to make it an escape for her.

The marketing staff admits sometimes they become obsessed with their creations. Recently Organic account planning manager Jill Stieber asked herself if Jenny would go see “King Kong.”

After discussing how Jenny shops, they decided she looks around in stores but buys products online, which is helping marketing staff figure out where they can reach Jenny. She also cares 75% about style and admires women such as actress Natalie Portman.

Jenny also likes restaurants but can’t afford to eat out regularly. So she’s the kind of person who would order one drink at the bar of a hot new restaurant and hang out with friends there, but eat somewhere else, Ms. Stieber says.

For the Dodge Caliber hatchback, another vehicle Chrysler is introducing in Detroit, Organic came up with Roberto, a 28-year old who lives in Boston and has just moved into his own apartment for the first time. In the Caliber persona room, an open Lays potato chip bag sits on a scratched end table, a generic pizza box and an empty glass that Roberto stole from a bar are on his coffee table. Posters for the movie “Fight Club” and the animated film “Akira” adorn his walls.

During one 24-hour period, Ms. DeCourcy held four meetings in the Caliber room to try to understand the typical Caliber customer. “We can look at all of this and see where Roberto is, be there where he is looking for advice or conversing with friends,” Ms. DeCourcy says.

Ms. DeCourcy says the details are important. Organic staff debated whether Roberto would order from Dominoes or Pizza Hut and whether he would order in or go out for pizza.

“One of the writers said, ‘I don’t like to think of Roberto that way,’” Ms. Stieber says of Roberto ordering from a chain. “And he was right. Roberto is very loyal to his area and very local so he wouldn’t order from Dominoes.”

Organic is now working on another room for the Aspen, a new full-size Chrysler SUV that will be launched this summer.

“With the complexity of marketing today and to break through, you really have to understand the Jennys,” says Bonita Stewart, director of interactive communications at Chrysler. “The question is if you aren’t doing this, how will you stay on message? You know in an instant who Roberto is when you see his room.”

Write to Gina Chon at gina.chon@wsj.com
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113634558437837282.html

You walk into your shrink’s office and you find the office has sent you off on another reverie…

The room said to you, “Sit down in your chair.”
While you remember the meeting with you employer
That put a knot in you stomach,
As you look at the pile of journals waiting on the file cabinet.

And try not to hear them talking to you.
Telling you that your therapist works so hard–
There is no time to get to those journals,
Or maybe they’ve been read and deemed important to keep.

And if those journals were taken away,
Would you be able to remember the knot in your stomach?
Or would you think of something else?
The flirtatious smile you caught on the bus on your way here…
And how it infused you with a new sense of your attractiveness.
And where had that sense gone, that you need to be infused?
And should you take that same bus again to try to get another smile…
Or should you focus on the tax forms you were supposed to file?
And how you always do things at the last minute,
Because your anxiety cripples you.
For that’s why you’re here after all,
To work on that anxiety.
Speaking of which, that phallic sculpture in the relationship corner – the far right corner of the office…
Who’s getting it? Who wants it? Who’s giving it? Is it any of your business? That’s not what you’re hear to discuss.
Maybe in ten more years you’ll be able to make mention of it in passing, like “that’s such fine glass…”
Maybe.

You realize you’re being interrupted, and had been for you don’t know how long,
By the sound of the therapist’s voice. What?
Your body doesn’t want to lift its sutured gaze from the journals which anchor and hold you in your reverie.
Something gets lost, feels bad to the body, when you turn and look at the face of the therapist and beyond–
To the explosive print on the wall of a red, yellow, and purple flowers so ready for a bee to come to them.
Like the beautiful living room makeover in that show you watch on Monday nights when the football season is over was waiting for the owners to come home and see how spectacular it was!
But your father called during that episode, wondering when you were going to visit;
And you had a facile answer which could not stop the guilt you felt for not visiting as often as your sister does.
Which puzzles you because you’re really close to your father, closer than your sister is.
Maybe she’s trying to…
That noise – the therapist has asked you something–
Your eyes dart to her face, hoping the text of what she’s said till now will be available to read across her forehead,
So you can give some cogent response.

You try to buy time by taking a drink from your water bottle that is perched on the small table which is home to an enormous plant you try not to get caught in as you reach for the bottle.
Next time you’ll bring a smaller bottle so the plant doesn’t hang down over it like it does now.
Sitting smack dab in the children/creativity area which makes you wonder whose kid or creativity has dominion here – yours or the therapist’s.
Sibling rivalry with a plant?! Geez, you’re in bad shape.
Should you say something about this plant?

Oh, god! You’re half way through your session and you’ve not tracked a word the therapist has said.
Your gaze lands across the room to allow some air between your eyes and their target, hoping for some mental silence in which to regroup.
You notice the color of the wall seems different at this time of day than when you usually come…

© 2006 Katherine Grace Morris, PhD