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SereneAmbition
Aug 2008
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Brave Nation

Wednesday Aug 27 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
There is an amazing website called The Brave Nation that is showcasing people who’ve made a difference. Many of these examples of human vision, commitment and perseverance are boomers who challenged ‘the system’ in the '60s and '70s and are now sharing their experience with the current generation of ‘change agents’. It is inspiring to remember and reconnect with the idealism of our youth and perplexing to wonder what happened to so many of us who have drifted into complacency about (or in some cases complicity with) current events.[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: brave_nation commitment declaration future vision

I'll Never...Part II

Tuesday Aug 26 2008

   By Elizabeth Russell | Bio

Read Part I of this series


As soon as I got over thinking of myself as an oddity in the environment and began looking around, I discovered some very interesting people. One of the early people I met had been a detective (a Private I!) for over 35 years and had some hair-raising stories to tell, including her gathering evidence against an East Bay union boss who was using sexual coercion against women seeking work.

[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: aging old_folks_home people

Guilt

Monday Aug 25 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
I have been talking about ‘completion’ a lot lately. It is basically that state of being where we can let the past be in the past and not try to control everything to make the future turn out the way we want it. Completion is a necessary state if we want live in the present. One of the things that keeps us from being complete is guilt. Guilt is a waste of time. It is blaming ourselves for whatever we think we’ve done wrong. As far as I can tell, it is also a cover-up for not being responsible for whatever we did that we’re feeling guilty about.[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: blame choice completion guilt judgment responsibility

Loneliness

Friday Aug 22 2008

  By Jim Selman | Bio
Nathan Oates, a Christian minister who writes a very thoughtful blog called “Theologically Speaking”, did a nice piece on loneliness. His point: how we seem to fragment our society into all kinds of niches and end up not relating to or connecting with most of the people around us. Even in the churches that one would imagine to be the most community-oriented institutions, the norm is to break the congregation into oriented ‘special interest’ groups according to age—the tots, teens, 20 ‘somethings’, 30 ‘somethings’, middle-agers and seniors.  While such segregation might make sense in terms of some ‘educational’ objectives, it makes no sense spiritually and undermines the whole idea of a multigenerational community.[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: community control ego loneliness multigenerational

Happiness and Age

Thursday Aug 21 2008

The Journal of Positive Psychology recently published the results of a multi-year study of 818 people between the ages of 18 and 94 into the origins of life satisfaction throughout adulthood. The research team's findings indicated that:

  • The key components of successful aging are not cognitive or physical functioning (older people tend to rate their happiness as high or higher than young people, in spite of medical concerns)
  • Self-reported health is not a key predictor of satisfaction
  • Knowledge, skills and experience required in life are not significantly associated with satisfaction
  • The capacity to reason abstractly and draw inferences was a key predictor of satisfaction in younger and middle-aged adults (intelligence is highly valued when one is still in the workforce)
  • Things that dissatisfy us the most remain constant
Lead author Karen Siedlecki, a post-doctoral research fellow in the cognitive neuroscience division at Columbia University, stated that, "The really key components of successful aging may be how happy you are and how satisfied you are with your life, and these factors don’t tend to decline with age.”[Read More]

Written by admin at News

Tagged with: age happiness satisfaction

Going to the Elders

Wednesday Aug 20 2008

Companies and organizations across North America are looking to retirees as part-time or temporary workers. Hewlett Packard is reaching out in a different way to capitalize on the power of its former employees. In this year's annual gathering of HP retirees, chief executive Mark Hurd asked people to get involved in volunteer sales, join local alumni clubs, speak up about legislative issues the company cares about and represent Hewlett-Packard in philanthropic and community events. Third-party endorsements and word of mouth can generate goodwill for the company that will help it achieve its goals.

With the emphasis on participation being its own reward, it will be interesting to see how former HP employees, some of whom 'built' Silicon Valley, respond. Other high-tech companies like IBM, Intel and Xerox have similar networks of retirees, but their loyalty is often focused on particular communities of practice or projects rather than the company.Considering that many retirees have spent much of their working lives, if not all, with one company, such calls for institutional loyalty are being closely watched.

[Read More]

Written by admin at News

Tagged with: company goodwill participation retirees

I'll Never Live in One of Those Places!

Tuesday Aug 19 2008

   By Elizabeth Russell | Bio
I had enormous resistance in moving into what I thought of as “an old folks’ home.” For years I had said to my children, “I’ll never live in one of those places!” When circumstances conspired to make such a move wise, I spent much of the first few months in my new home looking at San Francisco apartment ads, traveling to the city to look at those apartments. As I did, I began to notice the difference it would mean to me living in one of those apartments as compared with living in Woodside Terrace. Increasingly I acknowledged that it no longer made sense for me to live alone and, with that acknowledgment, came the appreciation of having my apartment cleaned and my linen changed weekly, having meals prepared for me and having emergency help as near as the cord next to my bed or by the shower in my bathroom.[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: old_folks_home resistance

Future Shock

Monday Aug 18 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
Since Alvin Toffler published Future Shock in the 1970s, futurists have been speculating what will happen in the coming decades. As with most attempts at long-range predictions, the proof is in the pudding. Most turn out to be somewhat accurate, along with lots of unpredictable ‘surprises’. No one, for example, anticipated the Internet, globalization, Google, global terrorism, cell phones or the unimaginable cost of energy. The future continues to be a fickle mistress and pretty much does what she wants to do, regardless of our prognostications.[Read More]

Written by admin at The Great Turning

Tagged with: agrarian globalization heidegger protectionism toffler trade_talks

Inside the Rainbow

Friday Aug 15 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
If we think about retirement or growing older in general, it seems to me that most of us are trying to figure out what we want for our future. Our orientation is to explore options given whatever opening we have, rather than to consider that aging is an opening and the challenge is to create new possibilities—not simply cope with our circumstances.[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: aging perspective rainbow retirement wisdom

To Fret or Not to Fret

Thursday Aug 14 2008

   By Marilyn Kentz | Bio | Website

Unlike in our mothers' and grandmothers' day, you and I are bombarded with young, beautifully and magically enhanced women 24 hours every day. Frequent ads remind us that we should be defying our age. Half the time, I don't even know I should be worried about something until a commercial tells me so.

[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: age_spot aging change purpose wrinkles

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