By Jennifer Corriero | Bio Jennifer Corriero is co-founder and executive director of Taking It Global. Her poem, originally published on Jennifer's blog in December 2009, is reprinted with kind permission from the author.
How does change happen? This is perhaps one of those eternal questions that carries both simplicity and depths of complexity juxtaposed in a tension so bright and dark that emotions explode and identities blur. Is your belief defined by your role or is your role defined by your belief? How does change happen? POLICY says the policy maker MARKETS says the business manager MASS MOBILIZATION says the organizer DIALOGUE says the convenor SYSTEMS CHANGE says the academic IMAGINATION says the artist INVENTION says the scientist INNOVATION says the technologist INVESTMENT says the banker DESIGN says the architect ENLIGHTENMENT says the spiritual guide RULE OF LAW says the lawyer CONVICTION says the leader EDUCATION says the teacher REVOLUTION says the activist UNIVERSAL ACCESS says the philanthropist HEALTHY CHOICES says the coach AWARENESS says the communicator DATA says the analyst CRISIS says the journalist ACTION says the entrepreneur PERSPECTIVE says the author HOPE says the dreamer NETWORKS says the connector INSPIRATION says the storyteller LOVE says the mother ASPIRATION says the father LAUGHTER says the child POSSIBILITY says the youth REFLECTION says the elder And so we ask ourselves Where we stand, where we shine and where we fly. We ask whether or not we are defined by the roles we take or the collective outcomes that emerge when our efforts and beliefs collide. Is it magic or tragic that we disagree?
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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By Ana Lepri
There is a humorous
1-1/2 minute video called Masi,
Me Tiro which is winning awards around the world. It has
inspired me to reflect on how we listen to others. The characters
demonstrate that our listening is often filtered through our personal
judgments and preconceptions of others. This filtering limits our
ability to listen. We find ourselves reacting to what’s being said and
to who we think they are based on our history and their identity (or
appearance). We are prisoners of our stories about them. We are not
really listening to what the other person is saying.
In the
video, the two men are trapped inside their own circular conversations,
unable to hear or validate the other person except inside the
interpretation they have of them. They react to each other without
listening.
I find myself often caught up in reactive
conversations. This is how we normaily interact in our daily lives in
society. I realize that every time I experience the type of stress
response these two men demonstrate that I can change my experience of
what’s happening and the other person by changing my listening. I can
re-engage with them and listen, not from my judgments, but from a place
of acceptance and validation.
As Humberto Maturana, the Chilean
biologist and author, says: "The acceptance of others as a legitimate
other is a prerequisite of language.” If we do not accept the other
person as a legitimate other, our listening will always limit and
obstruct our communication. The good news is that if we commit ourselves
to listen actively, without preconceptions and judgments, we can become
effective listeners.
Listening actively to the other person
is a commitment, a commitment that legitimizes the other and allows for
effective communication and creativity. Listening validates the talker,
not the listener. Listening is the key factor in communication. Peter
Drucker said: "Too many executives think they are wonderful with people
because they speak well and do not realize to be wonderful with people
means to listen well."
The actual value in a conversation is
only discovered when preceded by our commitment to listen for the
possibility the other person is. We can relate better to others in
conversation when we focus on these key question:
- What am
I learning here?
- What new possibilities can we open up if I am
committed to listening for possibility?
- What new worlds could
we then create?
Conversation, like art, always evokes and
provokes us to look for possibility. View Masi
Me Tiro on YouTube.
Written by eldering at Learning
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By Elizabeth Brown
- We’ve
already experienced what works and doesn’t work for us regarding sex.
And now we know it is about passion, trust and playfulness…and an
expressed intimacy.
- Sex becomes a sacred expression of our body
and our soul. It takes maturity to know the two bring a satisfaction
unsurpassed in being fully expressed and joyful.
- We listen, with pleasure, from a desire to know and satisfy our partner.
- It
is easier to be playful and open to new opportunities. Now, with the
wisdom of life, we are completely and desirably vulnerable to each
other.
- Touching and exploring become the path to a deeper
awareness of each other. Touching nurtures and heals. Exploring opens
gates to sharing new found sensual and sacred intimacy.
- Our
bodies always remember when we were the most sexually expressed. So we
can be 80 and still have the sexual expression of being 40. This is the
time for patience and playfulness.
- As an Elder, we’ve learned how to love loving and we know it is the beautiful dance of life.
© 2010 Elizabeth Brown. All rights reserved.
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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By Adrienne Sharp The
world is operating on a huge misconception that excessive garbage,
extensive use of fossil fuels and other forms of pollution are causing
global warming. I have discovered the true cause of global warming:
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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By David Korten | Website Read the previous post in this series. This brings us to the most important reform of all:
changing the way we create money. One key to Wall Street’s power and to
the inherent instability of the financial system is the current
practice of private banks creating money with a simple bookkeeping
entry each time they make a loan. Because the bookkeeping entry creates
only the principal, but not the interest, unless the economy grows fast
enough to generate sufficient demand for loans to create the new money
required to make the interest payments on the previous loans, debts go
into default and the financial system and the economy collapse. The
demand for repayment [ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
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By David Korten | Website
Read the previous post in this series. The only legitimate function of an economic system
is to serve life. At present, however, we assess economic performance
solely against financial indicators—gross domestic product (GDP) and
stock prices—while disregarding social and environmental consequences.
We are now paying the price for years of managing the economy for
financial performance, which translates into making money for people
who have money—that is, making rich people richer.
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
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By David Korten | Website
Read the previous post in this series. Far from serving the financial needs of Main Street, Wall Street treats
Main Street like a colony to be managed for the benefit of its colonial
master. In alliance with the Federal Reserve, Wall Street players have
used a combination of control over the money supply, predatory lending
practices, and lobbying and campaign contributions to suppress wages,
dismantle social safety nets, and capture the value of productivity
gains for themselves. The top 1 percent of U.S. income earners
increased their share of national cash income from 9 percent to [ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
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By David Korten | Website
Read the previous post in this series. Once we extinguish the immediate fire, we can turn
our attention to redesigning the potentially beneficial institutions of
finance to align with the imperatives of sustainability and equity.
Ironically, given the excesses committed by Wall Street in the name of
market freedom, the economy we need to create looks remarkably like the
market economy vision of Adam Smith, revered by many as the father of
capitalism.
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
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By David Korten | Website
Read the previous post in this series. The first item of business is to get the immediate
crisis under control. Wall Street institutions have long claimed their
trading activities create wealth, provide the funds that keep business
moving, increase economic efficiency, and stabilize markets. The
financial meltdown pulled away the curtain to reveal a corrupt system
that runs on speculation, the stripping of corporate assets, predatory
lending, and asset bubbles like the real estate and dot-com “booms.” [ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
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By George Por | Blog of Collective Intelligence
Yes!!
“Let’s clean up the mess before we die” is the most concise and
energizing way to say that we got one more chance to make a difference
for a better world. But how can we clean up, in the next few decades, a
“mess” produced by the millennia of scarcity, humans treating one
another less than equals, unnecessary suffering caused by unwise social
systems? Whether we can or can’t, our best bet is[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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By David Korten | Website The financial crisis has put to rest the myths
that our economic institutions are sound and markets work best when
deregulated. Our economic institutions have failed, not only
financially, but also socially and environmentally. This, combined with
the election of a new president with a mandate for change, creates an
opportune moment to rethink and redesign. President-elect
Obama has promised to grow the economy from the bottom up. That would
be a substantial improvement over growing the top at the expense of the
bottom. [ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
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By Juanita Brown, David Isaacs and Samantha Tan | World Cafe website Read the previous post in this series. Together for Tomorrow Exciting multi-generational collaborations are emerging as we continue
to explore this rich terrain. One outcome of the Ojai InterGen
dialogues at Meditation Mount will be a series of intergenerational
programs in Ashland, Oregon that will be aired on-line and distributed
globally. Multi-generational Global Cooling Cafes are being organized
in other local communities. The 10th anniversary celebration of the
Pioneers of Change, with young change makers in 70 countries, will
include a focus on ways to ignite greater multi-generational
partnering. Planning is also underway [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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By Juanita Brown, David Isaacs and Samantha Tan | World Cafe website Read the first post in this series.
What Are We Learning? At the Shambhala Institute and in
subsequent gatherings exploring multi-generational partnership, we have
experienced a similar outpouring of excitement and engagement. Key
multi-generational dialogues aimed at building bridges between the
generations have now been sponsored by Pegasus Communications at their
international Systems Thinking in Action conferences, by the Institute
for Noetic Sciences, the Bali Institute for Global Renewal, Meditation
Mount and the Ojai Foundation, the World Café, and others. In 2005,[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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By Juanita Brown, David Isaacs and Samantha Tan | World Cafe website Discovering One Another
In the summer of 2004, the World Café, the Berkana Institute, and the
Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership convened an innovative
inquiry into intergenerational wisdom and collaboration for the common
good. A multi-generational team that ranged in age from 23 to 81 hosted
the gathering. What we thought would be a small ‘learning laboratory’
of 20-30 people took off like wild-fire. The meeting, held in Nova
Scotia, Canada, rapidly mushroomed[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
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By David Korten | Website
The Power of Conversation
Getting out of our current mess begins with a conversation to change
the shared cultural story about our essential nature. The women’s
movement offers an instructive lesson. In little more than a decade, a few courageous women changed the
cultural story that the key to a woman’s happiness is to find the right
man, marry him, and devote her life to his service. As Cecile Andrews,
author of Circles of Simplicity, relates, the transition to a
new gender story began with discussion circles in which women came
together in their living rooms to share their stories. Until then, a
woman whose experience failed to conform to the prevailing story
assumed that the problem was a deficiency in herself. As women shared
their own stories each realized that the flaw was in the story.
Millions of women were soon spreading a new gender story that has
unleashed the feminine as a powerful force for global transformation.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
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