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.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
Tagged with:
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
As we watch the devastation in Haiti on
television, the world recoils at the horror and the suffering,
mobilizes its resources and tries to clean up the mess and help the
survivors. The media forages, looking for who to blame (usually corrupt
or incompetent politicians). We’ve witnessed this scene following
earthquakes countless times: in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake 2008 when
69,000 died in China; in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake when 230,000
died in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand; in the 2005 Kashmir
earthquake where 86,000 died in Pakistan; in the 1923 Great Kanto
earthquake when 142,800 died in Japan; and even in 1908’s Messina
earthquake when 100,000 died in Italy. If we think about the
hurricanes, volcanoes, fires, tsunamis and famine, it seems the “Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse” are doing a fabulous business these days.
The fact is[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
Tagged with:
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
Forty-five
years ago Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the
message”. I wonder what he would have made of today’s
media-on-steroids. Someone sent me a fascinating YouTube piece called “ Social Media in Plain English” , which was followed up with a dramatic piece on the extraordinary impact of all that is going on in the Social Media Revolution.
It includes a new term I had never seen before: socialnomics. It’s
getting easier and easier to feel ignorant and out of touch. The
general consensus is that the phenomenon of social networking/social
media is as potentially revolutionary as the Industrial Revolution.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
Tagged with:
communication
conversation
future
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social_networking
time
 By Jim Selman | Bio
This has been a sad week. My partner’s mother died at the
age of 94. Even when the end is expected (and perhaps even welcomed after a
long period of decline), it nonetheless has a powerful impact on those who
cared. All of the clichés aside, there just isn’t much to say to the bereaved
other than “I am sorry for your loss.” As we get older, death and dying becomes
a larger part of our day-to-day reality as we lose friends and loved ones. For
“Mimi”, there weren’t many left. She outlived almost everyone of her
generation. [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
Tagged with:
death
dying
learning
life
loss
 By Shae Hadden | Bio
What
we do with our time seems to be an ongoing topic of interest for many.
Popular belief says we need to balance time for 'work' and 'life'.
Innumerable authors and experts have invented tools and techniques for
us to 'manage' our time. Common sense says that procrastination occurs
when we 'waste' time doing nothing or doing things other than what we
say we're going to do. More experts have written about how we can get
motivated, stop procrastinating and get down to business. Then why is
it that many still struggle with trying to stay focused on what they
really want to do? [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
Tagged with:
discipline
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By Jim Selman | Bio
Yesterday
I was coaching a friend of mine. I was sharing a bit of how important
it is to ‘come from’ your vision for your life. Our future is always a
product of our actions, and our actions are always a correlate of how
we relate to the future. When we act as if the future has already
happened, then it is only a matter of time before that future is
realized or we learn what we need to learn to achieve it. Her response
was, “Well, you make it sound so simple, but it is too abstract and I
need to know ‘how’ to have what I want in the future.” This was my
response.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
Tagged with:
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 By Rick Fullerton | Bio
Over the past few months I have been an
absentee blogger, a consequence of having accepted a full-time work
assignment that I expected to last two years or more. I was enticed by
a personal request for my services to lead a strategic initiative that
would call on my experience and skills. So after nearly 10 years as a
freelance consultant, I returned to work inside an organization at age
62. Any major decision like this comes with[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
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Tagged with:
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By Shae Hadden | Bio
Someone was
telling me recently that some of Buddhist temples in Japan are guarded
by two fierce-looking demon-like figures. These guardians of ‘Truth’
are known as ‘Paradox’ and ‘Confusion’. These days, paradox and
confusion seem to be states I alternate between in my quest to discover
who I am and what future I want to create. If I’m not confused, then
I’m trying to embrace something that defies intuition. My ‘truth’ seems
elusive.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
Tagged with:
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
My daughter wrote a blog yesterday ( A World of Performance)
about how technology can move us further and further away from
human-to-human connections. I thought “Wow, I would never have thought
about that at her age”. Her reflections about what is happening to us
as human beings were insightful, but also very useful to me. I have
been promoting use of technology to connect people and never imagined
that it could also divide us. Now I can be more rigorous and prudent in
balancing the risks and rewards.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
Tagged with:
connection
generation
listening
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technology
 By Lauren Selman | Bio
This
past weekend, I was hiking with a couple of co-workers of mine in the
beautiful Grand Canyon National Park. As we were walking, one woman
posed the question, "Is our society changing or is it our awareness
making it look worse?" I didn't understand what she meant at first, but
as we continued to talk, she was speaking to the concept of perception.
For example, people have been making 'at home 'drugs for a quite a long
time, but now that it is known that they are making them, does it make
society worse or just seem worse because we can now see it?[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
Tagged with:
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