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
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
New Year’s is a time to reflect and remember.
I was reviewing some old ‘resolutions’ and came upon one that has
served me well over the years. It may be one of the most useful and
relevant bits of wisdom I have to share with people.
“The important thing is to choose what we have and
give up our attachment to what we don’t have—so we can have the space
to create our dreams and manifest our intention.” [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
Over
the course of my lifetime, I have heard many ‘bottom-line’ bits of
wisdom. For example, “the key to happiness is loving what you do”. Or,
“at the end of the day, you can either resist life or surrender and
live life on life’s terms”. These kinds of nuggets are usually true
and are certainly valid in a list of maxims and aphorisms for living.
“All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” by Robert Fulghum
is a great example of this genre. My favorite (and the one that I have
personally found the most useful) is one I first heard in the 1970s in
something called the ‘est training’. The ultimate choice we have as
human beings, we were told, is whether we are ‘at the effect’ of our
circumstances or whether we can relate to them ‘at cause’, meaning be
responsible for everything in our lives.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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By Jim Selman | Bio
I am coming to the conclusion that I am a
travel-aholic. Like most ‘isms’, travelaholism is the product of
thinking we control something that we don’t control and, therefore, are
controlled by it. One of the primary symptoms of an ‘ism’ is that we
say we want to change something—usually our behavior—but continue in
whatever pattern it is that we want to change. I protest that I am
traveling too much, while at the same time filling in my calendar with
airports and connections and hotels around the world. So far this year
I have been to Buenos Aires, Geneva, Madrid, Sao Paulo, Paris,
Amsterdam and am on my way to Tanzania before leaving for New Zealand,
the Ukraine and New York City. While this may sound exotic, I rarely
have time to fully appreciate the uniqueness of these far-flung
locations. It is also true that[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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travel
 By Jim Selman | Bio
I was recording a podcast recently in
response to the question of how ‘elders’ should be dealing with money
these days given the current and projected economic mess. The woman I
was speaking to was clearly ‘worried’ about her financial future. I
started my response by sharing that over many years of coaching I
sometimes chuckle when speaking with women because they all seem to
have a generic fear of becoming a ‘bag lady’. There was an interesting
article in the Toronto Globe and Mail in December titled, “Why women
look in the mirror and a bag lady looks back”. It seems this archetype
pervades a lot of women’s deepest fears of failure and becoming
destitute.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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By Jim Selman | Bio
I
have said many times that I view one of the biggest threats to our way
of life (and at least the medium-term future) is widespread and
institutionalized resignation. Resignation is a mood
that most of us have experienced and many are experiencing today. It is
a worldview devoid of possibility. It is the perspective that ‘nothing
can be done’ and ‘nothing will really make a difference’. It is giving
up, but in a way that justifies and rationalizes that giving up is the
rational and reasonable thing to do. The benefit of resignation is that
we can stop thinking or struggling.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Personal Empowerment
Tagged with:
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By Irene Noble
My mother, my friend,
died when she was 91. I miss her still, yet it was eighteen years ago.
She was a beautiful, elegant, stylish lady. More than that, she was
forgiving, uncomplicated by her total honesty, always willing to learn
new ways, new directions even though it might require a reversal of old
assumptions.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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I don't think that age is personal. I know it feels like it is 'me'
that is getting older, but I don't experience myself as older. If
anything, I experience my 'self' as being 'better' than at any time I
can remember over the past 66 years. I feel more 'alive', more engaged,
more present and more satisfied than ever. It is true that my body
can’t run, wrestle or climb as easily as in the past. I make love more
often than in the best moments of my youth and, best of all, I am
experienced enough to enjoy it more. While age is always relative, I
can't really think of anything about being my age that isn't wonderful.
Moreover, I am looking forward to every day being the best yet.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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I was talking with a fellow recently who was asking why this blog is
called Serene Ambition™. He thought that the two words didn't seem to
go together. He could get 'serenity' and also understand 'ambition',
but together they made no sense to him. In our normal way of relating
to the world, you can have serenity (meaning inner peace, calmness,
maybe even joy) or you can be ambitious (meaning committed to creating
or accomplishing something in the future)—but not both together. In some ways, we might say these two terms label the best of East and West.
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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If I could give one gift to my children, I think it would be
“acceptance”. It isn’t too hard to understand intellectually that we
should simply accept life on life’s terms and not try to control what
we can’t really control. Yet, it’s a hard lesson to learn. I think not
accepting may be the source of most, if not all, suffering. When we
live with the view that reality ‘should be’ other than it is, we are
living in a dream (at best) and a state of self-deception and denial
(at worst). Not accepting throws us into a relationship with the world
in which we must either control our environment or cope with
circumstances we consider beyond our control.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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