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Jul 2010
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12-Step Program for America: Step 1

Monday Mar 01 2010

By Jim Selman | Bio
I work with organizations that are attempting to change. At the beginning of working with a new client, I point out what’s missing for any organization that has recurring or seemingly intractable problems: what’s missing is a different way of observing. Whether we’re talking about a company, a community or a continent, a new perspective always gives us an opening to create new possibilities, have new choices and take new actions: a new way of observing the world effectively gives us a different future than some variation of ‘more of the same’. We need to stop asking what the problems are and start asking why they persist. When we do, we begin to realize that we have a paradigm problem. Until we deal with that, none of our seemingly intractable problems—from staggering debt to unending war, climate change to the underlying causes of the mortgage crises—can be solved. Albert Einstein expressed this concisely when he said that sometimes our problems cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them.[Read More]

Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: 12-step addiction america cause choice common conservatives constitution constitutional control declaration democracy freedom independence liberals of paradigm problem program step vision

Boundaries: Choosing Change

Monday Nov 30 2009

   By Jim Selman | Bio
We’ve all experienced a situation—whether in a marriage, friendship or business relationship—where we find ourselves thinking about the other person and saying, “I love you, BUT…”. It’s in that moment we realize a particular behavior of theirs is not acceptable to us and has become a source of stress and resentment. For many, resentment almost always leads to a downward spiral of self-destructive behavior and the eventual destruction of the relationship. I was coaching a friend recently who is in such a dilemma.[Read More]

Written by eldering at Personal Empowerment

Tagged with: addiction boundaries change choice commitment habit possibility relationship risk

Capitalism: Never Enough?

Monday Sep 28 2009

   By Jim Selman | Bio
New York is a consumer paradise. That’s one of the reasons it is a shopping mecca for so many people from around the world. Folks who can afford it want to have an apartment here, the ‘Big Brands’ want to have a store on 5th Avenue, and the rest of us want to look in the store windows and buy stuff. New York, of course, doesn’t have an exclusive on being a magnet for shoppers—most big cities have their own version of a street lined with designer stores overflowing with opulent offerings. As I travel from city to city, I find myself wondering[Read More]

Written by eldering at Leadership

Tagged with: addiction annie_leonard business consumerism economy shopping story_of_stuff victor_lebow

Sobering Up

Monday Apr 13 2009

By Jim Selman | Bio
As we move into the sixth month of the ‘global meltdown’, it seems like it has been going on a lot longer. I can hardly remember what it was like when we were ‘high’ on the prospects of prosperity forever. Like most ‘-olics’, we thought we controlled something we didn’t control that then began controlling us. In our pursuit of the American Dream, we somewhere began to get a little too much of a good thing and became ‘hooked’ on the idea that perpetual growth would continue, our houses would appreciate forever, and that expecting a 20% return on our investment was just a matter of finding the right ‘money manager’ or stock pick. We ‘hit bottom’ when[Read More]

Written by eldering at The Great Turning

Tagged with: addiction alcoholism economic_meltdown

A Crackberry By Any Other Name...

Monday Mar 16 2009

   By Jim Selman | Bio
A few weeks ago, I posted my musings about Blackberries and other gizmos that seem to have taken over our minds and that are becoming the focus for much of our attention (to the point of almost being amusing to see folks pulling them out). The media has dubbed these devices “crackberries’ in view of their seemingly addictive hold on us. Well, in spite of my protests to never get hooked, I bought one and[Read More]

Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Join discussion COMMENTS [1]

Tagged with: addiction crackberry habit

Gore’s Challenge

Friday Aug 01 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio

There is an inspiring 30-minute speech by Al Gore challenging all of us and our nation to commit to a 10-year program to move away completely from a carbon-based economy. The challenge echoes what a lot of us have been saying for years, but he has developed sufficient moral authority in some sectors that maybe more people will listen. Redesigning our energy infrastructure isn’t exactly the same as going to the moon as he suggests, but there are some powerful parallels.

[Read More]

Written by eldering at The Great Turning

Tagged with: addiction al_gore alignment challenge jfk oil thomas_friedman

Alcoholism and the Canary

Thursday Apr 10 2008

    In the late 80s, Anne Wilson Schaef and Diane Fassel wrote a book called The Addictive Organization. While I have a very different experience and theory than what they were proposing, I think their metaphor was perfect. For me, the idea that an organization or society can become ‘addicted’ is not a metaphor. I believe, like Charles Horton Cooley, that “Individuals and organizations are not separate phenomenon; they are the collective and distributive aspects of the same thing”. The way I express this idea is that “the ego is to the individual what the culture is to the organization (or society”). What I am saying is that, from a phenomenological perspective, the ego and culture are both self-referential structures of interpretation.
[Read More]

Written by eldering at The Great Turning

Tagged with: addiction breakdowns control faith perspective trust

Explainers Anonymous™ - II

Thursday Nov 22 2007


By Charles E. Smith
| Bio


Explainers Anonymous is for people who can’t help explaining they are dedicated victims of circumstance.

Explaining, like taking a drink, need not be not a problem. Telling a story to entertain or teach is wonderful. Sometimes explanations are really useful (such as in telling the doctor why your hand is bleeding) or when they warn you of something (such as in looking both ways before crossing the street because you might get killed). Sometimes they are useful as long as everyone understands it’s an explanation—and only one out of a hundred thousand possibilities.[Read More]

Written by eldering at Retirement
Join discussion COMMENTS [0]

Tagged with: addiction circumstance explaining explanation retirement

Explainers Anonymous™

Thursday Oct 25 2007



By Charles E. Smith

Bio


Explainers Anonymous™ is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to help people addicted to explaining everything. My name is Charlie. I started it.

It began in 1997 a few months after I retired. I woke one morning and said to myself:

"I now have no work, no place to go, no future source of earned income, no people telling other people about me. The phone doesn't ring and too many of my e-mails are ads. I diet until 6 o'clock and then eat like a pig. I go to the health club, work out and lose no weight. I have lists full of grand schemes swarming over my desk, but the truth is that almost nothing is actually going on. My big accomplishment of the day so far was to take a shower...."
[Read More]

Written by eldering at Retirement

Tagged with: addiction explaining retirement

Angst

Friday Sep 28 2007

I like this word. I don't know why…perhaps because it is one of those words that seems to express itself in speaking of it. The word means 'anxiety'—a kind of generalized anxiety with being alive. The existential philosophers talked a lot about angst. In fact, we normally associate angst with existentialism—existential angst. The word is usually associated with a negative mood such as depression or what Thomas Merton characterized as "the dark night of the soul". I think that Heidegger talked about it as the inherent tension between 'being' and 'non-being'. I think that angst underlies the 'suffering' that Buddha associated with human existence and probably is behind the concept of 'original sin'. Whatever its origins or deeper meanings, it is a day-to-day practical reality for most of us in our unending quest to 'get it right' and 'be happy'. There are lots of strategies for dealing with angst.[Read More]

Written by Jim Selman at Personal Empowerment
Join discussion COMMENTS [0]

Tagged with: addiction angst being conversation mood service suffering

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