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:
acceptance
communication
humberto_maturana
language
listening
masi_me_tiro
peter_drucker
By Jim Selman | Bio
I cannot remember having experienced or even
having read about a time when there have been so many “extremes”
co-existing in terms of political points of view and ways of
understanding the world. All seem to simultaneously have the quality of
being both ‘life threatening’ AND intractable. Whether we’re discussing
climate change, social justice, lifestyles, civil rights, the economy,
our political process or the price of oil, everyone seems to have a
strongly held point of view without much evident interest in learning or
working toward some common resolution of our differences. It would seem
collaboration is fast becoming extinct—an endangered competence.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Leadership
Tagged with:
collaboration
communication
competence
conflict
critical_thinking
leaders
point_of_view
trust
 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
learning
social_media
social_networking
time
By Jim Selman | Bio
Last evening we were having a lively family
conversation about life in general and Eldering in particular. We
talked about whether there is, in fact, a ‘generational divide’ and, if
so, what can we say about it. To my surprise, my children and my son’s
girlfriend all felt that there was less of a divide in the minds of
people their age than in the minds of people my age. I asked the
question, “What do young men and women talk to each other about that
you would be reluctant to talk about with people our age?” What they
said is that reluctance to have a particular conversation or to be open
has more to do with the culture of the participants than with their
age. They all agreed that they are more ‘open’ and authentic in urban
West Coast types of circumstances than when they travel to the Midwest
or the South.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Join discussion COMMENTS [1]
Tagged with:
communication
conversation
eldering
family
generations
 By Jim Selman | Bio
I got another shot of what has been a
curiosity to me for a long time: the growing practice of ‘texting’.
This practice was highlighted for me when I read that Barack Obama has
to kick his Blackberry habit in his new job and again when I was at the
theater earlier this week with an audience of mostly 20 and
30-year-olds. Both before the curtain and at the intermission, I
counted about 30 folks fixated on their ‘mobile communication devices’.
Several were even covertly ‘peeking’ during the performance. I don’t think I am a Luddite, yet somehow this seemed[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
balance
choice
communication
relationship
texting
 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:
actions
awareness
communication
connection
responsibility
Relationships will atrophy over time. Not because of intentional
neglect or lack of love, but because, like any ‘muscle’, relating takes
exercise. Use it or it will lose strength and functionality. I
see a lot people in various states of ‘midlife’ crisis confronting
their primary relationships from the perspective of ‘time left’. This
perspective is different for most of us than the one we had in the
early years of relating—even different from the perspective of the
‘maintenance years’ of child-raising and career-building.
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
aging
communication
love
midlife_crisis
relationship
Princeton University’s definition of curmudgeon
is “a crusty, irascible, cantankerous old person full of stubborn
ideas”. My friend Dan takes some pride in owning this distinction: he
is enjoying his retirement years a lot—naturally living each day on his
own terms, having a lot of fun and to heck with the rest of the world.
He wears this mantle with a twinkle in his eye and is actually very
committed and connected to what’s going on in the world, although not
optimistic about our collective prospects. Today I am thinking of becoming a curmudgeon myself.[ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at Fearless Aging
Join discussion COMMENTS [0]
Tagged with:
communication
curmudgeon
gratification
instant
I was listening to an interview on CBC’s wonderful Sunday program called “Our World”.
They were speaking with Charles Taylor, a 76-year-old Canadian
philosopher and political activist who was recently awarded the
Templeton Prize to research how spiritual aspirations shape society and
politics. In this interview, he came across as one of the most
optimistic commentators on the state of the world I’ve heard and he was
positive without being unrealistic or naïve. [ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at Wisdom in Action
Join discussion COMMENTS [0]
Tagged with:
civilizations
communication
community
conflict
worldview
By Stu WhitleyBioThis is the third post in a three-part series.
In
the 18th century, Sir William Herschel became the first man to discover
a planet, Uranus, and six years later, he found two moons to that
frozen, unimaginable world. His sister was an eminent astronomer as
well, discovering three nebulae and eight comets. His son John, born
into a family steeped in brilliance, wrote Treatise on Astronomy in
1833, in which he, like all visionaries, looked to the heavens to
illustrate the central point in his work: he warned against
misinterpretation and what he called ‘vulgar errors’ arising from
imperfect or habitual apprehension. His instruction to men of reason
was to try and listen, to see, and to understand the gigantic truths behind the reduced forms of mundane existence, in the same way as a sailor knows but cannot immediately measure the frozen immensity under the iceberg’s cap.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
Join discussion COMMENTS [0]
Tagged with:
communication
knowledge
listening
mind
open
relationship
|
RSS Feeds
