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Caught Napping

Monday Oct 13 2008

By Shae Hadden | Bio

It's Thanksgiving in Canada, and I've just enjoyed a full weekend of personal and work commitments. But the highlight of the weekend was a chance to reconnect with the power of the 'nap'. Research in the past few years has found that the human body requires as much sleep as the brain will allow it and that the brain needs a rest every now and then.

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Written by admin at Health

Tagged with: creativity nap sleep

Older IS Wiser

Thursday Jul 31 2008

The idea that our brains decline as we age is in itself in decline. Studies reported in a new edition of the neurology book Progress in Brain Research suggest that for most of us as we age, our attention widens in focus. This, combined with the fact that we have more information to remember, makes it more difficult to recall small bits of information like a phone number or name. Yet it is this very accumulation of information that helps us become "wiser" as we age: by transferring what we've learned in one situation to another, we can more readily clarify what information is useful in solving or avoiding problems. We effectively and assimilate data and more easily put it into a broader context. For example, an expanded focus means we can 'read' the indirect messages in someone's body language and conversational tone and wisely conclude the real impact of what they are trying to communicate. Or we can interpret a detail in a letter that may seem irrelevant, but which, given our experience and understanding of a similar situation, we know will directly impact our strategy or plans.[Read More]

Written by admin at Health

Tagged with: age brain creativity information wisdom

Creative Lives

Thursday Mar 13 2008

By Rick Fullerton | Bio

I am waiting for our third grandchild to be born. In fact, everyone in our family and circle of friends is primed for the big event—but none more so than the mother and father to be. Their lives are about to be totally transformed when their love, commitment and belief in the future is expressed in the arrival of ‘baby’. Birth, for most people, is the ultimate miracle of life. So it is natural that birth is celebrated universally as an act of creation. Beyond the waiting, the sacrifices, the preparation and the costs, bringing a child into the world is a symbolic declaration of possibility like no other.

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Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: belief birth choice commitment creativity generativity love

Creativity II

Monday Jan 28 2008

Read Creativity I.

Now it's easy to hear this conversation about 'standing in possibilities' of what the future might be as some sort of optimism versus pessimism discussion—the “Just be happy” versus “There’s no hope” maxims. I am not suggesting this at all. Optimism and pessimism are grounded in positive or negative predictions of the future. Changing how we observe is not a function of prediction: it is a function of commitment.

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Written by admin at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: collaboration commitment creativity future prediction

Creativity

Friday Jan 25 2008

My friend Dan at Curmudgeon recently sent me a very interesting video of a speech by Sir Ken Robinson. He is a British educator committed to reinventing education to give creativity in our schools as much weight as we now give to literacy. This makes sense. One of the underlying principles of Serene Ambition is that we need intergenerational collaboration. No one has any idea what the future will be and, therefore, we need to collaborate in new ways. Collaboration isn’t problem-solving: it is creative dialogue and coordination of action. Creativity isn’t just the province of the young—it is a possibility for everyone—and we can continue to be creative to our last days.[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action
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Tagged with: collaboration commitment creativity future prediction

The Art of Conversation

Friday Dec 21 2007

I was watching the CBS show “Sunday Morning” on the weekend and it had a segment on the dying art of conversation. The point was that with all our technology and almost real-time connections available with email, handhelds and social networking sites, people seem to have lost the ability to have conversations. It was a thought-provoking and, I think, mostly true observation about what is happening to us. The show also showcased a new book by Stephen Miller called Conversation: A History of a Declining Art. The program drove home the fact that we may be communicating more than ever, but we’re conversing less and less. Various people were interviewed and all agreed that we’re losing (perhaps have already lost) what may be one of the most basic and pleasurable aspects of life.[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action
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Tagged with: community context conversation creativity culture self-expression