By Shae Hadden | Bio
In the busyness of mid-life career
pursuits, we can easily find ourselves letting relationships slide. In
no time at all, it seems years have gone by, we’ve lost touch with dear
friends from near and far, and forgotten the lure of long-promised
adventures we were going to share. A recent NY Times article about Elizabeth Goodyear,
a centenarian confined to her one-bedroom walk-up, has prompted me to
reconsider my relationship to others and what ‘community’ I want to
grow older in.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Fearless Aging
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By Jim Selman | Bio
Either/or.
This way of thinking about and relating to life is one of the most
persistent and difficult aspects of our culture. Everything is either
this or that. And if it isn’t this, it must be that. This either/or mode of observing and thinking about the world is not a function of our brains.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
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By Jim Selman | Bio
A long time ago (in the late 60s I think). I read a book by John Gerassi called The Boys of Boise, Furor, Vice and Folly in an American City.
Basically, it was a shocking journalistic reporting of how a city’s
fears can create a kind of mass paranoia. Boise, Idaho isn’t quite the
Wild West, but to this day it has a kind of ‘cowboy’ feeling about it.
In the 1960s, same-sex anything (other than drinking and football) was
something that just didn’t happen. You’d rather be a Red than Gay in
those days—long before “Brokeback Mountain”. The book chronicles what
happens when Time magazine reports that Boise is a mecca for
homosexuals in America. The bottom line is that anyone and everyone was
a suspect, the City hired a Gestapo-type investigator, and
McCarthy-like prosecutions followed. If you want the details, get the
book. I am reminded of this because to my shock and dismay, I
read recently that child protection measures in the UK will be expanded
with the implementation in 2009 of the Independent Safeguarding Authority, which will increase the number of adults to be vetted by the criminal justice system to 11 million.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Wisdom in Action
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By Jim Selman | Bio
I
just saw the movie WALL-E about a lonely robot on planet earth 700
years after a Wal-Mart-like enterprise wins the game of mega mergers
and is the only corporation left, effectively running the world. The
people had to leave because they couldn’t keep up with the trash.
WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class) spends its days (we
soon begin to think of it as a ‘he’ thanks to some brilliant scripting
and Pixar magic) creating skyscraper-scale mountains of trash. It is a
great film and brilliantly delivers ‘social responsibility’ messages
while telling a beautiful love story that meshes with some profoundly
human moments when people wake up to the possibility of having a choice
combined with responsibility for cleaning up the mess we made in the
20th and 21st centuries.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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By Rick Fullerton | Bio
Earlier this month, I was away from home for
over a week on business. In itself, this is not a big deal. Lots of
people travel more frequently and farther than I do. Yet for me, this trip was filled with unexpected feelings of gratitude and wonder. At the outset, it was to be a routine work trip to two cities to
conduct seminars at the completion of the MBA course I teach. What set
this apart was the opportunity to be in Calgary, the home of Canada’s
energy sector and fastest-growing city in the country.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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relationship
Memorial Day is about remembering the sacrifices of our countrymen and
women in past wars—it is all about patriotism and not forgetting that
every American must do their part to sustain our democratic freedoms.
As I listen to folks talking, however, there are no conversations about
this or about much of anything other than reminences about last week's
golf games or past adventures or what is so-in-so doing these days.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Retirement
Tagged with:
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By Charles E. Smith | Bio
Over
the years, I have seen and recognized the enormous effect of the CEO’s
personality and ‘way of being’ on the energy of a company. All
personalities have limitations and drawbacks. But when somebody has the
top position in a system, the effect of what they focus on and what
they suppress is immense. Whatever a CEO’s automatic way of relating to
the world, whatever their way of dealing with relationships, or with
conflict, or with results and measurement, or with finances or
thinking, gets reflected throughout the organization. Too many CEOs
only allow real creative thinking in the areas that interest them and
simply avoid those areas that appear more threatening. Now this is
human nature, and it’s to be expected. But if CEOs could begin to see
the world in energetic terms, they would see the suppressive affect of
some of their behavior on the energy of their company and people’s
power to execute the very things they most want implemented. [ Read More]
Written by admin at Leadership
Tagged with:
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By Charles E. Smith | Bio
Read the first post in this series.
Lorin Smith had developed his own healing practice based on massage,
singing, dance, telling stories. As I came to know him over time, I saw
he could look at a person, individual, or look at a group, and see
exactly what kind of energy was missing. He could see where the joy was
missing, or where the relationship was missing. He could see whether
people didn’t mean what they said. He could see how their bodies were
contracted or turned against themselves or twisted out of shape. He had
an ability to see what I was not trained to see. I could already sense
some of this in my work with groups, but I was not really construing it
in any kind of energetic framework as he did. And what he was able to
produce, in terms of sick people getting better or groups going from
non-directed to focused, was very fast and remarkable. It was as though
he was breathing life—breathing energy—into them. And he would do
whatever he needed to do, whatever he could think of to do, given his
particular talent, culture, and repertoire. [ Read More]
Written by admin at Leadership
Tagged with:
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vitality
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]
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Tagged with:
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By Charles E. Smith | Bio
This is my personal journey, how I came from seeing organizations as
static objects, to seeing them as interacting energy fields. It began
six years ago, when I was the owner of a 16-person organization
development and training firm. We helped companies with strategic
visioning, culture change projects, coaching programs, and project
effectiveness. I built the business from a $25.00-a-day practice in
1969 to over $2.5 million in annual revenues in 1993, with the promise
of continued doubling in growth. I didn’t sleep very well during those years.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Leadership
Tagged with:
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