 By Jim Selman | Bio
It seems to me that there are three
fundamental relationships that we all share as human beings: 1) our
relationship with ourselves and other people, 2) our relationship with
our circumstances, and 3) our relationship with time. When we are
inflexible or stuck in habitual ways of being in any of these areas, we
become trapped in a condition from which we cannot extract ourselves: we
are caught in a ‘self-referential’ spiral in which the more we attempt
to improve a situation, the more intractable it becomes. In the extreme,
this condition becomes an addiction— whether to a substance, a behavior
or an ideology.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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By Stuart James Whitley | Bio
Continuing on from yesterday's post....
2. Be patient
As the Biblical injunction provides, all things good come to those who
wait. This precondition for good temperament has two elements to it:
time and wisdom. Part of wisdom is the understanding that
active listening is a form of generosity, a key element in a mature
temperament. Waiting for the other point of view, the various possible
perspectives, or even the depletion of emotion, takes discipline.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
intuition
justice
listening
pascal
responsibility
time
wisdom
 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 Kevin Brown | Bio
Like
me, you can probably remember a relationship you had as a child with an
elderly relative or friend of the family. Some of my best memories of
such a time involve Mrs. Cowling, an elderly lady who lived next door
to us. We had just moved to a new neighborhood in Calgary, and there
were only two completed homes on the block. Our home had the only
family of children for about three blocks. There was my older sister
Paulette (13 years old), myself (7) , and my brand new brother Ken who
was not yet one. Mrs. Cowling was in her eighties[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
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grace
interdependence
listening
love
relationship
seniors
time
 By Shae Hadden | Bio
What
we do with our time seems to be an ongoing topic of interest for many.
Popular belief says we need to balance time for 'work' and 'life'.
Innumerable authors and experts have invented tools and techniques for
us to 'manage' our time. Common sense says that procrastination occurs
when we 'waste' time doing nothing or doing things other than what we
say we're going to do. More experts have written about how we can get
motivated, stop procrastinating and get down to business. Then why is
it that many still struggle with trying to stay focused on what they
really want to do? [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
Tagged with:
discipline
focus
procrastination
time
will
 By Shae Hadden | Bio
Despite my intentions to stay focused on
launching new materials into the world, the last couple of weeks have
seen a flurry of activity around forming partnerships. When I look at
the very real challenges we are facing today and the urgency with which
they need to be addressed, establishing relationships might seem like
the last thing we should spend time doing. However, I’m reminded of
something Jim Selman often says: “Relationships are the foundation of
success.”[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Leadership
Tagged with:
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possibility
relationship
success
time
By Jim Selman | Bio
I notice lately that a lot of my conversations with older friends
revolve around the question “What do you want to do?” This is usually
followed by a smorgasbord of choices ranging from recreation to
entertainment to ‘just hanging out’. It sounds a lot like the
conversations my children used to have on a Saturday afternoon. It
seems to me that this kind of conversation is about filling time,
rather than intentional or purposeful choices. It is about picking from
available options, rather than creating the game we might create if
there were no constraints. When we were very young, we seemed to be
much more adept at creating games out of thin air with a lot less
effort.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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filling_time
habit
intention
time
By Jim Selman | Bio
I’ve been thinking about aging and
observing the human phenomenon for a long time and I know that most of
the chatter in my head isn’t ‘me’—it’s just the tapes of my past and my
ego playing the tune to which my culture expects me to dance. For
example, I believe and know from experience that the key to health and wellbeing is “participation”—staying
engaged in whatever games I choose to play. Yet, that little voice in
my head insists that I should rest more, take it easy, slow down and
just enjoy life. I can observe myself being seduced by the reasonable
and conventional wisdom that as I get older I should participate less. [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Retirement
Tagged with:
energy
health
participation
retirement
time
wellbeing
By Jim Selman | Bio
I was talking to my neighbor today about
the book that Shae and I are working on. It is about retirement and
we’re engaged in the question of ‘when’ does retirement occur. Is it
merely an ‘event’ that happens at the end of our last job? My thinking
is that it is whatever is left of our lives when our primary concern in
life is no longer about earning a living. In this context, a trust fund
baby could be born retired just as a person who is ‘retired’ could
still have an occupation. Even a homeless person (if homelessness as a
choice) might be seen to be ‘retired’—as Roger Miller’s “King of the
Road” would suggest.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Retirement
Tagged with:
concern
decline
prime
purpose
retirement
time
By Jim Selman | Bio
One of the biggest
questions most of us have is “Why do we do what we do?”, particularly
when what we do isn’t what we want to do or think we should be doing.
My answer is that, for most of us, most of the time we’re not actually
choosing what we do. We are living our life according to our historical
patterns within some narrowly proscribed personal and cultural ‘story’
about what is and is not possible and what our options are in any given
situation. In effect, we live our lives in a ‘circumstantial drift’
where the future is determined by our past.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Retirement
Tagged with:
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time
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