 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
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
It is almost impossible to turn on the television or read a
newspaper or a magazine without encountering one pundit, expert or “man
on the street” either talking about the future or trying to blame
someone for something. Our media commentary is rarely about what is
happening now: mostly it’s about what happened in the past or what
someone thinks is going to happen in the future. Combine the
establishment media with all of the blogging and chatting going on, and
it is incredible how fixated we are on what will happen next.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
My partner and I were recently enjoying
one of those lazy weekend mornings just chatting about life in general
when we got onto the subject of getting older and how we feel about it
all. I made the point that my passion and The Eldering Institute® is
about transforming our culture’s view of aging and teaching people that
we can change how we relate to the future—and, as a consequence, we can
have more choices, more possibility and more ‘aliveness’ than what most
people can expect as they grow older. Moreover, I reasoned, once people
are empowered as they age, they are free to contribute more, build
partnerships with the young and make the difference they always wanted
to make—to even take on the world’s intractable problems. [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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By Jim Selman | Bio
It was said that
the philosopher Martin Heidegger’s last words were “Only God can save
us.” He was, perhaps, one of the deeper thinkers (at least in modern
times) on the question of who we are and what is really going on. As
far as I know, he wasn’t religious. So what he meant by these words, if
indeed he said them, is open to question. My view is that he was
talking about the fact that all human beings live in interpretations of
“reality”—cultural and linguistic inventions—and that humanity is now
‘trapped’ in an interpretation that has no back door. That is, the
‘Cartesian’ worldview that now dominates the globe is so powerful that,
like a black hole,[ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
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By Jim Selman | Bio
I think there is a time when we realize that
‘what got us here’ isn’t sufficient to get us ‘where we want to go’.
These times are the transition points in life, the points where we have
an opportunity to make major choices and embark on a new phase of our
lives—to experience a transformation in how we observe and relate to
ourselves, other people and the world in general. I can recall having
this feeling when I left home for college, again when I got married,
when my children were born and at various times when I changed the
direction of my career.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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By Jim Selman | Bio
To continue our discussion about fear and
how to master it…. There are distinctions between coping with fear,
transcending fear and transforming fear. Coping is our
normal relationship with just about everything in our contemporary
world. Our relationship to circumstances is that ‘the world’ is real
and, more or less, whatever we think it is. We interact with our
circumstances based on our point of view, and our actions reinforce our
point of view. The result is that we participate in the persistence of
whatever it is we are coping with. People with phobias of various sorts typically learn to live[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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By Jim Selman | Bio
I am getting ready to fulfill one of my
dreams. I have always wanted to go to Africa, but for one reason or
another it was always too expensive, too far away or the opportunity
just didn’t click at the right time. In March, I will be going and I am
both excited and a little anxious since I am not quite sure what to
expect. As I watch myself preparing, I realize that the best part of
getting ready is that I don’t know what to expect—and that is the good
news. Too much of our lives is spent living into expectations, which is
one reason why we often get what we expect and are so surprised when we
don’t.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Retirement
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
We’re in the middle of the holiday season
and, from all reports, we’re buying a lot less ‘stuff’. Yet from where
I am sitting, it looks like there is a lot more ‘giving’. I see and
hear about more ‘charity’—from giving some paper money to the homeless
man we pass everyday to my father’s adopting an out-of-work mother and
three children who are members of his church community. A lot of people
seem to be generally nicer to each other, which is a wonderful gift
anytime. I suppose you can attribute this kind of mood-shift to[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
In 1976 I was working with some government
employees in Virginia trying to implement a new system for integrating
human services—a kind of one-stop shop for all the various services
offered at that time. I had just finished the est training the previous
July and was overwhelmed with my own experience and the idea that a
person could transform themselves and their relationship to everything.
Until then, I had bought into the belief that people don’t really
change in fundamental ways, that personalities are fairly fixed, and
that it requires a major crisis to shift our perceptions of reality. It
was during that period that I formulated the idea that there were
things that could be managed or taught and other things that could not
be managed or taught but that could be “coached”. The difference had to
do with how we observe others and ourselves and how we relate to power
and responsibility.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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By Jim Selman | Bio
One
of my friends who is about my age has been in a period of deep
reflection and growth. He recently shared that he was moving into a new
space of awareness analogous to the transition from adolescence to
adulthood. He said he was becoming profoundly aware that he has
something valuable to say and that part of his growing older is coming
face to face with becoming responsible for creating a new
‘presentation’ in the world. He struggled to express this
transformation: he likened it to learning a new language for expressing
himself as a person, as someone who has a very different and evolving
relationship with himself, other people, his circumstances and to the
future. He thinks this is what we must go through as we become Elders
in the truest since of the word. [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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