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Nov 2008
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Elder, Elderly and Eldering

Thursday Nov 20 2008

    By Jim Selman | Bio
I read a nice piece called Welcoming the Approach of the Golden Years by Gary Westover talking about his growing awareness that he has a choice about how he grows older. He can follow the path of his parents and others and deteriorate each year until finally succumbing to dementia or worse. Or he realizes he can see that it is his attitudes and expectations that create the future he is living into and he can look forward to a continually expanding and rewarding experience of living. How we age is a choice and a commitment, it is not a given. He is realizing the difference between being an elder and becoming elderly.[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: elder eldering elderly leadership service wisdom

The Wisdom to Know the Difference

Friday Oct 17 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
Think about the positive attributes of growing older, and ‘wisdom’ will always appear near the top of the list. Until recently, I had assumed ‘wisdom’ was a kind of ‘right knowledge’. Every time someone says the Serenity Prayer, I am reminded of this attribute again.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
I wonder if I do know the difference.[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: action change choice judgment serenity service wisdom

Rate of Change

Wednesday Sep 17 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
I came across an extraordinary six-minute YouTube video called ‘The Shift’—a presentation that blows one’s mind with factoids about the rate of change in the world. The Shift they are talking about is a ‘paradigm shift’, meaning our entire worldview, indeed our whole reality, is being turned upside down and inside out by virtue of technology, population and the exponentially accelerating rate of change. Whether we like it or not, our ‘new reality’ challenges our commonsense and conventional wisdom with ideas like “Knowledge is becoming obsolete before you learn it”.[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: change eldering relationship technology wisdom

Inside the Rainbow

Friday Aug 15 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
If we think about retirement or growing older in general, it seems to me that most of us are trying to figure out what we want for our future. Our orientation is to explore options given whatever opening we have, rather than to consider that aging is an opening and the challenge is to create new possibilities—not simply cope with our circumstances.[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: aging perspective rainbow retirement wisdom

Too Late Smart

Tuesday Aug 12 2008

By Irene Noble


Admittedly my vision of my granddaughter is somewhat impaired by my love for her, but for the life of me I fail to understand how she became so wise so soon. We are both an only child, both raised by a single parent (a father for her, and a mother for me). We share a “jack of all trades” DNA. I watch her now as she, like my younger self, slightly out of focus, tries her wings. Like a hummingbird sampling nectars looking for the blossom with the most satisfying sugar, she fearlessly plunges into an array of interests that defy the time needed to perfect any one of them. I tell you this by way of introduction hoping to lead you into a greater subject. There she is at 23 with time to spare and here I am at 85 almost out of time.

[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: dream failure potential rejection serenity soul wisdom

Wisdom and Fear

Wednesday Aug 06 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
I heard someone remark that the best thing about getting older is they don’t have to be afraid anymore. While I think that is one of life’s ‘truisms’, it falls into the same category as your mother telling you “not to worry”—it doesn’t help much to know that when you are worried! From what I can see, most people get more fearful and anxious as they age. This anxiety takes various forms: fear of not having enough money, fear of being homeless, fear of being alone, fear of becoming dependent or of losing one’s faculties. The list could go on.[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: age anxiety certainty fear future wisdom

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

Polarity

Friday Jul 25 2008

   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: being either/or independence relationship serenity wisdom

What Conversation Are You?

Monday Jun 23 2008

  By Jim Selman | Bio
As many of you know, I view aging, and the rest of life for that matter, as a series of conversations. In my work, I try to show people that if we can observe ourselves and our world through the lens of language, we can see that everything we think and experience occurs in the context of some interpretation or another. For most people most of the time, our interpretation is that there is a ‘real world’ out there, and if we could only understand it and control it (and ourselves), then we’d be okay and win whatever game we’re playing. Of course, in this interpretation (called the Cartesian paradigm), people (that means us) are objects and our conversation about aging is basically that we wear out like our cars and eventually aren’t useful any longer.[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: aging conversation empowerment possibility wisdom

Hillary

Monday Jun 09 2008

I don’t know if you saw Hillary Clinton’s concession speech, but it was extraordinary. While the skeptics might say she was stumping for the vice presidency or simply doing the expected, the fact is that she is a pro and spoke with dignity and, in my judgment, was sincere and even more magnanimous that the occasion required. She recounted the Democratic values and the distinction between liberal and conservative politics today. More than I recall at any time during her campaign, she spoke of breaking the ‘glass ceiling’ and the significance of her candidacy for women in politics. Naturally, she did her best to rally her constituents to support Barack Obama.[Read More]

Written by admin at Leadership

Tagged with: clinton democratic experience idealism leadership obama wisdom youth

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