 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
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 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
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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
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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
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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]
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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
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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
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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
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 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
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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
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