 By Shae Hadden | Bio
How often do we relate to our health as we
grow older as something ‘less than’ what it was in the past? I am
reminded of a dear friend in her 20s who has lived with polio all her
life. For her, the baseline of health is so very different than mine,
and yet, as she grows older, she too is caught up in the ‘less than’
comparison. Over the past few months, I have been discovering another
way of relating to my health—both present and future. I have been
discovering that I am not my health or any story I may have about what
was possible in the past or what’s possible in the future for my body.
I am learning how to be a patient patient, a middle-aged woman
committed to my healing process.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Health
Tagged with:
balance
commitment
health
patience
By Shae Hadden | Bio
While
waiting for the results of the U.S. presidential election to come in, I
was musing on what patience is and how valuable it will be in the days
ahead. Patience is the ability to endure without complaint, to
persevere when things get rough, to tolerate without annoyance or
provocation. Being patient is one way of relating to our circumstances
and to time that allows us to avoid being victims. The way of patience
is the way of surrender and trust—surrender to ‘what is’ and trust that
our intentions will unfold in time. The American people have
patiently endured this months-long campaign…and, for the most part,
have not been upset or annoyed with the slow playing out of their
democratic process.[ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
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patience
surrender
trust
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love
contains an interesting perspective on aging. For the Balinese, it is
more important what day of the week you were born on than the year you
were born in. One of the characters, a Balinese medicine man named
Ketut, knows only that his birthday is on Thursday and that he was an
adult in WWII. His estimates of his age vary daily, depending on how
tired or upbeat he's feeling.
Imagine what life might be like if you didn't know what year you were born in.... [ Read More]
Written by admin at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
age
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Several
years ago, a wise 93-year-old man named Hayden shared with me his
principles for living life “at the growing edge”. He had printed them
on cards, in the shape of a bookmark, and distributed them to everyone
who engaged in meaningful conversation with him. Today, as I’m
recovering from the first major surgery I’ve ever had, I was drawn to
reflect on a couple of them again. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I
shared them with you now:[ Read More]
Written by admin at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
choice
compassion
growing
health
letting_go
responsibility
 By Shae Hadden | Bio
Today is the day after the Canadian federal elections. It's also
Blog Action Day on Poverty. Admittedly, poverty is an important issue,
and so are politics. But there is an intractable problem we all face
that is the context for poverty, economics and politics. And that
is the environment. Our elected leaders in Canada and the U.S. will not
only set the course for
North American environmental and economic policies for the next few
years, but will also impact our long-term future as well. And we all
(developed and developing countries alike) need to transition to
clean energy economies if we want to avert global disaster. [ Read More]
Written by admin at Leadership
Tagged with:
economics
election
environment
politics
By Shae Hadden | Bio
With
elections today in Canada and next month in the U.S., this is a good
time to remind all the women we know to exercise their right to vote--a
right which we've only had for less than a century. In July
1917, a group of 33 women picketed outside the White House, asking for
the right to vote. They were rounded up by 40 police wielding clubs,
brought to Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia and imprisoned for
"obstructing sidewalk traffic". [ Read More]
Written by admin at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
courage
history
right
vote
By Shae Hadden | Bio
It's
Thanksgiving in Canada, and I've just enjoyed a full weekend of
personal and work commitments. But the highlight of the weekend was a
chance to reconnect with the power of the 'nap'. Research in the past few years has found that the human body requires
as much sleep as the brain will allow it and that the brain needs a
rest every now and then. [ Read More]
Written by admin at Health
Tagged with:
creativity
nap
sleep
By Shae Hadden | Bio
When one is free, one is accepting everything that appears with equanimity. When one is accepting everything that appears with equanimity, one is free. © 2008 Shae Hadden. All rights reserved.
[ Read More]
Written by admin at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
equanimity
freedom
By Shae Hadden | Bio
The
official arrival of fall always surprises me. It’s never the change in
weather so much as the passage of time that draws me up short—what
happened to the last few months of my life? This year I feel as if I’ve
been lost in a time warp while the rest of the world runs ahead at its
crazy pace…and as if I’m only just beginning to rejoin the rest of the
human race. And no, I didn’t go on an extended vacation or take a leave
of absence. All I did was connect to my purpose…and then my body seemed
to fall apart. Strange, but I’ve come to realize a distinction between
purpose and meaning through being ‘sidelined’ with health issues. [ Read More]
Written by admin at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
health
intention
interpretation
meaning
purpose
 By Jim Selman | Bio
I like this word. I don’t know why…perhaps
because it is one of those words that seems to express itself in
speaking of it. The word means ‘anxiety’—a kind of generalized anxiety
with being alive. The existential philosophers talked a lot about angst. In fact, we
normally associate angst with existentialism—existential angst. The
word is usually associated with a negative mood such as depression or
what Thomas Merton characterized as “the dark night of the soul”. I
think that Heidegger talked about it as the inherent tension between
‘being’ and ‘non-being’. I think that angst underlies the ‘suffering’
that Buddha associated with human existence and probably is behind the
concept of ‘original sin’. Whatever its origins or deeper meanings, it
is a day-to-day practical reality for most of us in our unending quest
to ‘get it right’ and ‘be happy’.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Personal Empowerment
Tagged with:
angst
existentialism
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Since Sarah Palin’s Gibson interviews, I’ve been hearing a lot of
people saying that she reminds them of George Bush—even more so than
John McCain does. Some of the similarities they’re seeing between Palin
and Bush include:[ Read More]
Written by admin at Leadership
Tagged with:
bush
mccain
palin
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
Tagged with:
career
community
giving
receiving
relationship
By Shae Hadden | Bio
An
overwhelming concern with mental fitness seems obvious from the
plethora of "brain games" geared to ‘older’ people. This fascination
with keeping our minds and our memories intact is admirable considering
that we will probably need our faculties for a lot longer than any
previous generation. From sudoku to crosswords, challenging video games
to virtual realities, we have many options to choose from. Each offers
different challenges for our key brain functions: concentration,
language, memory, logic/reasoning, and visual/spatial skills. Two
assumptions underlie much of the research and development in the area
of online brain games for older adults: [ Read More]
Written by admin at Health
Tagged with:
brain
dementia
game
leisure
video_games
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Traditionally, a generation was defined as the time between the birth
of parents and the birth of their offspring (about 30 years). Recently,
however, a more accurate definition would be a group of people born and
shaped by a particular span of time. The eras of Generations X, Y and Z
span much less than two decades each. And every generation experiences
life from a different perspective including changing societal values,
technologies and career options. These different perspectives are very
apparent when we communicate with each other. [ Read More]
Written by admin at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
collaboration
generations
intergenerational
language
multigenerational
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Usually
we think of the inevitable convergence of technologies as being
beneficial for the majority of people using them. Take the introduction
of video to the internet, or the internet to the cell phone, for
example. As soon as we discover something that works that people want,
then the advertisers and marketers are on the bandwagon, looking for
opportunities to sell within the new medium. What has me shaking my
head today is the obvious marketing spin on ‘virtual gifts’, iconic
symbols of items one might give to someone in appreciation or sympathy. [ Read More]
Written by admin at Fearless Aging
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