Too Tired

By Shae Hadden
Bio

It’s the battle cry of couch potatoes everywhere: “I’m too tired to do anything but watch TV.”

The secret language of couples that says so much more: “Not now, honey, I’m too tired…”

Parent’s pat excuse for eating fast food: “Let’s order take-out tonight. I’m too tired to cook…”

Employees incessant murmur: “I wish I could retire…I am so tired of this bullshit….”

With all this

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Choice

I was leading a seminar today in St. Lucia for about 80 people. We
were talking about organizational culture, but I was showing them that
culture is culture…the only difference is the perspective and scope of
the conversation. So the culture of an organization, the culture of a
country or the culture of a society can be viewed as the same
phenomenon—simply different levels of what people say about ‘the way it
is around here’. In other words, my view

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Serene Ambition

I was talking with a fellow recently who was asking why this blog is called Serene Ambition™.
He thought that the two words didn’t seem to go together. He could get
‘serenity’ and also understand ‘ambition’, but together they made no
sense to him. In our normal way of relating to the world, you can have
serenity (meaning inner peace, calmness, maybe even joy) or you can be
ambitious (meaning committed to creating or accomplishing

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First Impressions

I arrived in St. Lucia yesterday after an all-night flight and
grabbed the first taxi in line. The driver was an “old” guy who wasn’t
talkative and didn’t seem too happy. We had a 90-minute ride to the
hotel on the other side of the Island, so after a while I tried to make
conversation by asking some inane questions like “How many people live
here?” and “Have you lived here all your life?” The driver’s responses
were more like New York City

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Intergenerational Dialogue

By Shae Hadden
Bio

On Conversation Street, there are no age limits, and traffic can flow in both directions simultaneously.

Musing on intergenerational
conversations today. I’ve always been drawn to talk with people older
than myself. Perhaps this is because I’ve never felt comfortable with
my peers. I could blame it on the educational system (I was thrust
ahead of my age group in school to keep me interested in learning and
never

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Unreasonableness

I spent a good chunk of my life learning to be reasonable. In
business, the mantra for any proposal was always: “Is it practical?” It
seemed to me that reasonableness (and its sister practicality) were
virtues. People who were unreasonable or impractical seemed to be
exceptions—they came across as flaky, dangerous, occasionally lucky,
unpredictable, disconnected, loose canons and, above all, they weren’t
team players. When I turned 50, I came upon

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Fear

By Vincent DiBianca
Bio

A year or so ago, a few colleagues and I started to write a book
about the second half of life and how people could live a full and
fulfilling life until the day they die.

The treatise was that, in many ways, the second half could clearly
surpass the quality of experiences in the first half. I saw in my own
life and those around me profound examples of people 40 and older
reinventing their careers, physical condition and relationships.
Although I ran

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Trimtabs

I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t encounter or hear about
some nasty or absurd bit of bureaucratic/governmental non-sense. With
media people talking to other media people who are speculating on what
might or might not be true or relevant and an ever-increasing wave of
right versus left propaganda filling cyberspace, it’s just too much.
And when it comes to contacting me directly, there must be more
productive and satisfying avenues of expression

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