Tag Archives: breakdown

The New Year

By Jim Selman | Bio

The last 10 years seems to me to have been a long decade. I know that time is supposed to  ‘speed up’ as we get older, but the “Millennium” celebrations, Y2K and all the hype about the 21st century seems like ancient history. A decade ago, we still weren’t at war in two countries, 9/11 hadn’t happened, George Bush was still promising a bipartisan administration, climate change was still a bit of an arcane scientific debate for most of us, New Orleans was still having a non-stop party and Google was a minor start-up. YouTube didn’t exist at the turn of the century, eBay and Amazon were still babies, and the real estate bubble was just beginning. Steve Jobs had recently returned to Apple after spending 13 years with NeXT, the iPod and iTunes were concept just beginning to be developed and the iPhone wasn’t even in sight.

We were all younger and, I think, generally more optimistic than we are today. We’ve lost a lot of our innocence in only 10 years. From Al Qaeda to Bernie Madoff, we’re waking up to the realization that the world is not our oyster and that the American Dream is just a dream if we aren’t responsible for it and act upon it.

Personally, I think the saddest thing that has happened to us in the past decade is the political and ideological polarization of our nation. I don’t

read more

Back to Work

By Jim Selman | Bio

Today is ‘back to work’ for most of us. We’ve eaten too much, survived another holiday season and are now preparing for what’s next. This year is different for many throughout the world. The economy, climate, war and poverty are continuing sources of suffering. I hear more and more people expressing their fears about the future and predictions that 2009 will be ‘very tough’. Unfortunately, if enough people have a pessimistic view of their future, then as I have said on this blog many times, we are creating a self-fulfilling reality. We will get what we resist and fear unless and until enough people create a critical mass to create a different, unpredictable future.

This isn’t just about being pessimistic or optimistic, which are mostly just positive or negative predictions for most people. This is about the capacity we all have to create (not predict) the future. Creating the future is the essence of leadership and the source of possibilities throughout human history. It should be obvious that we are creating our current ‘reality’ all the time anyway. Our actions today are causing tomorrow, just as our actions yesterday created today.

read more

New Year’s Resolutions

By Jim Selman | Bio

It seems to me that I have been making New Year’s Resolutions most of my life. Like many, I have also been well intended and even ‘in action’ for awhile each year before my list fades into the background; habit or comfort or rationalization takes over and I once again ‘forget’ my annual commitments to personal betterment for another year. At my age I wonder why I even bother to make the list.

I found some of my old ‘resolutions’ from about 2001 the other day. As usual my ‘good intentions’ included weight loss, learning a new language, playing the guitar, exercise, more discipline about writing, a financial goal and some odds and ends related to recreation, meditation and taking more time to just read and relax. It wasn’t a lot different than the proclamations I made in college.

The irony is that, in spite of mostly failing to keep my New Year’s resolutions,

read more

Body Breakdowns

By Jim Selman | Bio

You hear about it and know it is true—the body breaks down as we grow older. Naturally there are lots of exceptions. If you take really good care of yourself, you might make it to the end of the game without any major physical impairment. However, for most of us we’re going to encounter some life-limiting change in our bodies. I encountered my first this week.

I showed up for a meeting with an orthopedic surgeon to have what I expected to be routine work done on a torn tendon in my shoulder, only to learn that it was inoperable and that I would need to accept the fact that, for the rest of my life, I will have limited functionality. That means I’ll probably not play golf or anything else that requires mobility or power in the left arm. The good news is that my right arm can still be repaired.

What was interesting to me was to watch

read more

Growth Too (Two)

I wrote a post on growth a while ago about how insane I think it is to believe we can grow forever—at least in terms of economic growth. I was also reading The World We Want posts by David Korten that echoed the same sentiments but that go further to point out that all the breakdowns that are appearing are perhaps the greatest creative opportunity in history. That got me thinking that while I

read more