All posts by Shae Hadden

Agreement and Alignment

By Shae Hadden
Bio

In a recent conversation with my sisters, I was reminded that people don’t necessarily have to agree with the how, why or when of a particular possibility. But they do have to be aligned on the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ in order to move forward together—and the ‘who’ has to include a commitment from each person involved to the possibility of the ‘what’. In fact, disagreeing with the specifics of how to create a possibility adds value to the conversation and can inform and, in many cases, contribute to the success of the venture—whether it is the creation of something intangible (like a relationship) or tangible (like a product, project or organization).

For
most, agreement occurs when one person surrenders their point of view
to accept another point of view. Essentially, one perspective wins, the
other loses, within the context of agreement. An example: in
negotiations, the struggle for power is a struggle between perspectives
that has the winner take the dominant position at the head of the
table. Agreement is an either/or proposition. It does not allow space
for collaboration, respect or trust.

Alignment, on the other
hand,

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Balance: My Choose-o-Meter

By Shae Hadden
Bio

I’ve had some further insights since my last post about Balance.

No matter what the extent of my commitments, I see ‘balance’ as my ability to be ‘grounded’ and ‘present’. In each moment, I’m doing what I’m doing…and just that. Nothing else. The whole idea of ‘balancing work and life’, as if they are polar opposites, makes no sense to me.

Life is everything I experience.

Work is what I choose to label as work. Pleasure is what I label as ‘play’. Both work and play are made up of the actions I take as I live.

Balancing

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Balance

Finding balance in life has been a concern of mine for a long time.
From the number of times it comes up in conversation, it appears to be
a major concern for many others as well. My struggle for balance came
to a head recently with a series of inexplicable dizzy spells.
Admittedly, I’ve been running non-stop since my mother passed away
suddenly two years ago—abandoning a work situation where I felt
inspired but unappreciated, leaving a 20-year relationship

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Out of Town

Perspective really is everything. When Barb and Jim tell friends they’re ‘out of town’, they’re not necessarily where you might expect them to be. They may actually be just down the street or in a neighbouring community in the cosmopolitan city in which they live. To this retired couple, being ‘away from home’ translates into days or weeks spent in someone else’s home, soaking up the ambience of the neighbourhood, re-creating days spent in foreign cities, immersing themselves in

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Forget Me Not

Memory is an interesting and strange phenomenon. I think (as most of us do) that what I remember is more or less what happened. This came home to me a number of years ago when I was dating a woman I had dated twenty years previously and whom I had not seen in the intervening period. We ‘connected’ like old friends and more or less fell into the kind of comfortable conversation that old friends do. As we began to recall our earlier relationship (which was pretty intense and lasted for more

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Agreement and Alignment

In a recent conversation with my sisters, I was reminded that people don’t necessarily have to agree with the how, why or when of a particular possibility. But they do have to be aligned on the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ in order to move forward together—and the ‘who’ has to include a commitment from each person involved to the possibility of the ‘what’. In fact, disagreeing with the specifics of how to create a possibility adds value to the conversation and can inform and, in many

read more

Terrorist Paranoia

By Shae Hadden
Bio

I live in a country where multiculturalism was once the watchword of a generation. I attended high school in a ‘multicultural district’ in an inner city, took several language courses at university and hung out with people from diverse racial, social and cultural backgrounds. Today, I am disheartened to hear how ‘terrorist paranoia’ creeps into our everyday lives and has us question whether we will accept new people into our lives.

Today, two of my cousins asked for my
perspective on something that happened to them recently. They each,
obviously, had opposing perspectives on what had occurred and wanted me
to objectively give my opinion. Their story goes something like this…

A
young woman of Chinese descent, an engineer by trade, is living in our
city, working here temporarily. She has no friends or relatives here
and has been attending a downtown church in an effort to meet people.

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Affirming the Future

After retiring from her career in real estate, Dr. Anne Marie Evers
became an international motivational speaker, author and workshop
facilitator. Known as “The Affirmations Doctor”, this ordained minister
and counselor has applied her training in child psychology and personal
development to several children’s Affirmation programs, including the
popular anti-violence Affirm and Learn Enhancement Program, the Kids’ Affirmation Program (KAP) and The Kids Affirmation Club.

Dr.
Evers

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Empowerment

I was speaking with a friend today about how we sometimes feel
‘disempowered’ in certain situations where people repeat their patterns
of the past and where we have no ‘accountability’ for the outcome. I
realized as we were talking that we generally look at ‘being empowered’
as a solution in our careers and personal lives—as the pathway to the
promised land that will deliver us from whatever circumstances are
challenging us in the moment. When

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Relationships…with a Difference

This post was contributed by Shae Hadden.

I find myself wondering why we let a difference in our ages limit how we relate to each other in our personal relationships. I’m not speaking of the obvious social taboos like pedophilia and infantophilia. It’s the relationships between consenting adults that have me pondering. Why are different arrangements acceptable in different cultures and societies? Why is what is considered perverse in one accepted in another? Why is the most common pattern of heterosexual relationships still a slightly older man with a younger woman? Why is it that age disparity is less of an issue the older the partners involved are?

Psychologists have developed a host of terms to describe age-disparate relationships such as gerontophilia (attraction of non-elderly people to the elderly), teleiophilia (attraction of young people to the elderly) and the more general chronophilia (for any age-related preference). These terms make intergenerational relationships sound like a disease. They even assign ‘causes’ in the form of reasons for the attraction—usually from financial and social

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