My friend Chauncey Bell recommended The 11th Hour, a movie about the state of our environment and the kinds of things that need to happen if we’re going to have much of a future to think about, on his blog. It didn’t contain a lot of new information, but did a great job of focusing the mind and will hopefully mobilize a lot of people into action through The 11th Hour Action website.
Several of the commentators and experts in the movie drew a parallel between the ‘state of our mind’ and
It’s almost springtime in Brazil. I was walking around in a t-shirt two days ago and almost froze to death this evening. The weather is one of the things I can count on to be unpredictable everywhere I go. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending upon your point of view), I don’t get outside much—mostly I am working inside with groups of people. Today I had two meetings with two groups and was struck by how similar conversations seem to be in this world of global business. Everyone seems
By Shae Hadden
Bio
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.
One of the things we need to learn if we haven’t learned it by the time we reach retirement and our ‘golden years’ is how to deal with loss. Aside from the obvious loss of friends and family though death and incapacitating illness, we have a host of other things we can ‘lose’, such as systems of support, material possessions, our physical abilities and perhaps most importantly—possibility. Not everyone experiences loss and certainly not in the same way. But loss, whether real or perceived,
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
I am writing a speech. It is the speech I would give to a college graduation ceremony if anyone ever asked me to give the commencement address. So far no one has. In the speech I am telling the new graduates they are as ‘adult’ as they will ever be and that I don’t really have any answers for them. The world is changing too quickly for me (or anyone in my generation) to presume to know what they will need to know in the future. I am also suggesting that, whatever else defines our respective
There has been a lot of general criticism about the self-centered nature of the ‘Baby Boomers’. While visiting last week, my father commented that many of today’s problems are exacerbated by the fact that the Boomers “never lived through the Depression”. In a recent conversation with my son, I found out he has the view that one of the biggest problems of his generation is that they all seem to think the world should be organized
By Shae Hadden
Bio
It’s my pleasure to begin this series of portraits with the story of a
man who has inspired me to persevere with my commitment to exercise
regularly since I met him two years ago. When I decided to begin this
column, I immediately thought of Richard Gauntlett as the epitome of a
person who is redefining the culture of aging through his actions.
“You
don’t have to a specialist or a particularly great athlete to
accomplish your
My father and I drove from Arizona to the Northwest last week and we are now enjoying a relaxed week together along with my daughter and her husband. I am grateful for the opportunity to spend whatever time I can with family. I think that, as we get older, our appreciation for our children and parents expands. At the same time, I can also see that I can become ‘stuck’ in a kind of ‘family-get-together-pattern’. Not that this is bad, but it is different than how I might normally spend a
Most of us are fans of the idea of ‘dialogue’. Dialogue is generally touted as the answer for resolving conflicts, building trust and crossing cultural divides of all kinds—be they national, organizational, ethnic, racial, gender-based or generational. I was having a conversation recently with a very bright young woman in the same business as me and we were swapping stories and ideas and experiences.
Although we are both professional communicators and teach others how to communicate more