Fearless Aging

Expectations

By Shae Hadden
Bio

Expectations are basic to who we are. From the time we are born, we live in a relationship with the future based on our experience of the past and the interpretations of reality that we learn from our culture and history. We learn from our parents to live up to our expectations. We organize our actions based on them and, more often than not, they become self-fulfilling. When something unexpected occurs, we feel fortunate if it is good and upset if it is bad. Our moods are always correlated to our expectations. And as we grow older, most of us expect to ‘slow down’, experience declining health, need to change our lifestyle and perhaps to give up many of the things we’ve enjoyed most in our lives. The general expectation of old age is one of decline.

If
I were to have a child (a hypothetical choice at this point in my life,
as I am long past my child-bearing years), I would not be able to bring
them up without teaching them what to expect in the future. For from
the first time they cry and I respond, I would begin a pattern of
stimulus-and-response behavior that would create an expectation. If I
can perceive that my child is hungry, I would feed them: wet, I would
change them. In need

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Personal Empowerment

Resisting Love

By Shae Hadden
Bio

  • Resistance causes persistence.
  • You get what you resist.
  • Practice non-resistance.

All
these axioms seem appropriate when speaking of violence, acts of
aggression, conflict, long-standing issues of hate and fear. But why
would we resist the ‘good’ things in life like friendship, support,
trust, attraction and love?

Time and time again I find myself
turning away from what I most want as if it is a poisonous substance
harmful to my health. I live alone now and often feel an overwhelming
need for intimacy, fun and laughter. I look at

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Wisdom in Action

So what have you learned in the last 30 years?

I gave a speech in Buenos Aires last week and was asked to share with folks my ‘bottom line’ on what I have learned coaching people over the past 30 years. Here was the list off the top of my head. On re-reading it, I think this is pretty much the whole story for me. What is your list? Please send it along as a comment.

  • Life is choices. At the end, your life story is just a record of the choices we made.
  • Choices are commitments—not decisions. Gravity doesn’t care why you jumped.
  • Moods are excuses for being less than we are. They blind us to reality and keep us coping with circumstances and whatever else we think is causing our moods.
  • We create our own reality. Life is pretty much what we say it is.
  • Intentions and vision are the same. They are where we come from, the context for whatever it is we are doing.
  • If you want to know what you intend, look at your results. The alternative is to deny our power and responsibility.
  • Possibilities aren’t real—they are created. If they were real, they would be examples.
  • We always get what we resist. Both proponents and opponents of change are frequently pushing in the same direction.
  • Control always produces what we don’t want. It’s the opposite of surrender and generally is grounded in the belief that we are choosing (when in fact, we are just resisting).
  • Clever self-serving people always lose in the end. This is more a matter of faith than actual learning. There are still a lot of slimy scumbags who look like they are ahead for the moment.
  • The best strategy for success is having a sense of humor, acceptance, gratitude and praying for humility.
  • The essence of leadership (and coaching) is love. It’s all about giving people space to be the way they are, as well as space to change.
  • Love is a choice. Therefore, love is a commitment (maybe ‘the’ commitment).

And finally, the list would not be complete without adding that I have learned that no matter how much I have learned, I am still a beginner and there is at least this much

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Wisdom in Action

Divisadero

AARP had an interesting book review of Michael Ondaatje’s new book, Divisadero, that leaves me thinking about how the past affects not only the future but also how we experience the present. Based on the review, it sounds like a well-written and thoughtful yarn. I will pick up a copy at the airport.

The premise of the book reminds me of a provocative question we used to ask in the 70s when the focus was on ‘being here now’ and ‘going with the flow’. The question was:

“Would you want to have 10,000 experiences in your life or live one experience 10,000 times?”

The point being that

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Personal Empowerment

The Little Voice

It is a cold day in Buenos Aires and I have a cold so am resting in the hotel room. For no particular reason, I am more conscious than normal of my ‘little voice’—you know the conversation in our heads. I talk about this phenomenon a lot in my work. People laugh when I challenge the conventional view that they can control it: “Try to turn it off” or “Don’t think about what I am about to say”. Then I suggest that this conversation we are always having, what we call thinking, is

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Health

Health – Who’s on First?

By Vincent DiBianca
Bio

Like many, I’ve heard both sides of the ‘Cooking and Freezing in Plastic’ debate. A good friend recently sent me an email warning of the dangers of “microwaving and freezing food in plastic containers” accompanied with supportive research. Another friend responded by saying that the ‘authorities’ (including the FDA and Johns Hopkins University) say that Rubbermaid®, Tupperware®, plastic cookware and food wrap sold for home use have been thoroughly tested, only tiny traces of a plasticizer have been found, and even that is not an endocrine disrupter. This set off a productive dialogue about who to believe about what.

Another
friend who is a prominent bio-chemist and clinical physiologist says
the impact of synthetics has a major impact on compromising the immune
system. (He contends that contrary to some reports, leaching from
microwave cooking has been proven to occur in virtually all plastics
and whether the plastic touches the food or not). Ugh!

Personally,
I give little credence to much of the mainstream position on health and
well-being. Unfortunately, doubting our ‘authorities’

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Fearless Aging

The Game of Life

Last week, the International Herald Tribune featured a fun editorial on the Game of Life Twists & Turns by Lawrence Downes. He was musing that if ‘life is a game’ he hopes it isn’t like the 120-year-old brainchild of Milton Bradley. It seems that the board game is getting another face-lift in August (the last one was about 1960). I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

His description of the ‘new’ Game of Life and of playing it with his young

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Wisdom in Action

Aging and Poverty

I just came from Sao Paulo—an enormous city of more than 20 million folks. Brazil has about 188 million, a lot of them dealing with poverty every day. They have about 17 million folks over 60 and, like our aging population, that number will almost double by 2025. The biggest difference is that Brazil doesn’t have as much of an economic foundation and social infrastructure to support its older citizens. I was speaking to a friend there who shared his view that very few people in Latin America,

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Wisdom in Action

Sand Art

I am profoundly grateful today for the gift of life and the opportunity to observe. How extraordinary and beautiful this all is. When we consider how miraculous it is that we are here at all, even the difficulty and pain are exquisite.

If I think about my life, it is utterly amazing that I have survived this long and have had such a wealth of experiences—a cornucopia of the good, the bad and the ugly. Perhaps the greatest gift of growing older is to appreciate ALL of it, the marvelous and the

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