Tag Archives: future

Fearless Aging

Fear and Risk

By Jim Selman | Bio

Our relationship to risk and our fears is closely related. Most of our lives we’ve made decisions based on some formal or informal process for assessing ‘risk’. In our conventional way of thinking, this means trying to predict what will or will not happen and with what probabilities based on some scenario or course of action. It is a ‘forward looking’ posture and, as with all predictions, draws on historical data or experience and projects it into the future. In other words, we take our past, project it into the future and then make our choices and commitments based on what our predictions (the past) tell us will probably happen.

Anyone who is even mildly
paying attention can easily grasp that the predictions are wrong more
often than they are right. Particularly now, when the world is changing
around us so rapidly, we can no longer rely on this mode of
decision-making. At best, we maintain the status quo and, more often
than not, we are completely blindsided by something unexpected that
wasn’t taken into account when we were assessing risk and making our
decisions.

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Fearless Aging

Worrying

By Shae Hadden | Bio

It’s difficult these days to not worry about something—what with the economic crisis, pollution, climate change, species extinction, resource depletion and the melting polar ice caps, not to mention the innumerable human conflicts on the planet. Many of our conversations revolve around one or another of these topics, or at least are impacted by the larger global issues we all are facing. And much of what I’m hearing in what people are saying is that they are ‘worried’

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The Great Turning

Who Designs the Future?

By Lauren Selman | Bio

This may seem like a far-reaching question, but really, who is designing our future? Is it is the politicians in marble buildings, or the aspiring college students whose optimism drives them to want to change the world, or is it our unborn?

If you are like most people, you may think that designers are the people that decorate the runways of Milan, New York and Los Angeles with glamour, innovation and beauty. Yes, these are designers. But this past weekend, my focus was shifted to designers that I would have never associated with holding the element of change. These new designers look to the planet as their runway and inspire and create new systems and solutions to our present problems. These graphic artists,

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Leadership

The Courage to Persevere

By Shae Hadden | Bio

I haven’t lived through the Depression, or participated in a major global conflict. Compared to many people on this planet, I haven’t had a lot of difficulties in my life. But the challenges that I have faced I have been able to survive. If you’d asked me a year ago what made that possible, I would probably have said “sheer will power”. But I’m a little older and a little wiser now. And my answer today has a quality of serenity in it that wasn’t evident back then.

Viewing the future as possibility has allowed me to look at everything that’s happening from a very empowering perspective. The future has not occurred yet…it is and always will exist in the domain of possibility. And, as Jim Selman would say, possibilities are not real (if they were, they’d be examples). So being afraid of the future is simply being afraid of what’s possible. It’s up to me to choose which possible future I want to commit to and ‘make real’.

Once

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Fearless Aging

My Birthday

By Jim Selman | Bio

My birthday is tomorrow. I don’t normally give much significance to these annual milestones. I don’t actually remember most of my birthdays, other than a few of the hallmarks—21st, 50th and maybe my 65th.  I certainly appreciate the cards and wishes and the fact that someone cares enough to acknowledge the day. My birthday has probably been of more interest to astrologers than it has for me. This year, I am spending it alone in Madrid on a rainy day.  Perhaps for this reason, I am more reflective than I might otherwise be.

Sixty-seven years ago I didn’t exist, and sometime in the foreseeable future I won’t exist again. I have already been around longer than most of my ancestors, made more money than my father, had three great children, pursued three totally different careers, traveled the world, loved and been loved a lot, experienced heartbreak and pain, and (arguably) have learned more in my lifetime than was learnable a hundred years ago. I am happy, healthy and, with the grace of God and

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The Great Turning

Transforming the Trends

By Jim Selman | Bio

I was sent this extraordinary video produced by the AARP communicating in a simple and straightforward way that if we don’t change the direction we’re going, we’re apt to end up there. It is one of a number of dire predictions about our common future. Yesterday, Al Gore declared climate change irreversible and challenged all of us to transcend short-term concerns and agendas and unite with the world in dealing with this looming calamity. There is so much bad news about

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Retirement

Africa

By Jim Selman | Bio

I am getting ready to fulfill one of my dreams. I have always wanted to go to Africa, but for one reason or another it was always too expensive, too far away or the opportunity just didn’t click at the right time. In March, I will be going and I am both excited and a little anxious since I am not quite sure what to expect. As I watch myself preparing, I realize that the best part of getting ready is that I don’t know what to expect—and that is the good news.

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Leadership

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.

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Wisdom in Action

Brave Nation

By Jim Selman | Bio

There is an amazing website called The Brave Nation that is showcasing people who’ve made a difference. Many of these examples of human vision, commitment and perseverance are boomers who challenged ‘the system’ in the ’60s and ’70s and are now sharing their experience with the current generation of ‘change agents’. It is inspiring to remember and reconnect with the idealism of our youth and perplexing to wonder what happened to so many of us who have drifted into complacency about (or in some cases complicity with) current events.

Personally, I think the idealism is still there, perhaps under a cloak of resignation and lost dreams. So much has happened in the past 35 years or so that it is difficult to imagine, let alone remember, who we were. It seems so long ago that I can’t even remember how it felt to live in the possibility of a “world that works for everyone”. Civil rights marches and protests aside, the world of my youth was a heady time—a time when ‘the best and the brightest’ went

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Retirement

Circumstantial Drift

By Jim Selman | Bio

One of the biggest questions most of us have is “Why do we do what we do?”, particularly when what we do isn’t what we want to do or think we should be doing.  My answer is that, for most of us, most of the time we’re not actually choosing what we do. We are living our life according to our historical patterns within some narrowly proscribed personal and cultural ‘story’ about what is and is not possible and what our options are in any given situation. In effect,

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