Tag Archives: possibility

Retirement

Retirement and Choice

By Kevin Brown | Bio

In my previous post, I mentioned two books that I was in the process of reading, Ken Dychtwald’s "With Purpose" and Don Tapscott’s "Grown Up Digital".  Ken’s book calls us to consider how we will spend our time and apply our life experience in the later stages of our life. Don’s book has us consider the impact the ‘Net Generation’ is having on the world at large. I have only begun to read "Grown up Digital" and already I am reading it from the perspective of aging. While considering the impact of the ‘Net Generation’, I am really listening for "What does this mean to the generation of baby boomers (my generation) that is about to retire and how will it directly or indirectly influence our generation’s impact on society going forward?" Traveling regularly back and forth between Calgary and Edmonton (the two largest cities in Alberta, Canada) allows me to interact with the many friends I have made in both of the cities in which I have grown up, gone to school, worked, and contributed socially.  For many of my friends and I, our conversations are increasingly turning to the subject of retirement. For some, retirement is eagerly anticipated and just a few short years away. For others, it is on the mind, but seen as something that will occur five to ten years in the future. The question that I have been asking my friends when the discussion turns to retirement is, "Could we have a more powerful discussion about our future by focusing on possibility?" One doesn’t have to spend much time researching aging to conclude that life expectancy continues to increase (in Canada 83 for women and 78 for men and in the United States 81 for women and 73 for men). There is every likelihood that, with the constant improvements in medicine and in health and wellness research and practices, we will continue to live longer lives with greater levels of health.  If, therefore, we can reasonably expect to live into our mid to late 80s with healthy bodies and minds, then how will we spend our time and contribute the best of ourselves back into society?  What if our focus were to shift from one of "Retirement" to one of "Choice"? Each calls us to consider very different possibilities for aging. Webster defines retirement as "withdrawal, as in withdrawal from one’s occupation or profession". Choice is defined as "the opportunity and power to choose or reject a possibility". Shifting our focus from one of "withdrawal" (in which the future is defined by our past and we see only diminishing opportunities) to one of "choosing” (in which the future offers endless possibilities for us to choose) creates an opening for action and contribution and engagement.

At the Eldering Institute, we speak of "Eldering" as a way of being in which we are creating purpose and mastery in later life. One of our program offerings is "Eldering: The alternative to retirement". This interactive one-day workshop is intended for individuals who are focused on choosing how they relate to their future. Eldering is a masterful way of relating to the rest of our lives—one

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Wisdom in Action

Moods

By Jim Selman | Bio

Perhaps the most pervasive and omnipresent aspect of being alive is our moods. We are always in one mood or another. Moods are either positive or negative and they ‘color’ our experience of living, affect how we relate to others and our circumstances, and have extraordinary power to open or close possibilities. If we examine this phenomenon, we can see that our moods are portable—we take them with us wherever we go. I can be angry at home and find that mood affecting me at work or even on the golf course.

Moods are also contagious. Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone is in a good mood and then the boss or someone enters the room in a different, perhaps negative, mood and it isn’t long before everyone has ‘caught’ the new mood?

Moods constitute the contexts in which we normally live and experience our lives. But most importantly, they are almost always involuntary—they happen to us. We rarely choose what mood we will be in, especially when we get our ‘buttons

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Leadership

Where Is a Genie When You Need One?

By Jim Selman | Bio

There is a widely understood belief in Argentina’s culture that “the way we are is a big part of the problem … and one of our characteristics is that we’re always waiting for a leader to come along and save us.” The first time I heard this I was giving a talk to a large event in Buenos Aires. A man stood up and challenged my ‘American optimism’, suggesting that I just didn’t understand the way things really were in ‘their’ country. My response was to acknowledge that this may be true and to suggest that, since they were all waiting for the leader to appear, perhaps he could take the job until the leader came along. That got a chuckle or two and drove home my point. We live as if the causes and the solutions to our problems are somehow outside of ourselves and that they are beyond our ability to resolve. This view of the world inevitably leads to resignation—giving up—and has us drift into a kind of spectator relationship to life and the future.

I make the same point in a different way in my Leadership in Action workshops. I usually begin by asking participants what they would to say to a ‘Genie’ if that magical being promised to grant them one wish to change something in their organization. I am always a little surprised to hear people’s innocuous and tiny wishes (such as better communication, more cooperation between departments, more straight talk, more trust and so on). Not that these aren’t

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Health

The Miracle Within

By Kevin Brown | Bio At the end of April this year, my wife and I spent a week in Nevada.  The purpose of our visit was purely one of rest and relaxation.  We spent a few days in Las Vegas and then a few in Laughlin, Nevada and Bullhead, Arizona.  Our short vacation included a few days of golf (for me), some sightseeing, viewing some real estate properties, a Cirque du Soleil evening show, time by the pool, lots of dining out, and a last-minute decision to take in ‘Bodies…
The Exhibition‘ on display at the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. While each of our activities provided the rest and enjoyment we sought, it was the Bodies exhibition that left me both amazed and filled with awe.   If you have never had the opportunity to take in one of the several ‘Bodies… The Exhibition’ displays, I highly recommend you create the possibility of doing so. It is my understanding that while each exhibit has different elements, each display features actual human specimens for visitors to examine in detail. Visitors hopefully gain a first-hand appreciation for the complexity of the human body.   I cannot think of another exhibit that has impacted me the way this one did. I felt a deep sense of amazement viewing full bodies with the skin removed, exposing internal organs. the nervous and arterial systems left me in complete awe with their complexity. I was disturbed viewing the portion of the exhibit that featured fetal development from 1 week to 12 weeks.  Disturbed because I support the right to choose an abortion and now am left with images of the fetus at 1, 3, 6, 8 and 12 weeks…all of which were fully recognizable as human life! Leaving the exhibit, I was left to consider the complex workings of the human body as nothing short of a miracle.   Webster’s has several definitions for ‘Miracle’, including extraordinary events linked to divinity to simply an extremely unusual event, thing or accomplishment. Other sources seem to invoke statistical improbability, survival of natural disasters, survival of terminal illness, and yes, even birth itself. For me, I think of a miracle as an occurrence for which there is no reasonable explanation. In my life, I cannot remember a time or event in which I experienced one. Certainly there have been events which I was willing to attribute to a miracle (for example, the survival of everyone following the plane crash on the Hudson River). I, however, have had no personal experience of a miracle, at least not one I was present to.   Leaving the Bodies Exhibition, I was left to consider "the miracle within" my own body. When I considered the enormous complexity of all the internal systems at work and the real-time communication within and across bodily systems, I could not help but consider the miracle that occurs in both the design and the operation of our bodies. Whether we attribute our internal workings to genetics and evolution or to divine creation, the ‘Miracle Within’ is something to consider each and every morning when we rise to face another day.

Imagine the possibilities we can generate when each new day begins with a recognition of our own ‘Miracle Within’!

© 2009 Kevin Brown. All rights reserved. read more
Fearless Aging

Pessimist or Optimist: Who Has the Edge?

By Jim Selman | Bio

I was reading an interesting article by a prestigious think tank this morning that was saying perhaps the ‘recession’ isn’t as black or white as most of us make it out to be and that it most certainly isn’t as bad as conventional wisdom and media hype would have us believe. I noticed I felt a little better after reading it, but then I wondered why my mood shifted so easily based on only one article. Tomorrow I could read a darker scenario by another equally reputable

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Fearless Aging

Simplifying Uncertainty

By Shae Hadden | Bio

Spring flowers bloom passionately on this sunny West Coast day, birds are preparing nests for their young and people run madly by me as I sit by the ocean and ponder what it takes to survive in these times. My search for a place to live has not yet been entirely successful, and the conversations I’ve had reveal both desperation and gnawing hesitation in myself and others to actually put a stake in the ground—metaphorically speaking—and declare that this is the future we are committing to. It’s almost as if, with so much uncertainty about so many things in our lives, we are afraid to take a chance—whether on an investment, a potential tenant, a business expense or a relationship.

What do we lose when we put aside possibility and focus on surviving?

I think that we lose touch with our courage and creativity. When things look difficult, change is tumultuous and our internal sense of balance is thrown off kilter, we often forget there is a silver lining to the economic doom and gloom. We now have an opportunity to return to the heart of things, to simplify our lives, to free ourselves from practices that might have had us living beyond our means.

There

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Wisdom in Action

The Care and Feeding of Seniors

By Kevin Brown | Bio

You must forgive the title of this post, especially if you view aging the way that I view aging: as a natural progression of life that embodies endless possibilities. This view is the core reason why I joined the Eldering Institute, an organization that promotes a life of power, purpose and possibility for Elders. I choose to live in a world in which individuals, regardless of age, are committed to continually creating new possibilities for their lives.  I am speaking

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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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Wisdom in Action

My Funny Valentine

By Jim Selman | Bio

This is one of those nights when I am up early in Madrid—still having a little ‘time zone’ fatigue. I am writing today’s blog while listening to Miles Davis play “My Funny Valentine” on my headset. Now for those who are into music and listen to it all the time, this may seem like a “so what?” But strange as it seems and even though I enjoy music when I hear it, I am not very conscious of it. Music is just background for me most of the time. The other day I was talking to a friend who also does a lot of blogging who said she couldn’t think of writing without carefully choosing the music to listen to while she is writing. So, here I am at four in the morning listening to my jazz favorites on iTunes.

Valentine’s Day is coming up in a couple of days and it has me thinking about romance. I am a romantic and always have been. I think I may be getting more romantic as I get older. This has me wondering what romance is. Diana Kroll is singing “You may call it romance, but I call it love”. The fact is that romance is a lot of what I think makes life worth living. Romance isn’t just about seducing the ‘objects of our desire’. Maybe it is the recognition that the ‘other’

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