By Shae Hadden | Bio
Despite my intentions to stay focused on launching new materials into the world, the last couple of weeks have seen a flurry of activity around forming partnerships. When I look at the very real challenges we are facing today and the urgency with which they need to be addressed, establishing relationships might seem like the last thing we should spend time doing. However, I’m reminded of something Jim Selman often says: “Relationships are the foundation of success.”
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.
By Jim Selman | Bio
I have said many times that I view one of the biggest threats to our way of life (and at least the medium-term future) is widespread and institutionalized =&0=&. Resignation is a mood that most of us have experienced and many are experiencing today. It is a worldview devoid of possibility. It is the perspective that ‘nothing can be done’ and ‘nothing will really make a difference’. It is giving up, but in a way that justifies and rationalizes that giving up is the rational and reasonable thing to do. The benefit of resignation is that we can stop thinking or struggling.There is a difference between true ‘acceptance of those things I cannot change’ and resignation. Resignation is not a choice; it is a succumbing to the circumstances and buying into a ‘no possibility’ scenario. I was sitting next to a man last week from Mexico discussing the Mexican government’s campaign against drug cartels. He assured me that all the effort and all the lives that have been lost are meaningless and that corruption and organized crime are a permanent
By Jim Selman | Bio
One of the aphorisms we were given at the end of the est training in the 1970s was the statement, “Understanding is the booby prize.” It has taken me most of my life to really appreciate and mostly live day-to-day with this trueism. In our culture, understanding is assumed to be more or less synonymous with ‘knowledge’. It’s the point to most communication and a prerequisite for most commitment.If I have acquired any wisdom over the past six decades, it is this: the purpose of learning is action and understanding is a by-product of accomplishment (not a prerequisite). When I speak to groups of people, it usually takes me a few hours for them to ‘get’ that I am not communicating so they understand me, but communicating in a way that I hope will provide them with some new possibility or opening for action. As a coach, I am very clear that
By Eliezer Sobel | Website
There is much talk on Serene Ambition and elsewhere about altering one’s perspective and internal conversation about aging so as to “create a future to live into” that infuses the present with passion and energy, as distinct from the dreary resignation of merely playing out the repetitive and predictable habits and tendencies generated by the past.
And yet, while this sounds good in theory, what of the physical limitations imposed by age? I read Marilyn Hay’s posts
By Jim Selman | Bio
I just saw the movie WALL-E about a lonely robot on planet earth 700 years after a Wal-Mart-like enterprise wins the game of mega mergers and is the only corporation left, effectively running the world. The people had to leave because they couldn’t keep up with the trash. WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class) spends its days (we soon begin to think of it as a ‘he’ thanks to some brilliant scripting and Pixar magic) creating skyscraper-scale mountains of
By Jim Selman | Bio
As many of you know, I view aging, and the rest of life for that matter, as a series of conversations. In my work, I try to show people that if we can observe ourselves and our world through the lens of language, we can see that everything we think and experience occurs in the context of some interpretation or another. For most people most of the time, our interpretation is that there is a ‘real world’ out there, and if we could only understand it and control it (and ourselves),
I spent a good chunk of my life learning to be reasonable. In business, the mantra for any proposal was always: “Is it practical?” It seemed to me that reasonableness (and its sister practicality) were virtues. People who were unreasonable or impractical seemed to be exceptions—they came across as flaky, dangerous, occasionally lucky, unpredictable, disconnected, loose canons and, above all, they weren’t team players. When I turned 50, I came upon a quotation by George Bernard Shaw
Bill Plotkin’s latest book, Nature and the Human Soul, offers a
model for human development rooted in the natural world. Calling on the
stories of elders Thomas Berry and Joanna Macy, Plotkin
evokes a strong sense of a lack of maturity in a culture dominated by
adolescent desires and habits.
In this book, this pyschologist, ecotherapist and wilderness guide defines eight stages of life–Innocent, Explorer, Thespian, Wanderer, Soul Apprentice, Artisan, Master and Sage. Plotkin leads the
I saw a documentary film last night entitled, “Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard”. I had heard a lot about it from many friends who shared some of the ‘heady’ experience of working with him in the 70s and 80s. The film was a very well done tribute to his work and to the man I knew.
I had expected that the film’s purpose was to restore his reputation after his departure from the USA following a controversial ‘character assassination’ piece on CBS’s 60 Minutes.