Tag Archives: reality

Wisdom in Action

Positively Stinking Thinking

By Jim Selman | Bio

Julia Baird has a nice piece in the September 25th issue of Newsweek called “Positively Downbeat”. She’s commenting on Americans’ obsession with being happy and the billions we spend to learn “the secret”. It’s all about quick and easy fixes for life’s dilemmas and the not-so-small industry of consultants, motivational speakers and authors that are standing in the wings to offer answers and potions. She rightly points to the grand daddy of all self-help offerings, “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale and its latest incarnation “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne as archetypical examples of this genre.

I am not against the intentions behind our quest for happier and richer lives. Like millions of others, I can nod my head in agreement with most of the wisdom contained in these offerings.  I have been a self-help junkie myself in the past. But as I get older, I have learned that I am not my ‘thinking’ and the little voice in my head is not always my friend. Most recovered alcoholics and addicts will tell you that it was their ‘thinking’ that took them to their

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Fearless Aging

When Push Comes to Shove

By Jim Selman | Bio

Have you ever wondered where the line is between being idealistic versus realistic? I don’t think there is an objective answer. It is one of those questions that each of us must answer for ourselves. The ‘idealistic’ versus ‘realistic’ divide is not the same as ‘optimistic’ or ‘pessimistic’. Optimism and pessimism have to do with how we relate to the future and which crystal ball we’re looking into at the time. Whether the glass is half full or half empty can make for interesting conversation at Starbucks, but at the end of the day doesn’t make any difference. Reality doesn’t care what we think.

Being idealistic or realistic has less to do with how we see the future than it does with who we are. It is a choice of how we choose to relate to the world. I am an idealist. That is, I prefer to see the best in people and am committed to winning games worth playing. I see little benefit in arguing against possibility (which is what I generally hear when told I am not being “realistic”). Possibilities are never realistic. If they were, they would be examples. Further, realists

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The Great Turning

Markets and Mindfulness

By Jim Selman | Bio

Sandra, my financial advisor and friend, and I were talking about the ‘meltdown’ the other day. I was asking how my retirement investments were doing and she shared that I probably don’t want to know. She is a believer that markets go up and down and, over the long-haul, reasonably conservative investing will pay off. Historically this may be true, but somehow knowing that doesn’t help when you are afraid of ‘losing’ your life’s savings or having to live off your friends and children when you are old. Sandra’s advice was to relax and don’t read the newspapers. I think she is right.

When I think about it, I
have been a long-term investor for the past twenty years or so. For
most of that time, I didn’t think about my investments or ‘follow’ the
market. My relationship with the financial world was about like my
relationship with the weather—I was vaguely aware when it was raining,
but mostly it didn’t affect my life one way or the other. So what
happened? Now I read the financial section in the newspaper first

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Leadership

Being My Word

By Jim Selman | Bio

I was working with a group of people last week in Mexico. The session was about planning and they chose as their theme for the year “I am my word”. The idea was to emphasize ‘count-on-ability’ and the importance of delivering on plans. I spoke to them for a bit and shared the following reflections.

My work is about ‘Being’. It is an inquiry into who we are as human beings that is grounded in a great deal of theory, practice, rigorous philosophy, biology and more recently in some of the implications of what we’re learning from quantum physics. This ‘ontological paradigm’ claims that whatever ‘reality is’ (including who we are) is a matter of interpretation—and all interpretations occur in language. Language is to us what water is to a fish. It is the medium

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Fearless Aging

Springtime Awakening

By Jim Selman | Bio

I went to the Broadway musical Springtime Awakening this evening. The last musical I cried in before tonight was Les Miserables. Springtime Awakening is an exceptionally intense, well produced and acted story about youth coming of age in Germany at some time in what would seem to be the early or mid-1900s. It is a story that has plenty of parallels today, including confronting hormone-driven questions about our sexuality, about friendship, teen suicide, parental sex abuse, back ally abortions and somehow dealing with the wounds of growing up. read more
Fearless Aging

Slowing Down

My neighbor and good friend is moving to an apartment without stairs in another city where there’s a better environment for retirees and a more laid-back lifestyle. She tells me that she is ‘slowing down’. I am sure she is making the right decision for her—stairs have become difficult following hip surgery last year. And I am sure she knows that our choice of wording reveals
some of the bias hidden in our cultural predisposition to the
future.

To be sure, we hear a lot of people declaring

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The Great Turning

Growth Too (Two)

I wrote a post on growth a while ago about how insane I think it is to believe we can grow forever—at least in terms of economic growth. I was also reading The World We Want posts by David Korten that echoed the same sentiments but that go further to point out that all the breakdowns that are appearing are perhaps the greatest creative opportunity in history. That got me thinking that while I

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News

Memorial Day

Long weekends are often an opportunity to catch up on chores, connect with family and friends, and sometimes find time for reflection. This Memorial Day, the reality of the war in Iraq is very present in our thoughts and conversations. This article, Thinking for Ourselves, by Shea Howell, from the Michigan Citizen, invites us to commit to ending the war and to "restore our people and our country to life."  

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Fearless Aging

Lemons into Lemonade

Well, it happened again. I was mugged and robbed on the street in Buenos Aires—this time at 7:45 in the morning while walking on a major thoroughfare. I am normally pretty vigilant at night. This time, I stopped to window shop and before I knew it I was on the ground and the guy had pulled my wallet from my front pocket. I instinctively tried to kick him from the ground as he leaped over me and started running down Avenida Florida, which is a wide pedestrian boulevard. The next thing I know

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