Tag Archives: relationship

Personal Empowerment

Relationships…with a Difference

This post was contributed by Shae Hadden.

I find myself wondering why we let a difference in our ages limit how we relate to each other in our personal relationships. I’m not speaking of the obvious social taboos like pedophilia and infantophilia. It’s the relationships between consenting adults that have me pondering. Why are different arrangements acceptable in different cultures and societies? Why is what is considered perverse in one accepted in another? Why is the most common pattern of heterosexual relationships still a slightly older man with a younger woman? Why is it that age disparity is less of an issue the older the partners involved are?

Psychologists have developed a host of terms to describe age-disparate relationships such as gerontophilia (attraction of non-elderly people to the elderly), teleiophilia (attraction of young people to the elderly) and the more general chronophilia (for any age-related preference). These terms make intergenerational relationships sound like a disease. They even assign ‘causes’ in the form of reasons for the attraction—usually from financial and social

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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

The Blessing of Sadness

By Don Arnoudse
Bio

For as long as I can remember, I have been an optimistic person. I’ve always taken great pride in my natural inclination to see a ‘silver lining in every cloud’. ‘Making lemonade out of lemons’ was one of my favorite clichés. Imagine my surprise when, in a recent conversation with Ann, my personal coach, I heard her say she felt a deep shiver of sadness while listening to me. It brought me up short. I had been talking about turning 59 years old, how good life was right now and, at the same time, how acutely aware I was of how fast time was flying by. When I stopped, took a deep breath, and listened to my body, I realized that deep down there was a pool of sadness within me. This is an emotion I’ve kept at bay for a long time. I’ve learned in my work with Julio Olalla at the Newfield Network that sadness is not something to be avoided. Contrary to what our culture would have us believe, it is a valuable emotion—one that reminds us of what we truly value. When we mourn the loss of someone or something, we are brought up close and personal to that which truly makes our life worthwhile.  I’ve decided to ‘practice’ sadness. To let it in, rather than deflect it. I am beginning to understand the gift it is. In great sadness, we have a profound opportunity to take another look at our life and make course corrections. Ironically, sadness can also give us access to gratitude. Sadness points us to what we must accept in life in order to achieve real peace. From now on, whenever I feel a glimmer of sadness, I intend to sink into it a bit before moving on with my busy life. I feel sad about a number of things even now… My father died last October. I felt initially overwhelmed with sadness and then, in my eulogy of him, I was so grateful for the many things I had learned from this modest man. My two children are 21 and 22. I am sad for the many mistakes I now see I made as a parent. As they create their independent lives, I am sad for the distance between us. I am so grateful for them in my life and I so value my relationship with them. My sadness points out my need to accept that I did the best I knew how to do at the time and reveals my commitment to love them for the rest of my life. I am increasingly aware of my mortality. I do the ‘life math’ and am sad that I won’t have as much time as I would like. My sadness points out how much I love life, my fascination with so many things, and the eagerness with which I live most of my days. What a blessing! I am sad for my friends who have already died. I miss them and I am so grateful for the contributions they made to who I am today. I pledge anew to make time for the friends I have today. I am sad for the state of the world we inhabit. War, hunger, poverty, the environment, terrorism, racism, greed and exploitation of the powerless and all the other seemingly intractable problems sometimes seem so overwhelming. I am glad I no longer live with my ‘head in the sand’, naively seeing only the bright side. I commit to engaging with the world, not hiding in fear. As I hear the life stories of my coaching clients, I practice letting myself simply be with their sadness for losses they have suffered. Rather than try to cheer them up right away, I acknowledge and am grateful for the connection this allows me to have with them. I am grateful for the shared journey we are on and for the trust they have in me that allows them to communicate their pain. I yearn for peace at this point in my life. My sadness gives me clues to what I must learn to accept to find that peace. I accept that I am a human being who makes mistakes. I have a dark side. I sometimes let people down, even those I most love. I sometimes betray my own values. I procrastinate on important things. I backslide on resolutions I have made. And these are all things that make me who I am. These are the struggles that have shaped my character and remind me of what I prize in life. My wounds have given me compassion for others. My failures have allowed me to appreciate success and the value of continuing to show up and give things my best shot. My tears allow me to get close, to drop my mask and be intimately connected with others.  So, when you see me with tears in my eyes, please don’t try to cheer me up. Be grateful, along with me, for the blessing of sadness. read more
Learning

Silence, Discernment & the Art of Listening III

By Stu Whitley
Bio

This is the third post in a three-part series.

In the 18th century, Sir William Herschel became the first man to discover a planet, Uranus, and six years later, he found two moons to that frozen, unimaginable world. His sister was an eminent astronomer as well, discovering three nebulae and eight comets. His son John, born into a family steeped in brilliance, wrote Treatise on Astronomy in 1833, in which he, like all visionaries, looked to the heavens to illustrate the central point in his work: he warned against misinterpretation and what he called ‘vulgar errors’ arising from imperfect or habitual apprehension. His instruction to men of reason was to try and listen, to see, and to understand the gigantic truths behind the reduced forms of mundane existence, in the same way as a sailor knows but cannot immediately measure the frozen immensity under the iceberg’s cap.

John
Herschel said that a person who would seek to properly understand
should “loosen his hold on all rude and hastily adopted notions, and
must strengthen himself…for the unprejudiced admission of any
conclusion which shall appear to be supported by careful observation
and logical argument, even if it should move of such a nature adverse
to notions he may have previously formed for himself,

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Wisdom in Action

Learning Across Generations

We had a wonderful conversation last night with my daughter Lauren (who is graduating from college this week) and two of her friends. The mood was celebratory with lots of speculation about Lauren’s future and so forth. The conversation became focused and very interesting as we began to talk about how her generation uses and participates in the ‘technological space’ of the Internet. Specifically, we ‘older folks’ were wondering why the young seem so intent on putting everything about

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Learning

Silence, Discernment & the Art of Listening II

By Stu Whitley
Bio

This post is second in a three-part series.

In our relationships, as with our work, listening is absolutely fundamental to leadership and the discipline of effective communication. This includes the need to be alert for situations where cocking one’s ear to the rhythms of speech, as well as its content, will ensure better understanding. To do this in the context of conversation means to project positive non-verbal behaviour, to avoid being captured by words that we know can provoke negative emotions, by not interrupting, and by silently analyzing as dialogue proceeds.

When witnesses testify, when judges speak, when communities express
concern, or when a victim expresses doubt, we sometimes—often—hear only
what we want to hear, and dismiss the rest. In doing so, we overlook
the lesson of one of the primal aboriginal teachings: to hear the most
important part of the message, it is necessary to hear with the eyes
and

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Personal Empowerment

Balancing Priorities

By Vince DiBianca
Bio

I’ve noticed I’m feeling a certain dynamic tension between two
opposing forces. On one hand, I’m committed to going out in the world
and maximizing the difference I can make. In my 60s, that continues to
be a significant priority. On the other hand, I’d like to play more,
visit with my family and work in my woodshop. And that too is a
priority.

The
tension comes from the fact that I’m equally committed to both
priorities. I look for

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Personal Empowerment

Connections

By Shae Hadden
Bio

I’ve always been aware of the distances between people…ever since my
first childhood remembrance of being a being separate from my mother.
Vivid memories of being the last one chosen to be on the team in gym
class translated into a story about being the one assigned to sit on
the sidelines of life while others got to play. I thought I had left
that all behind when I got married at the ripe old age of 28. I was
ready to dive in and live full

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Fearless Aging

Choosing Age

I’ve asked a lot of people how old they would be if they really had a choice. In a recent essay entitled Complaint and the Blind Men,
Laurence Platt, who writes from his experience of Werner Erhard’s work,
wrote about the idea of choice as a creative act as opposed to a
conclusion based on some analytical reasoning. The message is that
happiness is the result of choosing ‘what is’, what some disciplines
call ‘profound acceptance’ or ‘surrender’.

There
aren’t many areas of

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