Are you a Grownup?

During holiday break, we went to see the movie Up in the Air and I can't stop thinking about it.  While I was talking with our minister yesterday about something, we ended up talking about this movie.  He said, "It is a perfect movie for these uncertain times.  So many thing are "up in the air." 

Image via Wikipedia

For me, the movie reflected issues about life and work.  We witnessed challenges between generations among topics such as: value systems, integrity, relationships, downsizing, freedom ... and others all within one movie.  In fact, I could see it again because the dialogue goes fast yet it is witty, clever, and interesting. 

There are two scenes that I can't stop thinking about and both of them revolve around the word "grownup."

Right after this clip, the young woman tells Ryan (Clooney) that he should act like a grownup and give the relationship a try.

Then at the end of the movie (I won't reveal the surprise), Alex (Farmiga) is on the phone to Ryan reminding him that they had an agreement and that she is a grownup.

So, what does it mean today to be a grownup?

What messages did you get from seeing the movie?

Tell me what you are thinking.

Thanks.  Happy New Year (to anyone who might be reading my blog.  I am grateful.)

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Overcoming Fear

At the workshop I attended at the Omega Institute last summer with Pema Chodran, we spent a lot of time exploring the implications of fear.  Pema talked about "leaning into our fears" when our natural instinct is to move away from or to deny them.  Learning to overcome fear seems to be an important skill in order to not let our dark side or shadow side take dominate our behaviors.

A good example of overcoming fear was an interview with Glenn Close.  She talked about how she was frightened over the words schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar and she recognized the power those words had over her.  Since she has mental illness in her family, she knew that if she wanted to help she would have to learn to say those words fearlessly out loud.

To overcome her fears, Glenn started volunteering at Fountain House, a community in New York City for people with all levels of mental illness.  "I got to look into their eyes, stand next to them, and work with them.  The more I learned, the less I feared."

Now Glenn, along with a groups, is launching a campaign called Bring Change 2 Mind (Bringchange2mind.org) in order to bring awareness to this issue and "to connect people to whatever they need:  help, community, education, or a chance to join one of the organizations."

Glenn concluded by saying that she hopes it "will give people the courage to talk about mental illness, to lose their fear of the words, to conquer shame and stigma."  By leaning into her fears, she is overcoming them.

First we need to recognize our fears and then we need to try to lean into them to overcome them.  When we do this, we are healthier in all aspects of our lives. 

What do you fear? 

Image via Wikipedia

Are you willing to lean into it? 

What are some other ways you know to overcome fears?

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Six Word Memoirs

I discovered this site called Six Word Memoirs that is think is a great site and wonderful idea.  They believe that "everyone has a story.  Can you tell yours in six words?"  Several books have been published targeted at various audiences.  The first book was titled:  Not Quite What I Was Planning:  Six Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser.

The idea is an interesting one.  Take a topic and see if you can summarize your thoughts in only six words.  For example, What is the best advice you have ever been given?  Some of the responses include:

• Forget head, heart.  Go with gut.
• Greatest things in life aren't things.
• When cookies are passed, take one.

  Cover via Amazon

• Life's a rummage sale.  No returns.
• Love unlovely; they need it most.
• Moderation in all things (including moderation).

So I have decided every now and then I will ask whomever is reading my blog (Are there readers out there?) to submit responses to various topics.  And I will start:

What is your best definition of leadership in six words?

My response:  Learning to live your best life. 

Now, what is your response?  I would love to hear from you.

Happy holidays.  I hope to hear from more of you in 2010.  Thanks. 

Women of Yucatan Finally Arrives

After a decade and hundreds of rejections, my book co-authored with George Ann Huck has finally arrived:  Women of Yucatan.  It can be found on Amazon now.  It is a dream come true.  While I said all of this in the acknowledgements, I want to thank some of the key people who helped me keep the dream alive.  The book would not have been possible with the funding support from:

• Central College
• Iowa Arts Council
• Humanities Iowa
• Iowa Sister States

There were also many people who added their insights, wisdom, skills, and expertise along the way.  These people were supportive when I felt as if we would not find a publisher.  These people listened to my trials and tribulations for years.  I am sure many of them got tired of the whole project, but continued to listen patiently anyway.  I am grateful to all of the and I am sure I am forgetting people.  If so, you know who you are and I thank you:

• John Fisher
• my sons
• Yvonna Lincoln
• Tilly Woodward
• Valerie Hedquist
• Valerie Grimsley
• Paula Holcolm
• Kate Cater Frederick
• Jim Zeller
• Stacy Heston
• Jeanette Borich
• Maxine and Don Huffman
• Charlie Perdue and the staff at McFarland Publishing
• and many others ...

While I am not sure what happens now, one of my goals is to get the bilingual photography exhibit traveling again.  It will be at Iowa State University in February.  Hopefully, I will have some book readings around Des Moines.  But our main goal was to have the book published while all of the women are still living.  We accomplished that goal!

I also look forward to getting to Merida and hand delivering a copy of the book to each woman.  I thank all of them for helping me to learn about courage so that I might be daring.

This was a great gift to receive in 2009!  Thank you for reading this.

Heath Ledger: A Youthful Sage

The other day I caught a clip on MSNBC Morning Joe with the director of Heath Ledger's last film just released titled The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.  He talks about how wise Ledger was at such a young age.  He describes how Ledger was trying to learn everything about the industry as fast as he could. 

"Heath was clever, talented, and nice at the same time.  He was a walking cliche ... It was as if he had an old soul inside of him.  He didn't die young.  It was as if he was 100s of years old."

Image via Wikipedia

This reminded me that we really are made up of our life experiences.  We don't have to be old to be wise and the old are not necessarily guaranteed to be wise. 

What are the differences?

What would make Ledger so wise at such a young age?

What do some people become old and not wise?

Apparently, Heath Ledger was a youthful sage.  It makes me sad that he is no longer with us. 

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"Slumdog" as Sage

Last night I saw the last half of the movie Slumdog Millionaire that won the Oscar for best picture last year.  While I blogged about it at the time, I was moved to write another blog post.  I find the movie fascinating because of how Jamal (contestant on game show) was able to answer the questions.  The answers came from his processing his life experiences, both good and bad. 

People could not believe that Jamal was not cheating.  Since he was from the "slums," how could he possibly answer the questions.  But from a young age, he learned how to reflect on his life experiences in order to inform his decisions.  He knew whom to trust and not trust.  The movie makes you think about right and wrong, good from evil, integrity, character, and love.

As I watched the movie again, I was reminded that you don't have to be old to become a sage and being old does not guarantee that you will become a sage.  Growing in wisdom requires intentional decision making and learning from our life experiences. 

I highly recommend the movie. Make sure you watch it all the way through the credits.  Fabulous. 

Image via Wikipedia

Play in Traffic

As a parent, you don't think of telling someone to go "play in traffic."  In a recent issue of the New York Sunday Times, there was a Q and A with Joseph Plumeri, chairman and chief executive of the insurance broker Willis Group Holdings. 

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Plumeri described how he has changed his leadership style from one of command-and-control to one that allows for collaboration and debate.  He has learned that in this environment, leaders have to engage and inspire rather than control even though it is more time consuming.

He was asked what questions he asks of job candidates and he responded that he only asks one question:  "Tell me what you're passionate about.  That's it.  I'm looking to see if there's anything inside, other than what they do, and how passionate could they be, therefore, about being here?"

But what caught my attention was his best career advice: 

"Everything that I have done I've done because I went out and I played in traffic and something happened."

As I said, reading this as a parent made me shiver, but I liked the metaphor as Plumeri explained it:

"If you push yourself out there and you see people and get involved, something happens ... So I tell people, just show up, get in the game, go play in traffic.  Something good will come of it."

Sounds like good advice.  Life is an adventure.  We can't plan everything.  Go play in traffic and let me know what happens.

Privilege

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

This semester I am teaching a course titled "Managing and Valuing Cultural Diversity."  Since it is a management course, the focus is on diversity in the workplace.  But we have to start with understanding what is meant by diversity before we can "manage" it.

The emphasis tends to be on the main dimensions of diversity such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and AIDS.  We read articles and texts, watch a film series out of class, and have guest speakers on each aspect of diversity covered.  I believe the speakers are important to put a human face on each dimension to remind ourselves that we are talking about people--not things.  We are trying to learn how to work together more effectively even though we may be different.

When I teach this course, I find that my diversity antenna is always up and it seems as though almost every day there is an incident to share with the students.  So the editorials by Leonard Pitts about Sammy Sosa caught my attention. 

Much is being written and said about the color of Sammy Sosa's skin now as compared to when he played baseball.  In the latest column by Pitts, he mentions a recreation of the old "doll test" conducted by a black psychologist, Dr. Kenneth Clark, in the 19402.  Clark found that black children, when asked to choose between otherwise identical black and white baby dolls, overwhelmingly selected the white baby as "nice" and the black one as "bad."  The recreation by Kiri Davis found the same results six decades later!

Why aren't we making more progress? 

What is it about privilege that those of us who have it can't seem to share it? 

In my diversity course, we talk about all kinds of privilege:  white, male, Christian, heterosexual ... Basically the dominant groups have privilege.  The point is not to argue about it, but to recognize it.  When we are aware of privilege, the question then becomes:  How can I use my privilege to help others less fortunate?  To improve organizations and society at large?  To be a better leader and person?

Watch this video clip and ask yourself:  Do I have any form of privilege that I can use to make a difference?

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What kind of leader are you?

For the past few years, I have been spending more time learning and teaching about the "dark side" or "shadow" of leadership.  Whenever I used the word "leader," I always thought of it in a positive sense.  It was not until I interviewed one of my sages, James Hunter who is the author of The Servant, that he made me think about this. 

Jim said, "You can be a leader, but what kind of leader are you?  There are a lot of bad leaders out there."

While I several images of bad leaders immediately emerged, Jim's comments have resonated with me.  So now I spend more time with people exploring the dark side of the ego that creeps up and can negatively influence our behaviors and then relationships if we are not careful.  We don't want to be bad leaders.

So, what kind of leader are you? 

How do you know?

How will you learn more about this?

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Make Life More Interesting: Mix it up!

Since one of the keys to aging gracefully or sage-ing is intergenerational relationships, once a year my husband and I like to invite a "bunch for brunch."  But what is different about this event is that we intentionally invite a mix of ages to make it more interesting.

We all can learn from others--both older and younger--and we have something to teach others.  Everyone seems so appreciative that we are mixing it up.  People who have more life experience than us regardless of our age can teach us so much.  As we all know, hindsight is 20/20 so listening to their stories enriches our lives in many ways.

It has become a tradition that we will continue.  We just ask each other who we would like to learn from, listen to, and include in the bunch.  Then we value the time together.  Reaching out and making something like this happen takes an investment of time, but the dividends are worth it.

Just think of a group of people (modified think tank) who you may not even know that well, but you would like to get to know better.  Then plan something simple and invite them over.  See what happens.

Who might you invite in your group?  Go for it. 

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