Leading, Living, Learning and … Sage-ing. I am interested in seeking wisdom to live our best life both professionally and personally. For more information, please see my Welcome Page.
For the past five years, I have been going to the New Melleray Abbey for a retreat. Since many of the Sages in my leadership study said this was a good thing to do, I decided I needed to have this experience. Now after a pattern of going on retreat always at about the same time in early January, I have come to think of this as a winter wonderland. It is always cold, stark, and usually snowing. The idea is to have some time to be alone, be in silence, and to go within myself so I can "hear" what I am thinking with a goal of calming the inner chatter or to listen to the inner voice.
I will be sharing some of my insights from this retreat in a few posts. Thanks for reading.
I've been thinking about friends and friendship lately, probably because of the Facebook explosion. Yes, I am on Facebook, but I can't say I use it effectively. But I find myself thinking about friends and how that term is used. There are invitations to be friends and to unfriend someone. You are encouraged to connect with the friends of your friends. Even the term BFF (best friends forever) seems to be used rather lightly I am concerned this term and how it is being used is diluting my perception of what it means to be a friend.
I think it is easy to have acquaintances, but that friends are special people and harder to find. When you find friends, these are people who lift you up, make you a better person, celebrate your successes and you would celebrate theirs, and people you would drop everything to help if they needed you.
A strength of mine to a fault is that I am a friend for life and I want to hold onto dear friends. I believe good friends are relationships worth investing the time because there are dividends. It is hard for me to "let go' because I care about my friends.
If we adhere to the Facebook philosophy, then it is easy to find friends, make friends, invite friends, and uninvite friends. This is contrary to what I have always believed. Our minister had a sermon on friendship in which he said:
"I officiated at a funeral for a man who considered himself very blessed in that he counted five good friends. Not just acquaintances--people with whom he had a sustaining and cordial relationship through work or some organization. Not just buddies--people he hung out with for beer or golf or some common interest. Rather, he was deeply thankful that he had five friends--people who loved him and shared their life and for whom he willingly did the same."
'I have five good, good friends,' he said to me a week or so before he died. 'I am a blessed man.'"
Our minister concluded that once we have solved our lowest level needs--food, water, health--it is our web of connections we share with other people that determines the quality of life--our friendships:
"It is our friendships that give us a sense of happiness and well-being. And the converse is true as well. There is nothing as painful as the loneliness of not having friends."
So I tend to take the word "friend" more seriously than used by Facebook. And I think as we get older it is harder to make new friends. Therefore, it is worth the time keeping in touch with old friends and Facebook has helped me to do that. But I don't accept every invitation and I don't invite everyone I know. I still like to consider a true friend as someone special.
What is your definition of a friend? Has your definition changed at all because of how the term is used by Facebook?
Last year I had the opportunity to hear Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, and I enjoyed her in person more than I enjoyed the book. Without using a note, she captivated the audience with her pleasing personality, authentic delivery and style, and her ability to tell fascinating stories.
Now Gilbert has a new book out titled Committed which is a meditation on marriage. In an interview I read about her explaining her new book, I was struck by her analogy involving relationships because I think it can be applied to work situations as well as personal. She talks about how she wanted to make sure that her husband-to-be knew all of her worse character flaws. So she had a prenuptial informed consent release where she described to him in writing her top five flaws. Then she presented it to him and here was his response:
"When i used to go down to Brazil to buy gemstones, I would often buy something they call 'a parcel.' A parcel is this random collection of gems that the miner or the wholesaler puts together. A typical parcel would contain 20-30 aquamarines at once. Supposedly, you get a better deal that way--buying them all in a bunch--but you have to be careful, because of course the guy is trying to rip you off. He's trying to unload hi bad gemstones on you by packaging them together with a few really good ones.
So when I first started in the jewelry business, I used to get in trouble because I'd get too excited about the one or two perfect aquamarines in the parcel, and I wouldn't pay as much attention to the junk they threw in there. After I got burned enough times, I finally got wise and learned this--you have to ignore the perfect gemstones. Don't even look at them twice because they're blinding. Just put them away and have a careful look at the really bad stones. Look at them for a long time and then ask yourself honestly, 'Can I work with these? Can I make something out of this?' Otherwise, you've just spent a whole lot of money on one or two gorgeous aquamarines buried inside a heap of worthless crap.
It's the same with relationships, I think. People always fall in love with the most perfect aspects of each other's personalities. Who wouldn't? Anybody can love the most wonderful parts of another person. But that's not the clever trick. The really clever trick is this: Can you accept the flaws? Can you look at your partner's faults honestly and say, 'I can work around that'? Because the good stuff is always going to be there, and it's always going to be pretty and sparkly, but the crap underneath can ruin you."
As I read this, I thought this philosophy could be applied to any type of relationship--colleague, friends, family, spouse. Maybe if we had this attitude, we could more easily work together--live together.
Our minister had a twist on the older book: I'm OK You're OK. He said that maybe our philosophy should be: I'm not OK and you're not OK and that is OK. In this way, we realize that we are not perfect and that no one else is perfect either and we can accept that. And that leaves room for grace and forgiveness which is what we need when we live and work together.
"The fact is that when you measure happiness, if you hold constant physical health, people only get happier over time. This is very important. When we think of old people being unhappy, we're almost always thinking of old people whose health is failing.
But it turns out, when your health fails at any age, you're unhappy. Older people tend to be unhappier than younger people only because they're in poorer health. As long as they aren't in bad health, they're actually happier."
This research is consistent with sage-ing work, but I would add some qualifiers such as facing one's mortality, embracing aging, focusing on relationships, and legacy work. These activities, which take time and effort, help us shift the paradigm from aging to sage-ing which is a key to happiness.
What makes you happy?
Is anyone out there reading? If so, tell me what you think makes people happy, particular as we gain in years of life experience.
I read a great review of Marshall Goldsmith's book What Got You Here Won't Get You Therewhich made me want to read the book. Our leadership effectiveness really has to do with behaviors. Goldsmith is wonderful for cutting to the chase and making things easy to understand. It is not surprising that he a successful corporate coach. To summarize:
It is one thing to live a long time. But the quality of life is probably more important. Becoming a sage is a journey to a quality life. Dan Buettner is on a mission to to help people live quality lives for the rest of their lives. Through his research, he has learned things that he is using to help transform communities. He has developed a program to help people eat better, become more active, connect with one another, and find a greater sense of purpose. These four things he believes lie at the heart of improved health and longevity--something he calls Blue Zones. These zones are unique regions where people have the world's longest life spans.
According to Buettner, there are nine easy ways to boost longevity:
1. Keep moving--Find ways to be active.
2. Find purpose--Find it and pursue it with a passion (See Richard Leider)
5. Dine on plants--Eat more veggies and less meat and processed foods.
6. Drink red wine--Only in moderation.
7. Join a club--Social networks are important.
8. Feed your soul--Spiritual activities are essential.
9. Love your tribe--Make family a priority.
While this list may sound as if it were common sense, it is based on research. If you want to know more about how you might score, go to Vitality Projectat aarp.org/bluezonesproject.
If we are going to live a long time, we might as well live a quality life. Sage-ing is better than just aging.
As a member of the Elder Council, Jimmy Cater is already recognized as a sage. He is a great role model for what it means to grow into a sage. On a recent trip, I was reading the Delta Sky magazine which included an article about Carter.
It reminded us that most people at age 85 are either mastering the Sunday crossword puzzle, golfing, lunching with friends, or finding some way to pass the time. "Unless we get out ideas about retirement from Carter, in which case we don't even acknowledge the existence of such a word."
As most of you remember, Cater was president from 1977 to 1981 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for decades working for peace, democracy, and human rights. During the past year, Carter has been to more than a dozen countries. He is now working to fight malaria in Haiti and monitoring elections in Lebanon with The Carter Center. He builds homes with Habitat for Humanity. In addition, he is a painter; he has written 24 books; he teaches Sunday school at a Baptist church in Plains, Georgia. He also spends time with his four kids, 11 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
In essence, Carter understands that to keep living you have to keep growing, learning, and giving back. He realizes that value of leaving a legacy and continuing to work in that direction. Carter is the perfect example of what sag-ing is all about.
While having good health is a benefit, we can all find ways to incorporate these concepts into our lives in order to live a quality life for the rest of our life.
I am on a mission to retire the word "retirement." As with so many of the examples about which I like to blog, there is a trend for a new model of life after major career. Call it recareering or transitioning or living the next phase. Regardless of what we call it, we need to think about how we want to live the third chapter of life. And the sooner we think about this the better.
In a recent New York Times, there was a fascinating article about Carmen Herrera, a painter who is now gaining recognition at age 94. Even though she has been privately painting for more than six decades, she sold her first painting at 89. Her style is considered a minimalist who paints geometric art. Her larger works sell for $30,000 abd one painting even brought her $44,000 to which Herrera said, "I have more money now than I ever had in my life."
But what caught my attention was Herrera's comments that resonate with sage-ing principles. She continues to learn, to create, and to live life to its fullest:
"I do it [art] because I have to do it; it's a compulsion that also gives me pleasure. I never in my life had any idea of money and I thought fame was a very vulgar thing. So I just worked and waited. And at the end of my life, I'm getting a lot of recognition, to my amazement and my pleasure, actually."
This story reminds me of a comment made by a participant in one of my seminars. We were talking about sage-ing and growing in wisdom. A woman spoke up and said that her grandmother figured out how to do this years ago and served as her inspiration. She asked her grandmother where she learned how to live and the response was memorable. Her grandmother told her that throughout her life she always looked for role models (people who were living in healthy and admirable ways) who were about 10 years older than she about every 10 years. So she always had someone leading the way.
How inspiring to read about people such as Herrera who just kept on a healthy path for all of the right reasons. We should all be so fortunate to have our health and to keep moving on down the "path."
I am excited to share the good news after years of working on this project that resulted in a book. Even though people are thanked in the acknowledgements, I want to thank everyone who supported me in one way or another to make this possible. You know who you are and I am grateful. Thank you.
Book by Jann Freed and George Ann Huck published
PELLA — Eight years in the making and Women of the Yucatan: Thirty Who Dared to Change Their World is now available. The book, which profiles 30 women who have dared to challenge gender inequalities set against them at birth in their native Mexico, is authored by Jann Freed, professor of business management and the Mark and Kay De Cook Endowed Chair in Leadership and Character Development at Central College, and George Ann Huck, professor emerita of Spanish.
The idea for the book emerged during the semester Freed taught on Central’s Yucatan program. The two paired up to interview 30 women in a patriarchal society who have lived in an environment where rape can often be forgotten as a crime if the victim agrees to marry her aggressor and where negative pregnancy tests are a sometimes a prerequisite for employment in the maquiladora factories. The profiles, supplemented by photographs, describe the women’s accomplishments and motivations as well as the obstacles they have confronted.
A bilingual photography exhibit has been displayed in more than 25 locations around the state of Iowa since 2000 and will be on display at Iowa State University in Ames in February. An exhibit was held in Merida, Yucatan, with most of the profiled women present in 2004.
This project was supported by grants from Central College, Humanities Iowa, the Iowa Arts Council and Iowa Sister States Program.
Freed is in her 28th year at Central College and has authored numerous articles and co-authored several books. She received the Virgil S. Lagomarcino Laureate Award from Iowa State University in October 2008. Freed is certified as an Academic Quality Improvement Program Systems Portfolio reviewer and a as a Sage-ing Leader through the Sage-ing Guild. She also is a commissioner for the State Library of Iowa.
Huck spent more than 35 years directing Central’s study abroad program in Merida and teaching culture and literature in the Yucatan. She lives in Merida and remains involved in the struggle of Yucatecan women.
Clint Eastwood is a sage. In May, Eastwood turns 80 and he is as active now as ever. He understands the value of continual learning and mixing it up with people of all ages. In his own words:
"I'm always trying to tackle subjects that tax me and make me think. The brain has to be exercised the same as the rest of the body."
He believes the never-too-old-to-learn philosophy is critical at this stage in life. "Follow what you think. You want to do something? Just do it the best you can, whatever that is. I'm not saying everyone make a phenomenal thing. But you can fail on your own terms."
In the interview I read, Eastwood savors life.
"You don't have to rush down the hill. you can walk down. The main things is not how long you're on the planet, but the quality you have while you're here. That was always the only thing that really mattered."
It is almost as if Eastwood has read a book on sage-ing. He intuitively understands the differences between sage-ing and aging.
"My dad was always talking about retiring and sitting next to a stream with a couple of beers in his hand. Sounds like a commercial, but retirement is not for me ... The reason I don't retire is that I learn something new every day. It's about expanding, constantly pushing yourself."
Eastwood is a great example of the importance of exercising the mind and body. Instead of retiring, he realizes that the key to a quality life is to keep learning and pushing oneself at whatever level possible. I would say at 80, Eastwood is inspiring.
We should all be so fortunate. But as pointed out above, there is work involved and the results are worth it.
How come some people understand this naturally and others just don't get it?
I think the answer may be intentional decision making, being awake, and not sleep walking through life.
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The idea for the book emerged during the semester Freed taught on Central’s Yucatan program. The two paired up to interview 30 women in a patriarchal society who have lived in an environment where rape can often be forgotten as a crime if the victim agrees to marry her aggressor and where negative pregnancy tests are a sometimes a prerequisite for employment in the maquiladora factories. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=5cdc39c5-29cc-4771-9af6-e1dd774f508e)
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