Dive into the archives.
- Disappointed Expectations: The Obstacle of “No Guarantee”
Reading about the history of retirement as a life-stage in the industrialized world, I realized that the expectations held by most of us, born after the Second World War, were “givens” or “truths” that were incredibly new as social phenomena. In fact, funded retirement from work-life only emerged in the mid 19th century, modeled on [...]
- On Pessimism, Beckett, and Optimism
Reading Beckett, reading Beckett’s reading of Proust, reading the intellectual regress back to Schopenhauer and Kant, I put down the books. I stop. It comes down to this in human affairs: we know that on the way to dying, we live and experience. Obviously, not only good times, but the odd “peak” experiences, fade: sometimes [...]
- Productive Hate
Some weeks back, I discussed the connection of flow—- as the integrative, passionate engagement of competence and skills toward a discrete task —- with an internal, late-life correlate to the mother-child relationship, now freed from external dependency on institutional facilitation or permission. That is, the freedom to demonstrate pleasurably one’s skills and competence. Certainly, from [...]
- When Internal Space Meets the Outside
It was one of those perfect days. And I chanced to fall asleep, mid-afternoon. Waking, looking out at a perfectly placid and receptive Manhattan, I had one of those connective moments of thought that are each time, new and precious. It connected “flow”, that psychological sense of competence, challenge and contentment, with another, more developmental [...]
- Cultivating the Flow of Internal Resources
Two terrific forces silently conspire to undermine the equilibrium of the mid-life underemployed. The first is the economic fear of watching one’s savings diminish in the absence of meaningful employment. The second is the related, private shame of unemployment. It is easy to forget one’s lifetime career of productive economic support for self and family [...]
- DayTrading & Managing Our Own Minds
Increasingly, clients have described their turn to trading in volatile and uncertain markets, as their corporate incomes have vanished and their assessments of possible return to their former workforce positions have darkened. Day trading. Paradoxically, they have embraced uncertainty as their former sense of loyalty to firm and task has been disappointed. Their “security”, they [...]
- Career Anxieties
This is how she remembered what her husband had said: ” Your preoccupation with work is destroying this family. We can’t take how wretched you’ve become.” And as she told it, she’d successfully kept her underlying depression at bay for years. But 18 months of unemployment— which were the busiest months of her life as [...]
- Becoming a (Professional) Executive Life Coach
Perception is everything. And sometimes, it takes a bit of questioning for our own perceptions to align with others’. Recently, a client informed me that I was an Executive Life Coach. She of course, was the executive. And it was her life that I was coaching. She recognized too, that while she might otherwise call [...]
- WKI: Charles Handy’s Corroboration
Here is the link to Charles Handy’s Marketplace podcast. Definitelty worth listening to– though I may be biased; but the world we’ve been describing is the one he is describing, too. The time has come for invention and innovation: especially if you’re over 50!
- Working Knowledge Initiative: The Stories We Tell Ourselves as Others Hear Them
Here is a simple exercise: take a room of mature, urban professionals– highly educated & highly skilled. Ask each to reflect on a personal vignette, mirroring their sense of accomplishment and pride. Then contrast what capabilities they think are reflected in their own stories with the capabilities that others actually hear in their stories: the [...]
