A large part of what I write in The Great Growing Up is about bringing forth a new paradigm in how we think – a new worldview – that absorbs and integrates the old ways of thinking, keeping the parts that work in the next context and discarding those elements that have become outmoded. My […]

Jan 2014 [Prologue: In May of 2001, I drafted a short article from a place of incredible gratitude. Looking back the feeling has stayed with me pretty much since then. In fact, it has grown in both depth and expanse for me. Due to some quirk of logistics, the article was never published. It was […]

The other day I had lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen in several years. Kathia Laszlo is a young woman I met about fifteen years ago while she was married to Alexander Laszlo the younger son of Ervin Laszlo, the prolific Hungarian systems theorist. In this time, she has earned herself quite a reputation […]

Dec 2013 People keep complaining about “loss of community” and feeling isolated from one another. Having witnessed people complaining about the systems to which they belong while simultaneously adding legitimacy to them, I had to wonder how we might be complicit in cutting ourselves off from the quality of relationships we claim to want. Here’s […]

The traditional motivators for individuals to change have been pain and pleasure, where the pain has become so unbearable one eagerly seeks relief or when the promise of pleasure is so attractive that one is willing to invest some of oneself into the process of fulfilling that promise. The desire for relief of pain is […]

Nov 2013 [This is a continuation of last month‘s Mini Keynote (see link here), in which I wrote about impossible dreams and how some people live their fantasies] Allow me to clarify what kind of martyr I am talking about here. I am not talking about people who have suffered or been persecuted because of […]

In life we have seen dramatic rescues and individual acts of heroism, people risking physical harm or even their lives in the face of terrible threats. Courage is required when there is fear of harmful consequences that are likely to result from one’s actions. Risking one’s personal safety for the welfare of the platoon in […]

Oct 2013 Some people may think of fantasies as really fantastic dreams, perhaps dreams that are less likely to come true than the ordinary ones. We can dream about making the varsity football team, or getting asked to the prom by a really popular student, or receiving the promotion at work, or finding that “dream […]

In July I wrote about rebooting ourselves and the value of self-reflection (click here). A few weeks later, in late August, I was part of a cohort taking the Art of Convening Tele-seminar which is offered by Craig and Patricia Neal of the Heartland Circle. As a transition between two segments of the two-hour call, […]

September 2013 During a recent conversation with some friends, a T.S. Eliot quote was paraphrased by a woman who has memorized many poems. I liked it so much I decided to look up the exact words. Here is what Eliot wrote as part of a larger poem, “Little Gidding”: At the source of the longest […]