The Great Growing Up Blog Artciles

[This is a segment from the final chapter in my latest book – The Great Growing Up – entitled “Let It Begin With Me” which addresses the reader’s role in the unfolding of what I call the “Great Dream.”] Everything I’ve written to this point can be viewed as interesting, informative and conceptual brain fodder […]

Much of our society, for whatever reasons, has become a “spectator culture” in which we have removed ourselves from the field of play and have grown content to sit in the grandstands. This is commonly seen at sporting events, where we applaud the exceptional prowess of great athletes. And that’s expected. But we have also […]

Those who know me know that one of my favorite quotes is this: Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive. The author of this quote is Howard Thurman, mentor to Martin Luther […]

As the push car starts accelerating, the bucket seat into which I had just strapped myself starts bumping my tail bone. My heart is up in my throat as a hundred thoughts race through my mind. The wind starts swirling around my faceshield and into the crash helmet atop my head. I can hear the […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

It is so much easier to see how we humans fool ourselves by observing others than it is to recognize it in ourselves. I can see how some of my friends can really believe their rationality, their reasoning for things needing to be the way they are, far more easily than I can see my […]