Charter for Compassion

"The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves..." Sign up to the Charter for Compassion here: http://charterforcompassion.org/

Boom go the Resources!

Attended the Lowy Institute 2009 Lecture at the Intercontinental Sydney last night, delivered by Marius Kloppers, CEO of BHP Billiton. BHP used to be "the big Australian", now it's just big! Australia has always prospered on the back of its resources, Marius said. But the next boom is set to eclipse anything we've ever known. He emphasized the need for " getting this right", by which he referred to key factors such as fiscal stability, government policy, labour market flexibility, and capital availability. But I wonder if psychological capital might be an equally important factor in "getting this right"?

Happy Birthday!

It was my Birthday last weekend (Happy Birthday Peter!). At this stage of life the clock is ticking. I believe the best is yet to come, but it's like being in an aeroplane accelerating for take-off. So close to getting airborne but I seem to be running out of runway! It strikes me that whatever one's life themes are they will keep recurring at any age. There's really no there in getting there!

Inner Happiness

Attended a talk by Alan Wallace the other evening. He's the Director of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies and an interpreter for the Dalai Lama. Western technology has achieved great things in the external world he said, but failed to conduct the same level of empiricism on the internal world. Psychology, the study of the mind, still can't define consciousness. Three things are needed for inner happiness:
1. Ethics - for social and environmental flourishing.
2. Cultivating the mind - for psychological flourishing.
3. Wisdom - to know reality as it really is.

I asked him what he thought of the field of Appreciative Inquiry in the context of organisational change. "Yes", he said. "Encouraging what works best rather than focusing on the deficiencies would seem useful for avoiding cognitive fusion (with the problem)."