Regardless of what business we are in, what projects we are working on or what interests we have in world – we are all in business of relationship building. In business we are always cultivating relationships with employees, with prospective clients, with colleagues. In our personal lives place of relationship is often more obvious and more central. And our deeper relationship with ourselves is at core of how we manage and grow each of those other relationships and therefore our lives.

At every moment in our professional and personal lives we are faced with decisions – one after another that create and move along landscape of our lives. What criteria do you use to make good decisions, what benchmarks do you employ to measure your decision making process? The issue of relationships and decision-making are closely allied. If we are in close, clear contact with our own beings, our wisdom, our intuitive faculties- decisions we make have more likelihood of keeping us moving along a path that is in integrity with our values and real goals. When we allow rush of events to disconnect us from this deeper well of understanding and vision – all that we do suffers. I hear over and over again from clients how there isn’t time, how bottom-line is what must determine their choices and often their direction. I am not immune to pressures and demands of world we all live in. But if we are to, in some way, affect world positively and develop a life that is worth living we must find some time to allow for growth and development of that which will give us foundation, creativity and energy to make moment-to-moment sound decisions.

How do you cultivate this essential connection or relationship with yourself? What nourishes it? For me sometimes in a busy work environment it is presence of beauty or kind and friendly relationship I have developed with my colleagues. My daily habits of mind and inspiring walk contribute to this. Sometimes it is taking time to stop and allow silence to be present so I can sense next move. I know that when I do this my decisions are more balanced. Each of us must look to ourselves, to mentors and teachers to cultivate even simple practices that we can integrate into our day.

When we are able to do this – to maintain a stronger connection to that core in us there is a sense of our own strength and power that then comes forward in our relationships and choices. Of course our decision making takes into account facts, weighing of potential outcomes, history of issue at hand. But if you are making a decision context in which it is made is really state you are in, your thoughts, your clarity, and your connection to a deeper well of being. These influence directly your perceptions, understanding, openness to options and solutions, and flow of your creative juices. We must call on our own deeper understanding and vision to inform our choices.

Now they are reaching retirement age and current events are conspiring to remind them of unfinished business. If they can possibly recover health and energy they lost on their detour, they are going back to right and wrong of status quo, they have been supporting.

The naked idealism of their youth created a generation gap with their parents and will likely create same gap with their children; a generation that largely sees future as next year and global events as mysteries somehow connected to money. The Baby Boomers will have to find allies among grandchildren, if they hope to change future in next twenty years. I think they will pull it off.

Rejecting their parental role models, Boomers were truly without any at all. Heroes were scarce. They became a social experiment with very mixed results. They have been pummeled with idealism backlash. They have submitted to pragmatism. It has not fit them or worn well. They are about to shed their pragmatic skins and return to their idealistic roots. They have a hindsight that reinvigorates possibilities for future beyond that which was conceivable twenty five years ago. And they have economic power far beyond that of their youth. They can now change trade policies simply by agreeing with each other they need to be changed. They can now see abject failure of two party politics. Beginning in another five years, oldest of them will be free to return to political activism. Some aren’t waiting.

Half or more of them will choose to remain employed at least part time. At first glance it would seem they will be competing with their children and grandchildren for that employment. That will not be case. They will become greatest group of corporate drop outs world has ever seen. Moving back into world of individualism, they will create many of new, unincorporated businesses that will employ millions with better working conditions and personal satisfaction, than has been known before. They will cease their support of universal corporate power and begin creating global hope and prosperity. They will begin setting examples and providing models world craves.