Category Archives: Coaching

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Stress, Tunnel Vision, Perceptions

In today’s excerpt – in moments of extreme duress, such as that which police experience during a shooting, human perception alters radically:

“Over a period of five years, [researcher Alexis] Artwohl gave hundreds of police officers a written survey to fill out about their shooting experiences. Her
findings were remarkable: virtually all of the officers reported experiencing at least one major perceptual distortion. Most experienced several. For some, time moved in slow motion. For others, it sped up. Sounds intensified or disappeared altogether. Actions seemed to happen without conscious control. The mind played tricks. One officer vividly remembered seeing his partner ‘go down in a spray of blood,’ only to find him unharmed a moment later. Another believed a suspect had shot at him ‘from down a long dark hallway about forty feet long’; revisiting the scene a day later, he found to his surprise that the suspect ‘had actually been only about five feet in front of [him] in an open
room.’ Wrote one cop in a particularly strange anecdote, ‘During a violent shoot-out I looked over … and was puzzled to see beer cans slowly floating through the air past my face. What was even more puzzling was that they had the word Federal printed on the bottom. They turned out to be the shell casings ejected by the officer who was firing next to me.’ …

“The single distortion under fire that Artwohl heard about most, with a full 84 percent of the officers reporting it, was diminished hearing. In the jarring, electrifying heat of a deadly force encounter, Artwohl says, the brain focuses so intently on the immediate threat that all senses but vision often fade away. ‘It’s not uncommon for an officer to have his partner right next to him cranking off rounds from a shotgun and he has no idea he was even there,’ she said. Some officers Artwohl interviewed recalled being puzzled during a shooting to hear their pistols making a tiny pop like a cap gun; one said he wouldn’t even have known the gun was firing if not for the recoil. This finding is in line with
what neuroscientists have long known about how the brain registers sensory data, Artwohl explains. ‘The brain can’t pay attention to all of its sensory inputs all the time,’ she said. ‘So in these shootings, the sound is coming into the brain, but the brain is filtering it out and ignoring it. And when the brain does that, to you it’s like it never happened.’

“The brain’s tendency to steer its resources into visually zeroing in on the threat also explains the second most common perceptual distortion under fire. Tunnel vision, reported by 79 percent of Artwohl’s officers, occurs when the mind locks on to a target or threat to the exclusion of all peripheral information. Studies show that tunnel vision can reduce a person’s visual field by as much as 70 percent, an experience that officers liken to looking through a toilet paper tube. The effect is so pronounced that some police departments
now train their officers to quickly sidestep when facing an assailant, on the theory that they just might disappear from the criminal’s field of sight for one precious moment.

“According to Artwohl’s findings, the warping of reality under extreme stress often ventures into even weirder territory. For 62 percent of the officers she surveyed, time seemed to lurch into slow motion during their life-threatening encounter – a perceptual oddity frequently echoed in victims’ accounts of emergencies like car crashes. In a 2006 study, however, the Baylor University
neuroscientist David Eagleman tested this phenomenon by asking volunteers to try to read a rapidly flashing number on a watch while falling backwards into a net from atop a 150-foot-tall tower, a task that is terrifying just to read about. This digit blinked on and off too quickly for the human eye to spot it under normal conditions, so Eagleman figured that if extreme fear truly does
slow down our experience of time, his plummeting subjects should be able to read it. They couldn’t. The truth, psychologists believe, is that it’s really our memory of the event that unfolds at the pace of molasses; during an intensely fear-provoking experience, the amygdala etches such a robustly detailed representation into the mind that in retrospect it seems that everything transpired slowly. Memories, after all, are notoriously unreliable, especially after an emergency. Sometimes they’re eerily intricate, and yet other times
vital details disappear altogether. ‘Officers who were at an incident have pulled their weapon, fired it, and reholstered it, and later had absolutely no memory of doing it,’ Artwohl told me. If your attention is focused like a laser on a threat (say, the guy shooting at you), Artwohl says, you may perform an action (such as firing your gun) so unconsciously and automatically that it fails to register in your memory banks.”

Author: Taylor Clark
Title: Nerve
Publisher: Little, Brown
Date: Copyright 2011 by Taylor Clark
Pages: 245-248

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#1 Emotionally Intelligent Moment of 2010

Happy New Year. Please note that all of these top 10 moments are from talentsmart, a great website based on the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0:

EQ Moment #1:
Armando Galarraga Robbed of Perfect Game

Consider this: in the roughly 400,000 Major League Baseball games played since 1876, only 20 perfect games have been thrown. When a pitcher makes it through an entire game without allowing an opponent to reach base, it’s a feat that is guaranteed to place him in the history books. Therefore, a real tragedy befell Detroit’s Armando Galarraga in June when his perfect game evaporated before his eyes. When (what should have been) the game’s final batter was thrown out at first, umpire Jim Joyce missed the call. Everyone—including the runner, who writhed in shock—knew he was out, but instant replay in baseball is reserved for disputed home runs, spectator interference, and fair/foul calls. The call stands.

Galarraga didn’t throw a tantrum on the field, he didn’t yell and curse at umpire Jim Joyce (though Joyce cried and cursed himself violently during postgame interviews), and he didn’t bemoan the world’s injustices. Instead, Galarraga took some time to think. He accepted his disappointment and sadness for what they were (and likely still are), and realized that funneling those emotions into anger would do nothing to help the situation. Instead, Galarraga’s incredible self-awareness and emotional perspective on the situation enabled him to find a way to make things better. Galarraga realized that his young son one day would hear about and see the video of the perfect game that had been taken away from him, and he decided it was a tremendous opportunity to teach his son about demonstrating emotional intelligence. For that, Armando Galarraga tops our list in 2010.

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#2 Emotionally Intelligent Moment of 2010

EQ Moment #2:
Miners Survive on Team EQ

Imagine facing what appears to be certain death for 17 days, in the dark and 90° heat, cooped up with 33 of your coworkers. The Chilean miners endured this hellish situation prior to their first contact from above ground. The secret to their success? Team EQ. There’s no better example of a work team rising—literally—from the darkest depths and triumphing over disaster. The group survived their ordeal because each individual was willing to put his own needs aside—and keep his emotions in check—for the good of the group. For the first 17 days, each man’s daily diet consisted of a small piece of tuna, a few scraps of rotting leftovers, a small sip of ultra-pasteurized milk (every two days), and a drink of oil-tainted water siphoned from the ground and machine radiators.

From the very beginning, these men formed a productive team and took bold steps to manage themselves, their emotions, and their situation. The group chose a leader, assigned sub teams to tasks such as searching for an escape, and established a majority rule voting system. Five of the 33 miners, employees of a different subcontractor, had formed their own separate camp until persuaded to integrate with the other men for the good of the group. The men consciously chose organization and balance for their life underground by keeping a schedule for sleeping, using truck and helmet lights sparingly as rewards to keep their spirits up, and honking vehicle horns every hour in the faint hope that someone might hear them. They told stories and even played practical jokes to lighten the mood and provide moments of emotional release.

Team EQ doesn’t require heroic acts from everyone involved. Instead, each team member contributing to the small things makes a difference, and improves the team’s response to the emotional challenges that inevitably surface in the face of crisis. Whether they knew it or not, each miner’s contribution ensured that the intense emotions of fear, panic, shock, and despair didn’t derail the group’s survival efforts.

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#3 Emotionally Intelligent Moment of 2010

EQ Moment #3:
JetBlue Flight Attendant Abandons Ship

For any action fueled by out-of-control emotions, a little time to cool off and reconsider typically provides much-needed perspective. This is true in the case of Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who cursed at passengers over the intercom, grabbed a couple of beers, deployed the emergency chute, slid down it, and headed home. Slater was arrested later that day and charged with three felonies, before later being fired by JetBlue. He was lucky not face further consequences of his actions—aircraft evacuation slides deploy with enough force to kill anyone standing in their path.

Slater’s reaction to his stressful job struck a chord with many people, and he quickly became a folk hero for anyone burnt out on work. He has since been in commercials and has a Facebook fan page with close to 200,000 followers, and the outpouring of public affection has seen people offering to contribute towards his legal fees. Despite this, Slater regrets his behavior, and doesn’t believe his incredible luck justifies the way he handled his problems.

Slater’s episode was a case of prolonged emotional hijacking, culminating in a glorious escape from the situation. However, what felt like freedom at the moment of action soon became a dangerous act that resulted in legal problems, a financial burden, and career suicide. Emotional self-control enables us to be conscious of our emotions as they occur, and decide what we should or should not do based on understanding the possible consequences. The trick is to tap into your ability to reason before your actions take you off the deep end, because—unlike the fortunate Steven Slater—nobody is going to cast you in commercials the next time you explode.

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#4 Emotionally Intelligent Moment of 2010

EQ Moment #4:
“I’d like my life back,” says BP CEO

Tony Hayward rose quickly through the ranks of corporate infamy because of a simple statement made during the largest oil spill in US history. This quote became an oft-used sound bite, used to represent the out-of-touch C-Suite in business today. As facts about the cause of the accident slowly unfolded, and thousands of gallons of oil rushed into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Tony Hayward was one of several spokespeople the media relied on for answers, and BP relied on for leadership and poise.

Hayward lacked emotional intelligence when it mattered most. He was obviously aware of his own feelings about the event, but was blind to how sharing them would affect others. Hayward had not fully grasped the gravity of the situation or what was happening to the people in the gulf, and presumably didn’t try to put himself in the shoes of those affected by the spill. It was ridiculously inappropriate to portray himself as a “victim” of the disaster. His true colors shone brightly under the pressure of the spotlight, which in turn dimmed his—and BP’s—relationship with the public. Hayward’s low EQ had a direct and negative impact on the company’s bottom line.

A few days later, Hayward’s perspective had seemingly changed. He said, “I made a hurtful and thoughtless comment on Sunday when I said that ‘I wanted my life back.’ When I read that recently, I was appalled. I apologize, especially to the families of the 11 men who lost their lives in this tragic accident. Those words don’t represent how I feel about this tragedy, and certainly don’t represent the hearts of the people of BP—many of whom live and work in the Gulf—who are doing everything they can to make things right. My first priority is doing all we can to restore the lives of the people of the Gulf region and their families—to restore their lives, not mine.”

This response was emotionally intelligent, and a decent attempt at a save, but it was already too late—the perception of the CEO as being self-centered and out-of-touch was cemented in people’s minds. Though we may never really know why Hayward resigned, he became the villain figure for the entire tragedy, and thus a huge liability for BP. Perhaps in resigning he had decided it was indeed time to get his life back.

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#5 Emotionally Intelligent Moment of 2010

EQ Moment #5:
Cardinals Quarterback Melts Down

Derek Anderson’s laughter on the sideline while his team was getting being slaughtered would only have registered as a blip on the public’s radar had he showed composure during the post-game interview. The reporter provided Anderson ample opportunity to explain himself, asking difficult questions in a careful and respectful manner. At first, Anderson was merely defensive, denying that he was laughing on the sideline, but once the reporter told him the episode had been broadcast on television, the quarterback immediately funneled his profound shame and embarrassment into anger . This sequence provides a perfect example of how easy it is for anyone to transfer emotions that are difficult to deal with—including shame, embarrassment, and fear—into anger, an emotion much easier to tolerate as it shifts blame outward to another entity. In Anderson’s case, a little self-awareness would have helped him realize he was heading down this path before he exploded, and self-management would have enabled him to tolerate the embarrassment of being caught red handed. If Anderson wasn’t sloughing off as the reporter suggested, he would have looked more innocent had he kept his cool in the aftermath.

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#6 Emotionally Intelligent Moment of 2010

EQ Moment #6:
HP CEO Loses Job Over Secret Relationship

When actress Jodie Fisher—who worked as a hostess at high-profile HP events—filed a sexual harassment claim against CEO Mark Hurd, the ensuing investigation uncovered a host of inaccurate expense reports filed by Hurd that hid, among other things, $20,000 lobster dinners with Fisher. Hurd, who was married, and Fisher insisted that nothing inappropriate had taken place between them—beyond the bogus expense records.

Hurd was forced to resign as CEO and admitted, “there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect, and integrity that I have espoused at HP.” Considered one of the “TopGun CEOs” by Brendan Wood International, Hurd won acclaim for turning Hewlett-Packard into one of the world’s most successful technology companies by implementing major cost-cutting initiatives.

One look at Fisher makes it difficult to believe in the purity of Hurd’s motives. Whether you call it love, infatuation, or just over-the-top kindness, it was wrong. Hurd’s actions displayed a profound lack of judgment and self-management. A CEO known for cutting costs undoubtedly set a poor example by lavishly spending corporate funds for his personal entertainment. Hurd was likely hijacked by his emotions in a situation where strong feelings—desire in this case—drowned out reason. He probably could have avoided losing his job had he paused to reflect on the intensity and nature of his desire before taking action.

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#7 Emotionally Intelligent Moment of 2010

Another by Talentsmart–EQ Moment #7:
Dan Gilbert’s ‘Open Letter’ to LeBron James

LeBron “King” James, arguably the greatest to ever play the game of basketball, left Cleveland fans and the Cavaliers organization in suspense for months during his free agency. His announcement on primetime television that he was taking his talents to South Beach to join forces with NBA superstars Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh was a shock to all, especially the city of Cleveland. James’ decision to part ways after seven seasons in Cleveland instantly made him the most hated man in Ohio. Cavs majority owner Dan Gilbert joined the uproar and published an ‘Open Letter’ on the team’s website that expressed his reaction to James’ decision.

In the insulting letter, Gilbert bashed James’ nickname, called him “narcissistic,” and labeled James’ decision a “cowardly betrayal.” NBA commissioner David Stern fined the Cavs organization $100,000 for Gilbert’s imprudent comments.

The Cavaliers drafted LeBron straight out of high school in 2003, and the team’s value soared more than $200 million during the seven years he played there. We certainly understand why it would upset Gilbert to have his star player take his throne elsewhere, but LeBron’s response when asked how he felt about Gilbert’s reaction shows who was the one who really went overboard, “It made me feel more comfortable that I made the right decision.”

Not only did Gilbert’s lack of self-management and relationship-management skills cost him $100,000, but his grievous response to LeBron switching teams also affects the Cavs ability to lure new talent to sign with the organization. The fallout began when Gilbert made it a personal issue by verbally and publicly attacking James. Before Gilbert elected to lash out at James, he should have checked his emotional pulse and spoke to others within the organization who were not as emotionally invested in the situation. As the owner of the franchise, he could have discretely expressed how disheartening and unfortunate the situation was and wished James the best in the future. That would have been the emotionally intelligent thing to do.

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#8 Emotionally Intelligent Moment of 2010

EQ Moment #8:
Conan O’Brien Statement: I Will Not Follow Jay at 12:05

Emotional intelligence is the skill that makes you look graceful under pressure. It also helps you to earn people’s respect by allowing you to communicate clearly and directly, even when you’d rather be hiding under a rock. Conan O’Brien did both in January when he was given, and was promptly relieved of, the job of a lifetime—hosting The Tonight Show on NBC.

It was a confusing situation, to say the least. Conan took over The Tonight Show when Jay Leno, the previous Tonight Show host, started a new program in an earlier time slot. Leno’s new show suffered from an extended period of poor ratings, and on January 10th, NBC told Conan that they’d be moving Leno back into his customary time slot, thereby sending Conan back to late-night programming. These decisions left Conan to wonder, Did Jay want The Tonight Show back because he was failing, or was NBC calling the shots? Whatever the situation, Conan was caught in the crossfire. Tonight Show fans wanted desperately for Conan to remain, yet the network made their intentions clear—go back to your old program or leave the network.

O’Brien needed to set the record straight but keep peace with all sides. He did so in a pitch-perfect response letter. The letter, addressed to “People of Earth,” adeptly shared fact with feeling in explaining the situation. It was honest, heartfelt, and personal. It shared his frustration with his predicament rather than simply bashing NBC. He knew how he was feeling (self-awareness), and he shared this openly and calmly (self-management). Despite the gravity of the situation, the letter didn’t spare the use of humor that his fans had come to love and expect (social awareness and relationship management). In short, Conan’s letter was an emotionally intelligent response at a difficult moment in his career, and it created the kind of closeness and intimacy with his fans that you can’t obtain any other way.

“Have a great day, and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.”

Yours,

Conan

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#9 Emotionally Intelligent Moment of 2010

From Talentsmart:
Phillies fan gets tasered

In early May, the Phillies and Cardinals continued their age-old rivalry with a game at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. In the 8th inning, a 17-year-old fan ran onto the field, zigzagging his way through the outstretched arms of the police offers who tried to catch him. Eventually, one of the officers put an end to his escapade with a powerful (and unprecedented in this setting) shot from a taser gun. Why the taser? In America, baseball is big business—the competing clubs paid their players $1,465,000 to play in that game alone. Naturally, it’s going to ruffle a lot of feathers when a fan decides to stop the game and become the center of attention. More importantly, fans can be dangerous, as evidenced by the father-son tandem that ran onto the field in Chicago in 2005 and attacked a coach with a switchblade. The young Phillies fan knew it was illegal to run onto the field, and he was sober when he let his excitement take over.

Here’s the kicker. Before the kid ran onto the field, he called his father to ask for permission. Dad’s response? Not the best idea. And while we’ll never know just how strongly his father worded this so-called no, it clearly wasn’t enough to help his son fully engage his reason. With charges filed against the minor for defiant trespass, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest, this was an emotional intelligence strikeout for the whole family.

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Top 10 Emotional Intelligent Moments of 2010 (Highs and Lows) #10

Talentsmart produces a top 10 list of emotional intelligent moments. They are very fun and interesting. The first one is about email and Jobs.

“In September, Chelsea Isaacs, a journalism student at Long Island University, emailed Jobs’ personal (and publicized) email address with a complaint. Isaacs had left six voicemails with Apple media relations, requesting that they return her call to answer questions about the iPad for a class project. Apple never called. Jobs sent a quick reply to Isaacs’ longwinded email: “Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade. Sorry.”

Most people would have been tickled to receive a reply from the billionaire, but not Chelsea. She shot back a terse message that questioned the company’s customer service philosophy, and the two had a flaming six-message exchange that ended with this from Jobs: “Please leave us alone.”

The impact of Jobs’ statement? As one would expect from a journalism student, Isaacs took the exchange public, and it hit the ground running in the blogosphere, eventually getting picked up by several media outlets, including CNN. As Jobs is no fan of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, he undoubtedly paid no attention to Bezos’ revision of an old customer service adage: “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” Isaacs did that and more.

Regardless of whether or not Isaacs was overstepping her bounds in asking the company for help with a class project (which is debatable), Jobs did himself and his company a disservice by engaging in a tit-for-tat email exchange with a customer (Isaacs raves about the Apple products she owns in her first email). Jobs’ approach to Isaacs was bad form for any member of a company, let alone the CEO who lives under a microscope. A bit more self-awareness and Jobs’ would have realized that he was fighting a rational battle with Isaacs but losing an emotional war. With more social awareness, Jobs could’ve had the foresight to see how this simple email exchange might turn into the very public message that Apple doesn’t appreciate its customers. Maybe next time, Steve will read our article on Emotionally Intelligent Emailing before he hits “Send.”

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Lessons From Mom

I am not enough. This sentence echoes through the minds of most men (and many women) in our society. It is a burden we carry often from our dads (and sometimes our moms). We walk around doing all that we can to look good and feel like we are enough when in reality, we hear only a voice telling us that we are not enough.

My mom died this last summer, and a few months before she died, I was reminded once again of being enough. She was the voice that echoed to me that I was enough. I shared with her my newest adventure into becoming certified in professional coaching. She did what she did best with her kids. She looked straight into my eyes through into my soul, lightly wrapped her hand around my wrist, and said, “You will be great at that.”

I am reminded today, a day in which she would have turned 82, that she gave me the gift of being enough. She believed in me when I didn’t. This was her gift, and it is her legacy.

My youngest son is 8. He recently has gotten into learning how to throw a Frisbee. After every throw, he yells out, “Is that a good one?” The dutiful, worry wart, dad that I am thinks maybe he lacks self-esteem. As we are walking into the house after a Frisbee toss time, he looks at me and says, “Dad, do you think I am getting better?” Worried about his self-esteem, I ask him what he thinks. He immediately with a big smile says, “I think I am getting really great at throwing the Frisbee!” He is enough! And his Grandma’s legacy of being enough carries on in him and in all of us who she touched.

Are you enough? You are more enough than you could ever imagine. God said that you are His beloved. Can you feel His warm embrace? Can you hear His whisper in your ear, “You are my beloved. I adore you.” Even though my mom gave me the gift, I continue to live with the wound of feeling that I am not enough. It has only been recently that I have begun to embrace my enoughness. Don’t settle for the dial tone of not enough. Listen to the gentle voice that KNOWS that you are enough and so much more.

Mom is finally in a place where “I am not enough” doesn’t even exist. I am so grateful today, her birthday, for her gift. I am enough, Mom. I will always be enough. I am beloved, embraced, and delighted in. Thanks Mom. I miss you.

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Nerves: Anxiety and Fear

My college advisor was an expert on studying stress hormones. He always taught us that stress response/fear response is a healthy adaptive response when you are being chased down by a tiger, but when you get bad news from your boss, your stress response/fear response fires off but your body just sits there firing off all that stress while you sit at your desk.

I see stress, anxiety, and fear EVERY day at work. Most of my patients deny that they are stressed when most of their symptoms are from stress.

This excerpt about fear and anxiety is VERY telling and interesting.

“The average high schooler today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s:
“When you think about it, it’s one of the great ironies of our time: we now inhabit a modernized, industrialized, high-tech world that presents us with fewer and fewer legitimate threats to our survival, yet we appear to find more and more things to be anxious about with each passing year. Unlike our pelt-wearing prehistoric ancestors, our survival is almost never jeopardized in daily life. When was the last time you felt in danger of being attacked by a lion, for example, or of starving to death? Between our sustenance-packed superstores, our state-of-the-art hospitals, our quadruplecrash-tested cars, our historically low crime rates, and our squadrons of consumer-protection watchdogs, Americans are safer and more secure today than at any other point in human history.
“But just try telling that to our brains, because they seem to believe that precisely the opposite is true. At the turn of the millennium, as the nation stood atop an unprecedented summit of peace and prosperity, anxiety surged past depression as the most prominent mental health issue in the United States. America now ranks as the most anxious nation on the planet, with more than 18 percent of adults suffering from a full-blown anxiety disorder in any given year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. (On the other hand, in Mexico – a place where one assumes there’s plenty to fret about – only 6.6 percent of adults have ever met the criteria for significant anxiety issues.) Stress related ailments cost the United States an estimated $300 billion per year in medical bills and lost productivity, and our usage of sedative drugs has shot off the charts: between 1997 and 2004, Americans more than doubled their yearly spending on antianxiety medications like Xanax and Valium, from $900 million to $2.1 billion. And as the psychologist and anxiety specialist Robert Leahy has pointed out, the seeds of modern worry get planted early. ‘The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s,’ he writes. Security and modernity haven’t brought us calm; they’ve somehow put us out of touch with how to handle our fears.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this. After all, fear is truly our most essential emotion, a finely tuned protective gift from Mother Nature. Think of fear as the body’s onboard security system: when it detects a threat – say, a snarling, hungry tiger – it instantly sends the body into a state of high alert, and before we even comprehend what’s going on, we’ve already leapt to the safety of a fortified Range Rover. In this context, fear is our best friend; it makes all of the major decisions for us, keeps the personage as freed from tiger claws as possible, and then dissipates once the threat has subsided. …
“What makes a person capable of keeping cool and doing their duty in terrifying situations like [these]? …
“Fortunately – and not a moment too soon – a flood of cuttingedge research from psychologists, neuroscientists, and scholars from all disciplines is now coming together to show us what fear and stress really are, how they work in our brains, and why so much of what we thought we knew about dealing with them was dead wrong. Picking a painstaking trail through the labyrinth of the brain, a neuroscientist from the bayou traces our mind’s fear center to two tiny clusters of neurons, uncovering the subconscious roots of fear. Using a simple thought experiment, a Harvard psychologist discerns why our efforts to control our minds backfire, and why a directive like ‘just relax’ can actually make you more anxious. Employing one minor verbal suggestion, a group of Stanford researchers find they can make young test takers’ scores plummet in a spiral of worry – or hoist them right back up. Across the nation, intrepid scientists are discovering why athletes choke under pressure, how the human mind transforms in an emergency, why unflappable experts make good decisions under stress, and how fear can warp our ability to think.”

Author: Taylor Clark
Title: Nerve

Publisher: Little, Brown
Date: Copyright 2011 by Taylor Clark
Pages: 10-12, 15

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Emotional Intelligence: Self-Awareness

I just finished a very thoughtful book titled: Emotional Intelligence 2.0.  Here are some brief notes that I learned about Self-Awareness.  The book focuses on 4 parts to E.I.-Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social-Awareness, and Social-Management.

Self-Awareness:  To know yourself as you really are & to notice and understand your emotions

1. Allow yourself to sit with an emotion and become fully aware of it especially when emotions pop up or boil to the surface

2. Know who pushes your buttons and how they do it

3. Use books, music, and books to analyze and look at your emotions

Finally, keep a journal of emotions based on these 3 key points.

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Parenting Top 10

The latest edition of Mind magazine from Scientific American had an article about parenting. Including a top 10 list of key factors in parenting that predict a strong parent-child bond and children’s happiness, health, and success. Some are obvious, but others may not be.

The one that I continue to see that many parents can’t believe and don’t follow is that a strong parental relationship is KEY to happy and successful kids. A kid centered family is NOT healthy. We must date our spouse. The love that you show your spouse in some studies has been shown to be MORE important at times than the love you show your kids. The love you show your spouse is also a key model for your kids to see relationship love, respect, and support so they will hopefully have a successful marriage…

1. Love and affection. You support and accept the child, are physi-
cally affectionate, and spend quality one-on-one time together.
2. Stress management. You take steps to reduce stress for yourself
and your child, practice relaxation techniques and promote posi-
tive interpretations of events.
3. Relationship skills. You maintain a healthy relationship with your
spouse and model effective relationship skills with other people.
4. Autonomy and independence. You treat your child with respect and
encourage him or her to become self-sufficient and self-reliant.
5. Education and learning. You promote and model learning and
provide educational opportunities for your child.
6. Life skills. You provide for your child, have a steady income and
plan for the future.
7. Behavior management. You make extensive use of positive reinforcement and punish only when other methods of managing behavior have failed.
8. Health. You model a healthy lifestyle and good habits, such as regular exercise and proper nutrition, for your child.
9. Religion. You support spiritual or religious development and participate in spiritual or religious activities.
10. Safety. You take precautions to protect your child and maintain awareness of the child’s activities and friends. —excerpt from Mind magazine

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Give Thanks!

My youngest son listed what he was thankful for: Mom and Dad, his dogs, brother, sister, all living things, and me.  Not me but himself.  I have never seen some list themselves on a thankful list.  Cute and thought provoking.  We might all be happier if we could be thankful that God created us, that we are special, that we matter.  It points to my son feeling satisfied about who he is; he feels good about himself.

I am thankfully challenged.  My project for the 25 days leading up to Christmas is to call a friend every day and share with him one item each day that I am thankful.

Maybe we would all be better off being thankful for ourselves and each other…

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“Constructive” Criticism

Does “constructive” criticism work?  Answer: NO!  Dale Carnegie’s #1 rule: Don’t Criticize, Condemn, or Complain is founded on the reality that we DO NOT respond to criticism.

Why? Because he writes: “ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t criticize themselves for anything, no matter how wrong it may be.”   He goes on to say that “criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself.  Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.”

In fact, the father of behavioral psychology, B.F. Skinner, “proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behavior will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behavior.  Later studies showed that the same applies to humans.  By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment.”

So when will we “get this”? Constructive criticism DOES NOT WORK.  We must turn to the positive.  Wouldn’t it be exciting to try it!  What if the next round of evaluations at the office were filled with all things positive?  How might the climate change?

“Consider the annual performance planning process…a process dreaded by leader and subordinate alike!…What is possible when we focus on unleashing potential by giving direction, position, and conditions to individuals rather than assessing potential as under-performance or failure to perform?…focusing on what we want rather than what we don’t want activates the inherent strengths, gifts, and creativity of each person…”-Janet Harvey, MA, MCC

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Happy Thanksgiving! The Meeting Between Squanto and the Pilgrims

I love Thanksgiving not for the food, but it provides me with a reminder to thank and be thankful.

The excerpt below is a great reminder that our perspective can significantly change our understanding of the truth of the story.  I was raised on the North American Indian being primitive when in reality, we, the Northern European settlers, were the primitive ones in many ways.

‘In today’s excerpt – Thanksgiving. The meeting in 1621 between “Squanto,” other Native Americans and the Pilgrims, as seen from the perspective of those Native Americans:

“On March 22, 1621, an official Native American delegation walked through what is now southern New England to negotiate with a group of foreigners who had taken over a recently deserted Indian settlement. At the head of the party was an uneasy triumvirate: Massasoit, the sachem (political-military leader) of the Wampanoag confederation, a loose coalition of several dozen villages that controlled most of southeastern Massachusetts; Samoset, sachem of an allied group to the north; and Tisquantum [‘Squanto’], a distrusted captive whom Massasoit had reluctantly brought along as an interpreter.

“Massasoit was an adroit politician but the dilemma he faced would have tested Machiavelli. About five years before, most of his subjects had fallen before a terrible calamity. Whole villages had been depopulated [from disease] – indeed the foreigners ahead now occupied one of the empty sites. It was all he could do to hold together the remnants of his people. Adding to his problems, the disaster had not touched the Wampanoag’s longtime enemies – the Narragansett alliance to the west. Soon Massasoit feared they would take advantage of the Wampanoag’s weakness and overrun them.

“Desperate threats require desperate countermeasures. In a gamble Massasoit intended to abandon, even reverse, a long-standing policy. Europeans had been visiting New England for at least a century. Shorter than the natives, oddly dressed, and often unbearably dirty, the pallid foreigners had peculiar blue eyes that peeped out of the masks of bristly animal-like hair that encased their faces. They were irritatingly garrulous, prone to fits of chicanery, and often surprisingly incompetent at what seemed to Indians like basic tasks. But they also made useful and beautiful goods – copper kettles, glittering colored glass, and steel knives and hatchets – unlike anything else in New England. Moreover they would exchange these valuable items for cheap furs of the sort used by Indians as blankets. It was like happening upon a dingy kiosk that would swap fancy electronic goods for customers’ used socks. …

“Over time the Wampanoag, like other native societies in coastal New England, had learned how to manage the European presence. They encouraged the exchange of goods, but would only allow their visitors to stay ashore for brief, carefully controlled excursions. … Now Massasoit was visiting a group of British with the intent of changing the rules. He would permit the newcomers to stay for an unlimited time – provided they formally allied with the Wampanoag against the Narragansett.

“Tisquantum the interpreter had shown up alone at Massasoit’s home a year and a half before. He spoke fluent English because he had lived for several years in Britain. But Massasoit didn’t trust him. … And he refused to use him to negotiate with the colonists until he had another independent means of communication with them. … Their meeting was a critical moment in American history. The foreigners called their colony Plymouth; they themselves were the famous Pilgrims. As schoolchildren learn, at that meeting the Pilgrims obtained the services of Tisquantum – usually known as ‘Squanto.’

“[In our high school texts the story is told that] ‘a friendly Indian named Squanto helped the colonists. He showed them how to plant corn and how to live on the edge of the wilderness. A soldier Captain Miles Standish taught the Pilgrims how to defend themselves against unfriendly Indians.’ The story isn’t wrong so far as it goes. But the impression it gives is entirely misleading.”

Author: Charles C. Mann
Title: 1491
Publisher: Vintage
Date: Copyright 2005, 2006 by Charles C. Mann
Pages: 34-36

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Visualization, The Power of the Mind, and Metaphor

“Your brain has a difficult time distinguishing between what you see with your eyes and what you visualize in your mind.  In fact, MRI scans of people’s brains taken while they are watching the sun set are virtually indistinguishable from scans taken when the same people visualize a sunset in their mind.  The same brain regions are active in both scenarios.”-Travis Bradberry & Jean greaves, Emotional Intelligence 2.0

I have pointed out in the past the power of the placebo (see Hippocrates Shadow by Newman), and here again, it is clear that we do not tap into the power of our minds to transform our lives.  The use of visualizations has been shown to be very powerful during prayer (see Seeing Is Believing by Greg Boyd), and the use of metaphor and other visualization exercises can be a powerful way to change one’s perspective.

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Smile & Laugh More: It’s good for you!

“French university researchers measured the power of a smile by having two groups of subjects read the same comics page from the newspaper.  One group of subjects was instructed to hold a pencil in their teeth while reading (which activates the muscles used in smiling), while the other group held the pencil with their lips (which does not activate the muscles used in smiling).  Those who were unknowingly “smiling” found the cartoons far more humorous and had a better time while reading them than people in the group that weren’t smiling.”-Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Location 1102-1113