Twenty years ago, when I was getting a divorce, a good friend of mine asked me if I was going to become one of those bitter angry women who hates men. I had to laugh. I told him no, I love men, but my marriage was just unworkable. I had also realized that going forward, [...]
You have a superpower that you’re probably not aware of: your presence. Thinking back on your encounters with particularly angry or peaceful people, you might have noticed how their emotions seemed to rub off on you. Turns out, that’s a real thing. Research has shown that people unconsciously and automatically mimic the emotional expressions of [...]
Certain things have built-in warning signs when they need attention: a car has a check engine light; a tea kettle has a whistle. Wouldn’t it be great if people had the same type of warning signals when they went into stress mode? That would let everyone know when someone’s stress response had been triggered, and [...]
“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” – Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper [...]
Most of us have been proud multitaskers at one point in our lives. The ability to do a few things at the same time can seem like a necessary skill, both at work and at home. We talk on the phone while driving, send texts when we’re talking with someone in person, and reply to [...]
In one of my favorite books, The Art of Possibility, written by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, there is a chapter titled It’s All Invented. The authors say, “It’s all invented anyway so we might as well invent a story or a framework of meaning that enhances our quality of life and the life [...]
Being judgmental has a negative connotation. People don’t want to be viewed this way, yet our brains are hardwired to categorize and generalize things so we can move through our day more efficiently and stay safe (e.g., a dog bearing its teeth is dangerous, and a cooing baby is not). Unfortunately, sometimes our brains make [...]
I love being around young children as they are learning and honing their speaking skills. Even though infants and small children are able to communicate quite effectively without words, most quickly start vocalizing to better express their wants and ideas. As we get older, we become more skilled at using our words in speech and [...]
Listening is something we all do every day, sometimes effectively and sometimes not. When we are “listening” to other people while multitasking, looking at something else, or thinking about what we are going to do later, the quality of the interaction is diminished. Leadership expert and author Susan Scott says that people often think the [...]
One of the most fascinating and surprising things I discovered when I began to study stress and its impacts on the individual and the organization, was that I was creating my own stress by my thinking and perceptions. Up until that time, I had imagined that stress was coming from someone or something out there—the [...]
