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Go with the flow...
September 2007 |
Using 20+ years of life-consultation experience, I teach people how to get unstuck emotionally, so they can effectively reach their goals. I keep up on research addressing this fun, life-enhancing work, and I enjoy sharing what I've learned. Please tell others about this digest, and contact me if you have any comments, questions, or good jokes!
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Quote
Do not
try to live forever. You will not succeed.
--George Bernard Shaw |
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Oh, No. Resumes gone
wild! *
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The 8/29 edition of
the
I really enjoy consulting
about career issues with my clients, because I get to blend my
experience as a manager in a former Fortune 500 technology company with my counseling
experience. Not only do we spend so much time at work, but our
careers are extensions of our hopes and dreams. Contact me
for more information about how I can help
you develop a deeply satisfying career. |
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Suffering? Sing Spamalot or call the Spanish
Inquisition!
The August 2007 edition of
American Nurse Today included the article, The freeing force
of laughter
.
The article describes a
series of interactions between a nurse and a young, hemophiliac man named
Mark who was reading Deepak Chopra's book, Life After Death
.
After a harrowing experience in the emergency room, Mark confided in
the nurse that, despite studying mind-body connections, creating a mantra, and working
on accepting life transitions: "[The Emergency Room trauma] is all
I can think about; I feel like I'm drowning in fear."
The nurse asked if Mark was
familiar with the Monty Python comedy sketch, "Bring out your dead!" He
said he was and that it was one of his favorite Monty Python scenes. The
nurse replied, "Well, you are 'the body' in the sketch. You aren't dead
yet. You aren't dying. Not today. Don't jump on the cart!" Mark laughed
heartily. After that, every time the nurse walked by Mark's hospital room,
he
would say in an exaggerated British accent, "I'm not
dead yet!"
Instead of trying to put up
some kind of clinical "blank wall," I enjoy "being real" with my clients
and enjoying a good laugh.
(As a teacher once said to me in a clinical class,
"You aren't going to have a problem with the 'using irreverence' part of the
course, will you?" ;-) ) Contact me
for more information about how
I use humor with clients to shift point of view and
mood. | |
"With friends like 'Mistakes,'
who needs enemies?!"
The Summer 2007 issue of
First,
come to see your life as a personal-development process that involves experiments, trials
and errors. From this perspective, mistakes are part of life's
process, not a sign that
the process has gone bad.
Also, here are some tips to keep in mind when
facing your mistakes:
I
invite my clients to see things the way Marsha Linehan does:
"Successful people fall off the horse as often as unsuccessful ones;
they just get up quicker." As
a Life Consultant, it's
my job to help them get up quicker. Contact me
for more information about how I help people to manage
perfectionism and other mistake-phobic points of
view.
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Quote
Destiny: a tyrant's authority for crime and a
fool's excuse for failure.
--Ambrose Bierce |
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Provide a cushion when delivering
the blow
The 9/4 edition of
the CNN web site includes the article The 'Dear John'
talk and other dreaded conversations,
by Katheryn Mathews
of OPRAH.com. Here are some tips for having
these unpopular-but-necessary conversations:
In my
work as Life Consultant, I've assisted countless clients in regard
to having difficult conversations. Part of an effective approach involves understanding the situation, and
the other person's patterns and motives. Another part involves managing
your own emotions. And, finally, a good plan, practice,
and delivery all matter. Contact me for more
information about my approach to coaching a single conversation
or helping people to eliminate patterns of having trouble
with these kinds of conversations. |
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Who can feel more of your pain?
Men or women?
The Summer 2007 issue of
Greater Good includes a report
by Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas, Ph.D., which summarizes research
about the differing
abilities of men and women to take other people's emotional perspectives
(empathy).
Simon-Thomas reports that a
1995 study in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology showed that
women "mirror" the emotions of other people more than men; mirroring
involves matching body language, facial expression, and tone of
voice.
As another data point, other studies suggest
that, in men's brains, rational thought trumps empathy more than in
women's brains. When asked to describe what another person was feeling,
the part of the brain that activates when feeling that emotion "lit up"
for women but not for men (the women were feeling the emotion they
observed in the other person). Men rationally observed and identified the
other person's feeling instead of feeling it themselves.
Finally, Simon-Thomas reports that studies show
no difference in men's or women's abilities to detect feelings of their
own or of other people. She suggests that the basic biological building
blocks of empathy are there for men and women, and that "nurture" (social
learning) may explain gender differences in the extent to which this
skill is employed.
When talking with potential clients about my
work and how it differs from medical psychotherapy, I emphasize that, like
most skills in life, emotional responses can
be unlearned and learned. No one expects to become a star athlete or award-winning cook without ever
having been coached or without practice; why should it be different with emotional
skills. Contact me for more
information about how I employ a teaching/learning approach when assisting
clients with peace of mind and life satisfaction. |
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Quote Almost every man wastes part
of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not
possess.
--Samuel Johnson |