February 6, 2024

Events Don’t Have to Control You: Using the E+R=O Formula

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf.” Jon Kabat-Zinn   Beware of quick fix formulas! But, there are tools that can help us to manage our reactions to external events that can shift our emotional and behavioral responses. The E + R = O (EVENT + RESPONSE = OUTCOME) formula, which we picked up on […]
August 1, 2021

Beyond Anger Management – You and Your Anger

“The beliefs we have about anger and the interpretation we give to the experience are as important to its understanding as anything intrinsic to the emotion itself.” Carol Tavris   Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion Anger has been called the “misunderstood emotion.”  Why is that? Seems like we know everything there is to know about anger, don’t we?  While there still is […]
August 11, 2020

Leadership and Emotional Contagion

“Employees are not emotional islands. Rather, they continuously spread their own moods and receive and are influenced by others’ moods. When they work in groups, they literally can catch each others’ emotions like viruses, a phenomenon known as emotional contagion. ” Wharton @ Work, University of Pennsylvania There has been an important finding in neuroscience that should impact on how […]
January 7, 2020

Being Fully Present to Others

In how much of our communication with others are we fully there? If you ask what people want from most of their communication, many will say more clarity, better understanding, greater honesty – maybe even love? Underneath it all, what we really long for are deeper, more meaningful connections with others.  Even when we’re not aware of consciously seeking it, […]
September 1, 2019

Cynicism – The Price We All Pay

“Cynicism is an unproductive reaction to disappointment. It springs from the helplessness people feel when they are disappointed by others and allow themselves to become detached observers rather than active participants.”     Jamie & Maren Showkeir  Have you become a cynic?  If so, you’ve got plenty of company. Some might call this the era of cynicism. Some might even say, that’s […]
January 11, 2019

The Mirror in Us: Mirror Neurons & Workplace Relationships

“We use the same cells to build a sense of self, since these cells originate early in life when other people’s behavior is the reflection of our own behavior. In other people, we see ourselves with mirror neurons.” Marco Iacoboni, author, Mirroring People, The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others Emotions and actions are powerfully contagious. When […]
October 7, 2018

Why is Conflict So Hard? How to Manage it More Productively

Despite the worn-out demands that the workplace is no place for “”personal feelings,” people bring all of their unresolved emotional baggage to work – and there is little we can do about that. Outmoded collective beliefs that endure like – work life and personal life should be separate – speak to a lack of knowledge about the new science  of emotions […]
February 14, 2017

We Need to Belong

I continue to be surprised by the lack of understanding we have about what we humans need to thrive.   Of course, we know this.  Modern psychology has studied and  confirmed that without social connection, humans simply cannot thrive, They may, in certain cases, even die. Yet, many of us do not live as if we truly know this. This, I’ve […]
January 21, 2017

You are Hard-Wired for Altruism

Through the tragic events and natural disasters of the past decades we’ve seen  extraordinary outpourings of help and compassion for neighbors – and most important, strangers. Tragic events seem to galvanize our empathy and evoke great acts of kindness in response. In the past decade we have also been the beneficiaries of valuable findings from research to better understand the motives […]