June 27, 2019

Emotional Intelligence, 20+ Years On Part 2

Continuing the conversation started in Part 1 of this article – several key questions keep surfacing.  One is the often unspoken tension between EI (Emotional Intelligence) and what is typically thought of as “therapy.” For anyone who has been involved in a therapeutic process, it’s immediately clear that learning and applying EI principles is very different from being “in therapy.” […]
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 […]
January 1, 2019

The Ultimate Diet – The 7 Day Mental Cleanse

It’s always diet season, isn’t it? Seems a day does not go by without another article on dieting. But, what about your mind?  Are you willing to try out a really challenging but ultimately very rewarding new kind of diet?  Then the 7 Day Mental Cleanse is for you. If you believe, as I do, that thought is the real causative […]
October 10, 2018

Mindful Work – AM to PM

This article was inspired by the work of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn’s book, Work: How to Find Joy and Meaning Each Hour of the Day.  For those of you unfamiliar with the work of Thich Nhat Hanh (affectionately known as Thay) the Zen master, poet, peace and human rights activist was exiled from his homeland of Vietnam in 1966. […]
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 […]
January 1, 2018

The 8 Enablers of JOY

When was the last time you experienced joy? To answer the question it helps to remember what joy feels like in your body. Like all other emotions, joy has its own unique biological signature. We memorize emotions in our bodies.  With those emotions we experience less often, we may have to work a little harder to recall how they felt.  […]
March 11, 2017

Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?  

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver’s haunting question should become a mantra for life in the 21st century. Seemingly inured to stress, too many of us speed through each day without taking the time to stop and ask – what have I traded a day of my life for today? Jumping on the mindfulness bandwagon dozens of articles still ask, “Can […]
December 5, 2016

Empathy Killers

In doing some research on empathy I came across this article and found myself  so “hooked” by it that I sat down to write this piece. Nicholas Kristof’s compelling New York Times article, Where is the Love, discusses the pushback he’s received from many readers on food stamp recipients, prison inmates and the uninsured.  Writing about hungry children, Kristof shares […]
September 8, 2016

Developing Greater Emotional Competency

Since the term Emotional Intelligence (EI)  was popularized in the mid -1990’s by former New York Times science writer, Daniel Goleman, work on EI has found its way into mainstream business. Goleman’s first book, Emotional Intelligence,  was based on the work of university researchers John Mayer and Peter Salovey, who were trying to scientifically measure the difference in people’s emotional abilities.  At the […]