“ “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” ~ Plato Have you ever played with kaleidoscopes – those tubes of mirrors with colorful beads? You turn and shake them, and the stones form different patterns, reflecting off the mirrors. Our minds can be like [...]
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“Our perception of the world is a fantasy that coincides with reality.” ~ Dr. Chris Frith, neuropsychologist and author of “Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World” Conflict management by its nature involves a lot of uncertainty. The paradox is that uncertainty can be both a threat to the brain and [...]
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Whenever I work with people on emotional regulation during conflicts, I like to ask where they feel the emotions in the body. Stress and emotional overload can show up as muscle tension, hair standing up, sudden headache, pit in the stomach, racing heartbeat, deep sighing or shallow breathing. The body reveals what the brain tries [...]
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What does being vulnerable mean to you? Most people don’t like feeling vulnerable, myself included. Without our protective stance, we feel exposed to the world that is ready to prey on our weaknesses. Yet, more and more research indicates that the expression of vulnerability contributes to our sense of well-being. In one of my all-favorite [...]
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“Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.” ~ William Ellery Channing As a young boy with a severe learning disability, Chuck Close was told not to even think about college. Nevertheless, he went on to get his MFA from Yale and became a world renowned artist. [...]
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I’ve just returned from Chicago, where I had the pleasure to present my program “Rewire Your Brain to Speak Your Mind: Neuroscience Insights for Conflict Management” at the Association of Conflict Resolution Chicago Area Chapter. It was wonderful to connect with other conflict resolution professionals and tap into our collective brain power for new ideas [...]
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Metaphors often reveal the hidden connections between our perception of the physical world and our mental constructs. The expression “eye to eye” means “in agreement.” It turns out that seeing eye to eye in the physical sense may explain our tendencies to conform and “follow the crowd” under peer pressure. Put differently, what others say [...]
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I continue with my reflections on the 4th Annual Mediators Beyond Borders Congress and offer a few more take-aways from one of the workshops I attended, entitled “Essentials in Relating Across Cultures” by Ed Ladon and Alan Gross. We began with the discussion of culture as an iceberg metaphor. Only about one-eighth of an iceberg [...]
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Supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), a team at Queen’s University Belfast is exploring whether people can be trained to make better decisions by improving their ability to recognize and make allowances for their subjective opinions and biases. This interdisciplinary project harnesses leading-edge expertise in mathematics, statistics, critical thinking, knowledge management [...]
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Rewire your brain for positive influence and happier relationships View more presentations from Anastasia Pryanikova.
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With exclusive interviews from
Dr. Farhad Saba,
Dr. Rosemary Lehman,
Dr. Donna Gibbs,
Dr.Germain-Rutherford,
Anastasia Pryanikova, M.A., J.D.,
and James Breeze.
