Resilience is empowering, but so is revenge

May 19, 2011

“Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson There is power in the ability to take action and make a choice. Our brains like the sense of autonomy and control, after all, we want to feel [...]

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Boosting creativity through passion, novelty and pleasure

May 3, 2011

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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Your Brain or Mine? Collective Perceptions and Group Conformity

April 13, 2011

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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How The Grumpy Gremlin, The Inner Critic and The Mad Monkey Stole the Creative Seed of Discourse

April 2, 2011

Once upon a time, Discourse possessed a creative seed that in the right conditions had the power to germinate into better understanding among people and offer new solutions to their problems.  The wise and the elderly knew how to take care of the creative seed and help it sprout into a peaceful growth until one [...]

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Reflections on the 4th Annual Mediators Beyond Borders Congress, Part 3: Compassionate Listening

March 20, 2011

“Listening creates a holy silence.  When you listen generously to people, they can hear truth in themselves, often for the first time.  And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone.  Eventually, you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.” [...]

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Reflections on the 4th Annual Mediators Beyond Borders Congress, Part 2: Cross-Cultural Communication

March 9, 2011

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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Reflections on the 4th Annual Mediators Beyond Borders Congress, Part 1: Collaborative Informal Problem Solving

March 7, 2011

I am writing this post as I wait at the LAX airport for my flight back to New York, while the memories are still fresh.  The 4th Annual Mediators Beyond Borders Congress is over.  It’s been my pleasure and privilege to spend three days with so many wonderful people, doing great work all over the [...]

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Video Review Series, Part 4: Humor in Conflict Is No Laughing Matter

February 25, 2011

“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.” ~ Mark Twain When Nicole Eggert got harsh publicity from the media for gaining weight since her “Baywatch” days, she decided to use humor as her weapon against the tabloid attacks.  She teamed up with “Funny or Die” to create a video [...]

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7 Barriers to Active Listening

January 30, 2011

“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention.“ ~Thich Nhat Hanh Effective influencers master the art of listening, and they understand that people want to be heard.  In our fast-paced world, active and empathetic listening is a rarity, and it’s not as simple as it sounds.  Even if we know how to [...]

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Social media death spiral: U.S. Figure Skating deletes comments and disables fans’ updates on its Facebook page as 2011 U.S. Figure Skating Championships approach

January 22, 2011

It is not every day that a social media enthusiast gets to live the drama of a social media crisis.  Yesterday, apparently,  I took part in one after posting this comment to the U.S. Figure Skating Facebook fan page: I was surprised to discover a few hours later that my post was deleted, as were [...]

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