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In the midst of work, what ice breakers or icy barriers do you create in attempting to collaborate, attract support or lead others?

Do your gut instincts help or hinder your “LQ” – Likeability Quotient?

Answer this quick nine question quiz, to gain some insights on how to connect with others. Some answers may surprise you.
~ ~ ~
When you meet or re-meet people, what are ice breakers and icy barriers to connecting? Do your gut instincts help or hinder your “LQ” – Likeability Quotient?

From an expert on gut instincts, gain insights about how to say it better next time. Answer this quick nine question quiz and get some easy ice breaker tips. Some answers may surprise you.

1. Do people get along better when talking to each other if they are facing
each other or if they are standing side by side?

2. Who tends to face the person with whom they are speaking (men or women) and who tends to stand side by side, facing more or less the same way (women or men)?

3. If you want to increase the chance of knowing if someone is lying to you,what is one helpful phenomenon to notice about that person’s face when he or she is talking to you?

4. If you want to keep someone’s attention, is it better to wear a patterned shirt or blouse or a plain blouse or shirt?

5. What is the most directly emotional of all the senses, bypassing the thinking facilities and causing a quicker, more intense reaction in the limbic (emotions) system than any other sense?

6. Are you more likely to get someone to support you or buy something if you
give them something up front, unasked, before you ask for the favor?

7. Who tends to maintain wider peripheral vision when entering a new place, men or women?

8. Who tends to be more specific in their descriptions, adults or children?

9. Of the previous eight questions, which one do people who take this quiz first ask about, and most talk about among their colleagues?
~~~~~
Answers
1. People get along better when they “sidle” stand or sit side by side rather than when they face each other.

2. Men are more likely to sidle than women.

3. Note the timing and duration of the first “reactive” expression on someone’s
face when you think that person is not telling you the truth.

When lying, most people can put an innocent expression on their faces, yet few (except pathological liars) will have the right timing or duration of that expression. If you ignore the expression itself and, instead, consider whether the timing and duration of the expression seem natural, you’ll greatly increase your chances of knowing if that person is lying.

4. Wearing a plain, unpatterned shirt or blouse will increase the chances that the listener will hear you longer. A patterned top or ornate jewelry or loud tie will break up the listener’s attention span sooner, and that person is more likely to go on more “mental vacations” sooner.

5. Smell is the most directly emotional of the senses. The right natural scent can refresh or relax you and others in your home or work site. Vanilla, apple, and chocolate are the scents Americans most like.

6. Yes, up to 14 times more likely to get their support or a purchase. This gut instinct is often called “reciprocity reflex.”

7. Women. That is why storeowners who serve men will increase their sales if they have prominent, eye-level signage over large displays where men will see the signage soon after entering the store.

8. Children are more vividly specific, hitting their prime around fourth grade and then beginning to speak in generalities, more like adults. Specific detail prove general conclusions, not the other way around. Specifics are more memorable and credible.

9. Question number 3.
It seems that we have an inordinate interest in lying.
~~~~~
Three insights on instincts:

Finding #1: “Move to Motivate”
MOTION

Motion is emotional. It increases the intensity of feeling about whatever is happening.

Further, people remember more the things they dislike or fear that they experience in motion, more than things they enjoy. Motion attracts attention and causes people to remember more of what’s happening and feel more strongly about it, for better or for worse.

Insight:
This is another justification for golf! Think of the memorability of a golf swing. The more dimensions of motion involved (body moving up/down, left/right, backward/forward), the more memorable the motion.

Get others involved in motions with you that create good will: walking, sharing a meal, handing or receiving a gift, shaking hands, turning to face a new scene. You are more likely to literally get “in sync” (vital signs become more similar: eye pupil dilation, skin temperature, heartbeat) and to then get along.

Finding #2: “Deep Convictions”
PASSION

The more time, actions, or other effort someone has put into something, someone, or some course of action, the more deeply that person will believe in it, defend it, and work on it further.

Insight:
If you want more from another person, wait to ask until after she has invested more time, energy, money, or other resources. The more someone talks about it, repeats and elaborates it, writes it down, and explains it to others, the more deeply that person will believe it – and feel inclined to tell others. Imagine your customers raving about their experience with your product.

Finding #3: “True Timing”
LIKEABILITY

If a person likes the way he acts when he is around you, he often sees the qualities in you that he most admires. The opposite is also true. Two universal truths: people like people who are like them, and people like people who like them.

Insight:
Pick the moments when someone feels most at ease and happy to move the relationship forward. Don’t make suggestions or requests when they are acting in an unbecoming way your efforts will only backfire. Praise the behavior you want to flourish. Don’t ask for more from someone until they have invested more time, money, other resources, or emotional “chits” in the relationship.

“Your face is my map to your life.”
- Houdini, magician

We are all literally and unwittingly two-faced. To learn more about how you present yourself to the world, and your underlying, more “private” feelings, you just have to look yourself in the face. What to get out a mirror now, before you read further? Do you attract or alienate your insurance prospects and longtime staff?

You constantly present two aspects of yourself, on the two sides of your face. Recent research on the different functions of the left and right sides of the brain helps to explain why this is so. The two, vertical halves of the face are each affected by the nerves of the opposite side of the brain and show the world different parts of how you feel.

In fact, the two sides of your face, like the two sides of your body -- -the left and the right -- are usually asymmetrical and unequal in proportion. Look at yourself in the mirror -- full-face and full length -- to see the differences.

In short, your face is your shorthand to your body language.

Your expressions, in repose, are icons of your attitudes toward life.

The left side is your more “private” part of your personality and your right is the more “public” side of your face. The left often looks less happy than the right. Most subjects who have been analyzed projected their wish images upon their left side of their face and their right side related more to their real or basic self-image and attitude towards the world.

Your face’s right side often appears more pleasant, sensitive, vulnerable and/or open in expression. The left side is less expressive than the right and tends to reflect the hidden, severe, stern and/or depressed aspects you usually intend to keep private from the world -- and sometimes even from yourself.

The left side is more likely to register negative emotions, while the right side tends to reflect the more positive and optimistic, but not necessarily phony part of your personality.

“When I smile I must also show the grimace behind it.”
- Live Ullman, actress, author

Since the right side of the brain has more control over the left side of the body -- including the face -- then it stands to reason that the research on how the brain is organized, left and right, can give us insights into how we literally face the world and how we can better understand others. The left brain -- reflected more in the right side of the face -- relates to logic, pragmatic thinking, practicality and language.

The right part of the brain, in turn, relates more to intuition, imagination, and other more creative leanings.

The basic gut feelings, including your attitude towards yourself and your life emanate from your right brain. You express them more in the left side of your face.

We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.

The more controlled or conscious responses -- the social mask you put on for the world -- may be processed more by the pragmatic left brain and appear more readily on the right side of the face.

Now you may be getting lost in “lefts” and “rights” of all this, but let’s continue with some experiments you can conduct to learn more about yourself and others for whom you have strong feelings (like or dislike) in your life.

How Do You See the World?
Ironically, the right brain is more actively involved in observing the world -- which it does predominantly through your left eye. And, when you face someone, your left eye is across from the other person’s right side. Therefore, you are more aware of their right side. But you are thus most noticing the side of the other person’s face which is more connected with the left or “logical” and less revealing side. You miss facing the part of their face that is most likely to show underlying “true” feelings.

“Public / Private Face” Exercise
Here is a rather intimate exercise to do with someone -- and it doesn’t involve disrobing or even touching. Sit facing each other. Now look at the left and the right sides of the other person’s face. Does the right side show a more open, less tense presence? Does the left look more reserved, serious? The left side, that is their left side, is the more private face, remember, and the right side is their more public face. In fact, the left side is likely to show their more basic disposition. As you face each other, discuss your observations, one side at a time.

“The face is the most memorable part of the body and the eyes are the most memorable part of the face.”
- Werner Wolff, psychiatrist and hypnotist

“Driver’s License Photo Show” Exercise
Now try this experiment. Get out your driver’s license. Look at both sides of your face, covering one side at a time with a piece of paper. Look “inward” at yourself and see if you observe different aspects of yourself.

You may also want to look back at your family album and look at the progression of your face and your personality development overtime -- and that of others in your family. Look at the childhood albums of close friends and in-laws for other perspectives on them.

“Photo Finish” Exercise
To gain a still more revealing view of yourself, find two photographic negatives of “head and shoulders”, close-up pictures of yourself. If you don’t have any handy, ask someone to take two pictures of you; offer to do the same for them and compare notes on this exercise. Cut both negatives of yourself vertically in half, down the center of your face. Flop over one side of each negative. Take a glossy-coated side and a dull-coated side of the left side of your face from the two negatives, and ask your camera shop to print it to create a “left-left” photo. Take a glossy and a dull-sided half of your face and also get a “right-right” print made. Thus, instead of the normal right-left photo of your actual face, the joined half negatives become right-right and left-left faces. You will then see exaggerated versions of both aspects of yourself -- and will probably be able to see each more clearly.

Perhaps bad things won't happen if you don't think about them. Most leaders, like most humans in their personal lives, avoid planning for disasters. Because it is usually a thankless task, we often don't take action until after a crisis has hit us, someone we know, or someone who is like us or in a very public profession like ours.

But we do not have the fantasy of safety anymore. Ironically, now more than ever our citizens look to us for the safety they seek in their community and workplace.

More than many other kinds of people they trust their government professionals to do the right thing.

Responding quickly, fully, and truthfully is the only way to keep the faith of the people you serve, inside and outside your organization.

In advance of an emergency or attack by critics, your agency needs a crisis response plan, and the opportunity to practice it. When bad news strikes, almost immediately, people can learn the "truth" -- in several conflicting versions --compare their views, and see how those views stack up with those of "the general public."

Like a tennis game on fast-forward, the ball of "information" and opinions bounces back and forth at warp speed. Some organizations might still be trying to choose a spokesperson while the ball has already made several trips both ways, right over their heads, and they aren't yet participating in the game about their issue.

Bad news always travels faster than good news. What can you do to protect your or your organization's reputation in the face of a future crisis --inaccurate, incomplete, or biased government or otherwise official or media announcement; or an attack from someone, especially a credible, well-liked>powerful or well-known figure?

Here are some suggestions:


~No, I Do Not Beat My Wife!

If you are asked a negative, emotion-charged question, do not repeat it when you respond. Choose your own playing field and sound bite. Directly characterize the question from your perspective on the situation, then answer it. Be direct and specific with your facts, action you will take and your timetable for when you will be able to tell them more. Do not begin your remarks with lengthy qualifiers as it will appear that you are attempting to dodge the question. Provide the supportive information as you elaborate.

Do not attack or mock the reporter. Your genial, straightforward style can stand in stark contrast to others.

~ Open to Public View

Have an "open" face -- that is, with eyebrows slightly raised, and cheeks and mouth were slightly softened, free of tightness.

Practice.

Sound artificial? Consider what is at stake for you and for your government agency. Perceptions color reality. If you look upset, or evasive, even when you are telling the truth, people may doubt you and may not like you.

Ways to Face a Crisis Before it Happens

1. Picture the Situation and Put in the Practice Before You Need it.

You can't anticipate every possible disaster, but you can presume the most likely possibilities, at least in broad-brushstroke scenarios. Identify the worst-case scenarios your company might face and the inside and outside experts that would be most credible spokespersons. What fact-finding and decision-making process and public position would your organization take? Who would be involved in approving that position? If your organization were in some way to blame or at fault, what process do you have to ensure that your agency responds with of integrity?

2. Get Your Facts or the Facts Will Get You.

How would the key decision-makers be placed in communication with each
other quickly so they could be informed and make a joint decision? How fast would they would commit to making a decision?

Would all of them be involved in the decisions related to financial and political commitments involved in decision-making?

Who outside your government agency should be contacted first to be informed of the organization's stance and action? Who inside? Who are your most powerful allies and critics, in general and on this kind of situation?

Who could counter each critic? Who, outside your organization, would be most likely to comment on the crisis first (which reporters, other experts, citizen critics other government officials, and so on)? What approach would each of these people take (positive, neutral, or negative) toward your agency's situation and subsequent position? How knowledgeable and credible would they be? Who are your credible current and potential outside advocates in these situations? How can you deepen their knowledge, support, and able advocacy of your
government unit, in advance of such situations?

3. Be Vividly Specific and Compelling.

In general, what is the most vividly specific and accurate characterization of your government agency you would give in any discussion? Is it of interest and understandable to those outside kind of work? Strip your language of jargon and abbreviations that are not widely understood.

~Verbal Snapshots Penetrate the Mind and Linger

Speak in word pictures. Whoever most vividly characterizes a situation usually determines how others see it in their mind's eye, think about it, discuss it with others, and eventually decide about it.

4. Be Brief to Build Rapport.

Your brevity brings you other benefits. You are less likely to be misquoted. The interviewer stays engaged and feels more comfortable, because he feels in control as he guides the questions. You have more opportunities to complete your comments naturally with your short aside --the positive characterization you have created of your company, received feedback on, and practiced shortly after reading this article.

5. Make Unlikely Allies Before You Need Them.

Conduct a Stakeholder Analysis in which you and your associates in top management identify all of the key influencers who can alter people's perceptions of your government group. These influencers might include leaders of civic or special interest groups, stock analysts, reporters (industry, business,, consumer, and other beats), community leaders, government vendors and elected officials.

Then match each key influencer with a "key contact" in your government organization --ideally one who already has a relationship with that person that the influencer can maintain and nourish by providing genuine support for that person's interests and for those they share, unrelated to your agency.

8. Be the First to Say You're Wrong When You Are.

Say you are sorry. Say it soon. Prove you mean it. Say it in person, if at all possible. Say it first to the person or persons most damaged, no matter how much you'd rather avoid that uncomfortable situation. Otherwise, the situation will metaphorically stick to your feet like tar paper, forever pulling people's attention toward it and away from any subsequent good actions you take. You've made the taint potentially indelible, the stink longer-lasting.

~ Potential Future Statesmen / Heroes Out of Ashes.

More than any other kind of situation, there can be no ambiguity about the steps you must take if you want your government agency to have future effectiveness. For those rare instances when you or your organization is in the wrong or has caused damage to others, the sooner and more heartfelt your apology, the more sincerely and positively you will be perceived and the more quickly the forgiveness can begin, especially if your apology is directly coupled with your explicit and adequate plan to rectify the matter.

In today’s time-starved, relationship-diminished world, audiences:
• Crave attention and connection with each other
• Want ready-to-use ideas
• AND still expect to be entertained.

These goals are often at odds when preparing a presentation that will make people rave about one's program long afterwards. Consequently, successful presenters need gut instincts-based behavioral insights into how to grab and hold their audiences attention.

Here's some:

1. Getting specific sooner
Since vivid, specific details prove the general conclusion, not the reverse (yet most educated adults are talking longer to get to the point, and are inclined to use generalities more than their literally-minded children who are full of great word pictures)

2. Honor and surprise some attendees by name
Be a hero to your audience by citing audience members by name as positive examples of the points you are making. How? Interview the meeting planner, sharing your main points and gathering examples she/he has heard or can discover that involve diverse people in the audience.

Then, just before speaking, as that meeting planner to point out the two or three people you are going to mention.

That way, as you are making your point, you can begin walking toward the person you want to praise, getting closer and closer to him/her as you share your example so you can be at that person’s side, smiling, shaking hands, even asking the audience to give that person some well-deserved recognition (applause, please)

3. Avoid patterned clothing as it will cause attendees to go on even more “mental vacations" than they otherwise would.

4. Walk and talk. Your movements can evoke interest, reinforce the emotions of your stories and punctuate a change of pace or topic.

What's the secret to attracting others' respect, support, and friendship? It is not through our instinctual initial behavior with others, which is to show others our best side.

Quite the opposite. People are more inclined to like and respect you when they first get to show you their better side. As others enjoy being around you, they see in you the qualities they most like in themselves -- whether or not you've demonstrated that you, in fact, have those qualities.

Probably they will not be aware of their underlying reasoning, yet research shows that people like people who like them. *

In first meeting, women generally tend to become happier and higher performing when they feel liked and like the people they are around.

In first meeting, men generally tend to become happier and higher performing when they feel respected and respect the people they are around.

Tip:
* In first meeting or re-meeting, "Go Slow to Go Fast": First enable the other person to demonstrate or discuss her greatest talent or temperament.

"The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here," President Abraham Lincoln said in dedicating the cemetery at Gettysburg.

These words were written almost 150 years ago, at the height of the U.S. Civil War.

And about the closing words of his second inaugural address, Lincoln said: "It is a truth that I thought needed to be told," as noted by James L. Swanson in *The Wall Street Journal*.

Yet the secret to the emotion Lincoln evoked when he spoke, according to Ronald C. White Jr., author of "The Eloquent President" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400061199/104-3479112-6906330?v=glance), was that he "wrote for the ear, not the eye," using "a variety of . . . stylistic devices, including parallelism, assonance, alliteration, the use of one-syllable words and, perhaps most important, brevity."

With that in mind, read the speech's conclusion: "With malice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."

White offers another insight to speaking with impact. He delivered his words slowly, "at 105 to 110 words a minute instead of the 150 to 160 of normal conversation."

Read an excerpt: (http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=1400061199&view=excerpt).

Communities Dominate Brands -- And Most Everything Else

"Digitally connected communities are emerging as a force to counterbalance the power of the big brands and advertising,"
according to Tomi T Ahonen (http://www.tomiahonen.com) and Alan Moore (http://www.smlxtralarge.com) in their new book, "*Communities Dominate Brands*" (http://www.communities-dominate.blogs.com).

Read an excerpt at (http://www.the3gportal.com/3gpnews/archives/007376.html).

This book is a follow-up to the themes Howard Rheingold covered in his book *Smart Mobs* (http://www.smartmobs.com/book/book_summ.html)

Among the many ways this trend will affect your life are:

A. The organizations that thrive, (bank, biker group, or church) are the ones that are most interactive with and responsive to the people they serve.

B. In what the authors dub the Connected Age, with the emergence of what they call the Generation C* (C for community), well-organized and fervent affinity groups' power is rising while traditional organizations (think big business or government) will dissipate in influence.

C. Reputation and trust will be ever more crucial to success in any aspect of life, especially in attracting the community that will enable you to have more clout and choices in life.

Although the authors are mainly addressing the impact of group power on marketing, this phenomena of Internet-connected, collective clout will be felt in all parts of our lives.

Those organizations that forge SmartPartnerships first (http://sayitbetter.com/grandstore/SP_1.html) to better attract
and serve their mutual market together will move to the leading edge of this community-building.

If you'd like to read more about how we get connected and convinced to stay together and to evolve into a community -- or not -- read these thought-provoking books:

*Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and
Other People's Minds*
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1578517095/ref=pd_sim_b_5/104-3479112-6906330?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance) by Howard Gardner (http://www.howardgardner.com).

*Critical Mass : How One Thing Leads to Another*
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374281254/ref=pd_sim_b_6/104-3479112-6906330?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance) by Philip Ball (http://www.philipball.com).

*The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies,
Societies and Nations*
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385503865/ref=pd_sxp_elt_l1/104-3479112-6906330) by James Surowiecki.

When you're stuck finding just the right word for a speech or article you're writing, a reverse dictionary might come in handy.

Here are two good ones:

http://www.wordtree.com/
http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml.

Looking for a thesaurus, dictionary, or moderately accurate free translator of text? See http://www.dictionary.com.

To improve your vocabulary and communication skills, literally picture how one word is connected to others in the Visual Thesaurus (http://www.visualthesaurus.com).

For a quick course on social software, that is, the ways people are meeting around their mutual interests, read the well-written blogs and related news summaries at Many-2-Many (http://www.corante.com/many)

"We haven't begun to understand how the connected world will shape our lives at a level deeper than commerce and conversation," according to Chris Meyer of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation and co-author of *Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy*.

The Internet has changed our views on time, distance, capacity to collaborate, information gathering, and more, says David Weinberger.

Read an excerpt of his book *Small Pieces Loosely Joined* (http://www.smallpieces.com/content/preface.html). "This is not
a book about the Internet and society; it is about society, marked with the net," wrote Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law Professor and author of *The Future of Ideas* (http://www.the-future-of-ideas.com).

In all that we do, we are linked to each other through nodes or hubs--those people at the center of our networks of family, work colleagues or friends.

These human nodes are increasingly powerful centers of influence, according to physicist Albert-László Barabási, author of *Linked: The New Science of Networks* (http://www.nd.edu/~networks/linked). Yet networks have what he describes as an Achilles' heel.

Knocking out a single major hub can cripple the network, which the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks almost succeeded in doing. In the United States, the airline system, financial markets, and telecommunications networks all suffered grievous blows.

Says Barabási, "A me attitude, where a person or company's immediate self-interest is the only factor, limits network thinking.... Not understanding how the actions of one node affect other nodes easily cripples whole segments of the network." For insights into how we link to each other, or don't, read a free chapter at http://www.nd.edu/~networks/linked/newfile3.htm.

For further insights into how small actions can tip into a trend or other large-scale change in human behavior, read Malcolm Gladwell's *The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.* (http://www.sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=TTB&Category_Code=T2F).

When Google went public, life changed for employees in ways that can help us understand the nature of the systems in which we work and play, according to Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, who've constructed a model with two dimensions of culture--sociability and solidarity--that "give rise to four types of organizational culture: Networked, Communal, Mercenary and Fragmented."

Read the fascinating descriptions of each (http://www.elearningpost.com) in which Goffee and Jones demonstrate that one type is not better than the rest. Each just reflects the conditions under which people relate to each other.

To craft a compelling story, think PHAT.

No, not calories or hip hop.

According to Robert Dickman in his "The Four Elements of Every Successful Story", you need ...
Passion
Hero,
Antagonist
Transformation.

Read more, including "How to Use Story" (http://www.storyatwork.com/how_to_use/how_to_use.html).

1. If you embarrass someone while trying to reach an agreement, you might never have their full attention again.

2. Even and especially when you have the upper hand, do not make a victim of the underdog.

3. Offering something free and valued up-front, unasked, often implants the desire to reciprocate, even beyond the value of the offer.

4. Problems seldom exist at the level at which they are discussed. Until you get some notion of the underlying conflict, you will not be able to find a solution.

5. If you want more from another person, wait to ask for it after they have invested more time, energy, money, reputation, or other resource.

Imagine.

The number one reason people get fired in the U.S. is anger, and the number one problem people say they have at work is they do not feel heard and respected.

How do we make people feel heard when they are difficult to be around -- and still stand up for ourselves?

Here are some more "tools" to add to your "toolbox" for the next time someone is upset and taking it out on you. None will work all the time, and some will work better for your personality style than others.

Here are some suggestions:

Lighten Up.
When others begin to act "hot," we instinctively tend to either
1. escalate (become like them and get loud, more hostile, or other mimicking reactions), or

2. withdraw (poker face, quiet down).
Either approach gets us out of balance. Both are self-protective but self-sabotaging reactions. They are akin to saying "I don't like your behavior -- therefore I am going to give you more power." Instead, slow everything down: your voice level and rate and the amount and frequency of your body motions.

Be aware that you are feeling a hot reaction to the other person. Instead of dwelling on your growing feelings, move to a de-escalating action and leave room for everyone, especially the person in the wrong, to save face and self-correct.

Take the "Three A's" approach:
* Acknowledge that you heard the person, with a pause (buys time for both to cool off), nod, or verbal acknowledgment that does not immediately take sides ("I understand you have a concern" rather than "You shouldn't have . .. ." ) or involve blaming or "bad labeling" language ("Let's discuss what would work best for us both now" rather than "That was a dumb . . .) that pours hot coals on the heat of escalation and hardens the person into their position.

* Ask for more information so you both can cool off more and you can find some common ground based on her or his underlying concerns or needs. Try to "warm up" to the part of the person you can respect -- focus on it mentally and refer to it verbally: "You are so dedicated" or "knowledgeable" or whatever their self-image is that leads them toward rationalizing their behavior.

* Add your own. Say, perhaps, "May I tell you my perspective?" This sets them up to give you permission to state your view.

Presume Innocence
Nobody wants to be told they are wrong. Whenever you have reason to believe
someone is lying or not making sense, you will not build rapport by pointing it out to them. Allow them to save face and keep asking questions until you lose imagination or control. Say, for example, "How does that relate to the . . ." (then state the apparently conflicting information). You might find you were wrong, and thus you "save face." Or, by continued nonthreatening questions, you can "softly corner" the other person into self-correcting, which protects your future relationship.

Look to Their Positive Intent, Especially When They Appear to Have None
Our instincts are to look for the ways we are right and others are . . . less right. In arguing, as the momentum builds, we mentally focus on the smart, thoughtful, and "right" things we are doing, while obsessing about the dumb, thoughtless, and otherwise wrong things the other person is doing. This tendency leads us to take a superior or righteous position, get more rigid, and listen less as the argument continues.

Difficult as you might find it, try staying mindful of your worst side and their best side as you find yourself falling into an escalating argument. You will probably be more generous and patient with them, and increase the chances that they will see areas where you might be right after all.

Dump Their Stuff Back in Their Lap
If someone is verbally dumping on you, do not interrupt, counter, or counterattack in midstream, or you will only prolong and intensify their comments. When they have finished, ask "Is there anything else you want to add?" Then say, "What would make this situation better?" or "How can we improve this situation in a way you believe we can both accept?"

Ask them to propose a solution to the issue they have raised. If they continue to complain or attack, acknowledge you heard them each time and, like a broken record, repeat yourself in increasingly brief language variations: "What will make it better?"

Do not attempt to solve problems others raise, even if they ask for advice -- they might make you wrong. People will spend more time proving their way works best than using a method suggested by someone else, even someone we love or like. It's only human.

Here’s a wake-up call for more laughter in your life.

Watching TV studio audiences smile and look at each other after laughing at the sitcoms she produced, Roseanne and Home Improvement, Sherry Hilber became inspired to seek funding to discover whether laughter is, in fact, good medicine.

Hilber founded RxLaughter, a nonprofit project to fund a five-year study at the University of Southern California (UCLA), led by psychiatrist Margaret Stuber and Margaret Stuber, MD. Their first funding came, not from government, but from the Fox Network, the home of comedy Central.

Twenty years ago, Norman Cousins brought wide attention to the “laughter cure” in his book, Anatomy of an Illness, in which he described his remarkable recovery from a crippling connective tissue disease with a regimen that -- among other therapies -- included laughing at Marx Brothers movies.

Now, at UCLA they are studying the nervous and immune system effects of laughter such as heart rate, blood pressure, and the presence of the stress hormone cortisol in saliva, before and after the funny videos.

Already they have encouraging results from a first test.

Healthy kids were wired up, then asked to do something harmless, but uncomfortable. They were asked to put one of their hands in cold water, at 10 degrees Celsius, and keep it there for as long as they can, up to a maximum of three minutes.

On average, kids are able to hold their arms in the freezing water for
only about 87 seconds. But if they are shown funny videos during the
painful procedure, their heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing - all
their vital signs - get better, stronger, so they're able to put up with
the pain for 125 seconds, a full 40 percent longer.

Afterwards, the researchers sampled their saliva for the stress hormone Cortisol and found that laughing helped their bodies recover from the ordeal much faster.

The president of the American Association for Therapeutic Humor, Steven Sultanoff, PhD, is confident that the overall study will show that laughter helps healing, "Humor and distressing emotion cannot occupy the same psychological space."

Why not bring your favorite comedy videos to your family reunions?

Your brain’s right hemisphere can read emotions on the upper half of people’s faces better than the left can, according to a study by Calin Prodan, Ph.D. at the University of Oklahoma.

Past research suggests that one’s upper face displays inborn emotions, while the lower face exhibits learned emotions. “You can always put a smile on your face, says lead researcher Prodan, but the eyebrows, forehead and eye creases reveal true feelings.

In his study, Prodan presented drawings of faces displaying conflicting emotions on their upper and lower halves so that the images registered in only the left orright visual fields of the study’s participants. Initially, the subjects only recognized emotions on the lower face. ‘We tend to focus on the lower half of the face since eye-to-eye contact is rather aggressive,” he said.

But when subjects focused on the upper half of the face, they were almost twice as many accurate readings of emotions.

After 25 years, a woman who was caught up in the foster care system as a child, grows up, writes an engrossing memoir *Somebody's Someone*, and, through the book's publicity, is finally reunited with the woman she's searched for so long, the woman who was not allowed to adopt her. As adults, they decide to go ahead with the adoption.

Hear their story in their own strong, feminine voices on NPR.

After the first page, I could not put Regina Louise's book down, so I took it with me on stage for my keynote, held it up, and told the audience of bankers that Regina offers a lesson of resilience and transcendence for us all. Upon finishing my talk, I gave the book to the incoming president of the association, who walked on stage to thank me. One month later he wrote me to say that, so far, 23 attendees had contacted him, raving about *Somebody's Someone*, and so will you.

Hear her at (http://www.reginalouise.com/somebodyssomeone.htm>http://www.reginalouise.com/somebodyssomeone.htm.)

Take a work break and visit BuzzWhack for lighthearted commentary on the confusing, misleading or even arrogant use of jargon or buzz words (http://buzzwhack.com/).

Remember the last time you felt betrayed?

Recall that hot flush of recognition when someone you trusted to act one way, then didn't?

Over the holidays, which were filled with several gatherings with people I love and know well, two people broke trust. In the midst of convivial times came two sharp jabs. One person agreed to do something I really needed, didn't do it, and did not tell me. The other shared very private information about me with a stranger.

It's a one-two punch.

"Trust is the glue that holds relationships together."
- Price Pritchett

What to do? How not to become bitter or wary? Funny how one betrayal is closely followed by another wrenching experience -- or so it seems. Even if one's life is on a fairly even keel, one trust-breaker situation makes the second one seem to hit harder ... if we let it.

"Sometimes you cannot believe what you see; you have
to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to
have other people trust you, you must feel that you can
trust them, too -- even when you're in the dark. Even
when you are falling."
- Morrie Schwartz, quoted in *Tuesdays With Morrie*
by Mitch Albom

My head became filled with re-runs of the situation, digging a deeper rut in my memory so the jabs often dominated my thoughts more than the joys of the celebratory gatherings with loved ones.

"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Despite our intentions, we start looking at our moment-by-moment interactions through a more cautious, constricted-heart lens. Of course, that begets a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"No idea will work if people don't trust your intentions
toward them."
- Marcus Buckingham, *Now, Discover Your Strengths*
(http://sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=ND&Category_Code=T2F)

We have all faced these mind-grabbing breaks of trust, and will again. Conversely, we have all betrayed another's trust and dodged rather than rectified the situation.

"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live
in torment if you don't trust enough."
- Frank H. Crane

Well, it must have been time to re-learn a lesson. For more than a decade, I've studied, taught, and written about focusing attention on the positive parts of every interaction.

Yet, like breathing, it isn't a one-time practice.

When I felt betrayed, my first instinct was to make that person wrong and steep myself in my righteous upset. It takes a discipline I'd let lapse: the practice of understanding that every negative action comes from the root feeling of fear.

That does not mean we have to stand in the street and let the same car hit us again. We must not spiral down with them by reacting against them, even with an apparently "good" corrective comment.

"When people are overwhelmed with information and
develop immunity to traditional forms of communication,
they turn instead for advice and information to the people
in their lives whom they respect, admire, and trust."
- Malcolm Gladwell, *The Tipping Point: How Little Things
Can Make a Big Difference*
(http://sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=TTB&Category_Code=T2F)

Instead, in the moment of betrayal, try four steps back to balance:

1. Recognize the full emotional effect of the betrayal.

2. Look to that person's positive intent, especially when he appears to have none.

3. Praise the behavior you want to flourish. Ironically, it is one of your most self-protective tools in such moments.

4. Focus away from your reaction and toward what you can do to avoid that trust-breaking pattern again, with that person and in your life with others.

The sooner you serve yourself by using your hot reactive energyproductively to ...

* choose what you can do positively for yourself
* rather than against another

... the more quickly you'll climb out of that negative "re-runs" rut of thoughts and back to an even keel.

That's what I reminded myself, belatedly. But it is never too late to re-learn lessons.

"Character is what you really are. Reputation is what
people say you are. A person of character is trustworthy.
The other kind of person looks for an easy way out."
- John Wooden, author of *Wooden*

*It's All About Trust*
That's the name of the book for which former Johnson & Johnson CEO Jim Burke signed a deal to write just last week, with *Harper Business*. In his proposal, the usually understated executive was blunt: "Look at today's crisis in confidence with the current crop of business leaders. Trust is the missing element today and the most singular element that defined our generation of corporate leadership." Look for the book in 2005.

Here’s an excerpt from his commentary on November, 2001:

I've learned . . .
That when you're in love, it shows.

That just one person saying to me, "You've made my day!" makes my day.

That being kind is more important than being right.

That you should never say no to a gift from a child.

That no matter how serious your life requires you to be, everyone needs
a friend to act goofy with.

That sometimes all a person needs is a hand to hold and a heart to
understand.

That we should be glad God doesn't give us everything we ask for.

That under everyone's hard shell is someone who wants to be appreciated
and loved.

That the Lord didn't do it all in one day. What makes me think I can?

That everyone you meet deserves to be greeted with a smile.

That when you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.

That one should keep his words both soft and tender, because tomorrow
he may have to eat them.

That I can't choose how I feel, but I can choose what I do about it.

That love, not time, heals all wounds.

That life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.


I’ve Finally Learned
Jith Sreedharan, from the United Arab Emirates emailed these insights onto me from an unknown source:

I've finally learned . . .

• that I cannot make someone love me. All I can do is be someone who can be loved.

• that no matter how much I care, some people will not care back.

• that it can take years to build up trust,and only seconds to destroy it.

• that it's not what I have in my life but who I have in my life that counts.

• that it's taking me a long time to become the person I want to be.

• that money is a lousy way of keeping score, and that there are fewer reasons to keep score than I thought in my youth.

• that my best friend and I can do anything or nothing and have a happy time.

• that sometimes the people I expect might kick me when I’m down
will actually be the ones to help me get back up.

• that just because two people argue, it doesn't mean they don't love each other. And just because they don't argue, it doesn't mean they do.

• that two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different.

• that it's hard to determine where to draw the line between being nice and not hurting people's feelings and standing up for what I believe.

• that even when I think I have no more to give, when a friend cries out to me, I will find the strength to help.

• that I should always leave a loved one with loving words. It may be the last
time I see that person.

Here are four phenomena by which people are motivated to change their beliefs and behavior. Understanding them enables you to encourage others to see it your way.

Elliot Aronson, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Oregon and Richard E. Petty, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, provided the research and related ideas for this section and reviewed my description for accuracy.

1. Remember the Numbers or Images?
The Reader's Digest is full of dramatic personal stories that follow certain formulas to evoke an emotional response in readers.

One story might follow this structure:

Marie Beckinger (not her real name), a thirty-two year old mother of two, was driving home from grocery shopping when a dented pickup truck streaked through a red light.

The truck was driven by a would-be bank robber, trying to escape the police.

He struck the passengers’ side of Mary's car where her infant was buckled into his red car seat in front and her toddler was belted to his car seat in back.

The side and front car safety airbags car inflated within 20 milliseconds, lifting and displaying her children like jewels on display in cushioned boxes.

You would learn about the effectiveness of car airbags through comparative charts and factual summaries if you opened another magazine, say, Consumer Reports.

Which approach is more deeply felt and memorable? Stories and examples are more persuasive than statistics. They are usually easier to comprehend and require less effort to consider. People will have an emotional response to examples and consider them longer than they will statistics, which they simply try to remember. They react more fully to examples, as they recollect their own similar personal experiences.

But for information to be memorable and credible, start with the story and continue with the statistics, like a one-two set-up to appeal to their heart, mind and memory.


2. What’s the Pay-off or Penality?
Consequences influence behavior. People are more likely to do things when they like what will follow. Thus people are reinforced to repeat certain ways of acting, reduce other ways and stop still others. When you wish someone to act differently, how are you supporting or preventing that desired change? Consider the three Rules of Consequences and Reinforcements:

1. Consequences which give rewards increase a behavior.
2. Consequences which give punishments decrease a behavior.
3. Consequences which give neither rewards nor punishments extinguish a behavior.

If you want to increase a behavior (make it more frequent, more intense and/or more likely), then provide a consequence of reward.

If you want to decrease a behavior (make it less frequent, less intense and/or less likely), then provide a Consequence of Punishment.

If you want a behavior to disappear, then provide no Consequence (ignore the behavior).

3. Shoot to Save
How do you get people to feel more supportive of your idea, cause or product?

You “innoculate” them.

For example, most American youth get shots to innoculate them against deseases such as polio and diphtheria. The shot actually gives one a weak dose of the virus that activates the body's immune system. As one’s immune system fights off this weak attack it becomes stronger so it can withstand a larger assault of the desease.

If, however, the shot contains too strong a dose, it would overwhelm the immune system, causing a strongly adverse reaction or even death.

Deepening beliefs happens in a similar way. If you want to strengthen someone’s existing attitude or behavior, then create a situation where that person experiences a “weak” attack on that belief.

Here’s how:

1. Warn a person or people of an impending “attack”.
2. Make a weak attack or watch an attack happen.
3. Inspire the person(s) to actively defend the attitude.

1. Warn of the Attack.
When people are threatened in this way they immediately begin to generate possible defenses against the coming attack. In fact, people will consider multiple actions, many that may never be useful or necessary during the coming attack.

This is akin to a group of soldiers who have some time to prepare for an enemy’s approach. They may not know exactly what the enemy will do, so the soldiers get every weapon and construct every barrier they can. Maybe they won't use everything, but they want it available, if needed. Thus they become more mentally and physically prepared and motivated to defend.

2. Make a weak attack or watch an attack happen
An attack is, in fact, a form of “persuasion,” an attempt to change the thoughts, feelings, or actions of others.

Advertisers "attack" our existing attitudes when they try to get us to prefer their product over a competitor. The attack must be strong enough to force the receivers to defend. It must not be so strong as to overcome the defense.

3. Inspire the person(s) to actively defend the attitude.
The more actively someone defends an “attack” or opinion, the more intensely that person will believe in and act on that view. An active defense occurs when the receiver does more than merely think, but rather acts.

Example: Political campaign strategists often try to influence votes through “innoculation.” The Republican party might mail flyers to registered Republicans voters warning them that the Democrats are likely to attack Republican candidate on certain hot issues. The flyers provide a weak version of the attacks that they predict will come. Thus, when the real Democratic attack ads hit, the Republicans are “innoculated” again the arguments, and more likely to fight them off.

4. That Seems Reasonable
A stranger approaches you at the shopping mall one day and politely asks if you would spend just one or two minutes hearing about how you can help fellow Americans remain more safe in these times of greater risk to bio-terrorism. You say you have only a few minutes.

The stranger briefly describes the importance of the local blood bank. You nod your head in polite agreement, but you know there's a gimmick coming. Then the stranger asks, "Would you be willing to be a blood bank volunteer? You'd have to give ten hours a week for the next year and solicit blood donations from the people of our community by contacting them over the phone or face-to-face.”

You politely tell the stranger, "No."

The stranger looks a little disappointed and follows up: "Well, if you can't give your time, could you at least give a unit of blood right now? We have a station set up right down this hall in the mall."

People do this Two Step dance in two different ways. The first way, as illustrated by the blood bank story, is called the “door-in-the-face” (DITF) and the second is the foot-in-the-door (FITD). With DITF, a would-be influencer’s first request is aimed solely at getting the receiver to say no very quickly. The influencer’s second, much less extreme request is then much more likely to be accepted.

In the other foot-in-the-door tactic, the influencer starts with a small request that almost no one would refuse. After getting a "Yes!" response to this little request, the influencer makes a bigger request.

Because the listener has already “invested” in the idea, they are often more likely to increase that investment, and agree to the second request.

Example, you are first asked to sign a petition, then asked for a donation of time or money.

Create your own word and definition.
Each year the Washington Post asks readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter and suggest a new definition.

Here are the 2005 winners to their “Style Invitational”:

Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (this one got extra credit)

Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

Glibido: All talk and no action.

Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

I was an avid customer of a restaurant and two stores (I’ll leave
unnamed) in my small town of Sausalito.

Brought friends.

Enjoyed what I bought.

Told others.

Gradually that warm feeling has faded away. One reason is that, unlike Suzy's Hallmark in Sugar Land, Texas, they did nothing special for their biggest customers. Read J.C. Patrick’s story on December 1st in Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba’s excellent blog, http://www.churchofthecustomer.com Church of the Customer.

To my continuing surprise, very few business owners recognize the value of rewarding their most lucrative customers. Better yet, Suzie could have reduced the cost of providing her reward - and been introduced to other big spending, prospective customers by businesses they already know and like.

Here’s how. Throughout the year, she could have asked her customers, “What are two or three of your other favorite nearby businesses?”

Then she could approach the owner of one of the businesses most frequently-mentioned to suggest they create comparably-valued gift packages for each other’s top customers.

Suzy could give her “Top Ten Percent” (biggest spenders) a special “thank you” gift card that they can take to her partnering business to receive their gift bag of free goodies. That business reciprocates, sending the cream of their customer crop to Suzy’s shop to pick up their gift bag of her products and get introduced to her business.

Now that’s smart partnering (http://sayitbetter.com/grandstore/SP_1.html).

Over time Suzy and her partner might recruit two or three other businesses so they can offer more gifts to their biggest customers (provided by partners), promote that benefit to encourage more spending – and reduce their cost of acquiring and keep customers while increasing their profits.

In the 1960’s when cigarette smoking was still prevalent in the U.S. a priest offended his superior when he meekly asked, “May I smoke while praying? He probably would have received a more positive response if he’d made a small change in his request, asking instead, May I pray while I am smoking?”

Such is the power of context. As you start your new year, set a powerfully positive context. How will you choose to look at your glass of 2006? Half full or half empty?

Virginia Satir once said: "We connect through our similarities. We grow through our differences.” If we weren't so similar, we wouldn't be able to talk to each other. If we weren't so different, we wouldn't have anything to talk about.

To get a clearer picture of your beliefs, take the Implicit Association Test.
(http://www.yale.edu/implicit)

It measures unconscious bias.

Researchers Dr. Anthony Greenwald of the University of Washington and Dr. Mahzarin Banaji of Yale developed it.

Want a more positive, resilient way of looking at the world? Here’s some great follow-up by reading (each book is the best of its kind in its category) …

Emotions Revealed
(http://sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=ER&Category_Code=T2F ) ,

Influence
(http://sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=IS&Category_Code=T2F)

Learned Optimism
(http://sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=LO&Category_Code=T2F)

Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception
(http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-0684831074-6).

Here’s a timely excerpt form Vital Lies, “Self-deception operates both at the level of the individual mind, and in the collective awareness of the group. To belong to a group of any sort, the tacit price of membership is to agree not to notice one's felling of uneasiness and misgivings, and certainly not to question anything that challenges the group's way of doing things.

The price for the group in this arrangement is that dissent, even healthy dissent, is stifled. [There is a] lesson for those who want to break through the cocoons of silence that keep vital truths for the collective awareness. It is the courage to seek the truth and to speak it that can save us from the narcotic of self-deception. And each of us has access to some bit of truth that needs to be spoken.

It is a paradox of our time that those with power are too comfortable to notice the pain of those who suffer, and those who suffer have no power.

Read more (http://www.centerchange.org/store/review.asp?id=70)

You can search for song lyrics at several sites including Any Song Lyrics (http://www.anysonglyrics.com) and Music Song Lyrics (http://www.musicsonglyrics.com), and Lyred (http://www.lyred.com).

My favorite musical instrument is the saxaphone (so sexy!) so it was fun to hear one online (http://zenkicker.com/audio/track_results.jsp?keywords=saxaphone)

You can find your favorite sounds and sights (ring tones, audio, video, video games and more) with the help of the media search engine, GoFish (http://www.gofish.com) which claims to search 12 million media files.

“You can resist an invading army, but you cannot resist an idea whose time has come,” wrote Victor Hugo.

“If you're looking for low-cost tactics to get your current Web site visitors to recommend you to all of their friends, offer free e-Cards, newsletters and petitions,” (http://library.marketingsherpa.com/search.cfm?keyword=free+eCards&gogo=1) suggests MarketingSherpa’s Anne Holland

She notes that managers of many Web sites have tracked significant referral success to using them, including Oil of Olay and Singapore Airlines. See a two-pronged approach to attracting more site visitors through current visitors’ involvement: e-Cards and petitions.

Care2.com offers no-cost e-Cards (http://www.care2.com/send/categories) for visitors to send to like-minded friends and offer the opportunity to create, discuss or sign petitions at their sister site (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/?ltl=1104027919)

For mature Americans who want to remain in their homes and "age in place" the Home Depot and AARP forged an alliance to provide the products and information to support that choice.

For example, company also plans to sell future home improvement products that will eventually carry an AARP Seal of Approval, and will pilot an in-store information resource center in 2005 for age 50-plus adults seeking ways to live independently in their homes.

Together these partners generated more visibility in their market and can provide more value for their mutual market of consumers than they could have ever created with solo pr or marketing efforts.

Tip: If you own a business or manage part of a company or an association, you, too, can stand out from your competition by forging an alliance with other organizations that serve the same kind of people.

Discover exactly how by reading *SmartPartnering: How to Attract and Delight More Consumers While Spending Less* (http://sayitbetter.com/grandstore/SP_1.html)

You’ll discover ten proven ways to partner, how to identify and recruit the most valuable allies, pitfalls to avoid, the complete steps to a successful alliance and hundreds of success stories - all for just $20, and you can download your copy right now.

"The idea that we're all connected in the collective unconscious is an extremely important part of what makes entertainment successful," said Chris Albrecht, head of HBO and perhaps one of the most original minds in television today, when he was interviewed for an article in Fast Company.

This notion also helps us recognize that each person’s actions have unintended consequences on others, influencing their world view and actions.

Adds Albrecht, "You can't translate that interconnectedness literally, but you can be aware of the ideas behind it: that the psyche has a structure, that the unconscious is a very powerful force, that we're all on a journey, striving for individuation and wholeness. If you understand that, you have a better grip on what's relevant, resonant, and rich about human experience."

Consequently, in choosing new TV programs, ‘The only thing we have to go on is our own sensibility -- the gut.’

That sensibility boils down to one principle, says Albrecht: ‘Ultimately, is it about something something that is deeply relevant to the human experience?

Sopranos isn't about a Mob boss on Prozac.

It's about a man searching for the meaning of his life.

Six Feet Under isn't about a family of undertakers so much as it's about a group of people who have to deal with their feelings about death in order to get on with their own lives.

The next question is, Is it the very best realization of that idea? Is it true to itself?’"

Suggestion: Albrecht’s approach to choosing memorable TV programming can also be used to help us make meaningful choices in how we live our lives.

Change your role in your life story and you will change your life.

What words or actions can you craft to become the more fully developed character you want to become in the more satisfying story line for the next chapters of the adventure story you want to live for the rest of your life?

Get some ideas by reading my article, *Be an Author of Your Life Story*
(http://www.sayitbetter.com/articles/con_author_life_story.html).

Want to improve your ability to recognize the emotion behind facial expressions? Take a brief quiz (http://www.cio.com/archive/120104/faces.html) based on "The Micro Expression Training Tool" developed by Paul Ekman, PH.D., and author of *Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage* (http://sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=TLB&Category_Code=T2F.)

Captions under each photo in the book describe the muscle movements in the face that distinguish a sincere smile from an insincere smile, and that signal sadness, anger, surprise, fear, contempt or disgust.

By studying these photos and captions, you'll learn which facial movements are the clearest indicators of a particular emotion.

Ekman advises individuals to look in a mirror and remember a personal experience that made them angry, sad, fearful or disgusted so that they can see how their expression changes as the emotion washes over them. This exercise will help you recognize muscle movements that are the clearest indicators of a particular emotion.

If you’d like to learn more about body signals read…

• My article, *What Are You Telling the World?*
(http://www.sayitbetter.com/articles/sib_telling_the_world.html),

• My article *Your Likeability Quotient: A Gut Instincts Quiz*
(http://www.sayitbetter.com/articles/sib_likeability_quo.html)

• My book *LikeABILITY: How to Come Through Conflict to Create a Happier,
Higher-Performing Life for Yourself – With Others! *
(http://www.sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?)

It is Winter here in Northern America. At this, the darkest time of the year, we seek out the bright spots, yet we might also use this season for self-discovery by facing the darkness, straight on. So says Jim Burklo (http://www.openchristianity.com):

“So often we reject or deny the usefulness of our shadow side. We’d rather not even acknowledge our anger, pain, frustration and disappointment. We don’t want to identify with our bad attitudes and potentially destructive inner tendencies. Yet it is the shadow side that can guide us when we are lost. The dark side of our lives can show us the way to go, show us the change of course that will take us in a better direction.

If I can step back and lovingly observe my anger, I can let it direct me to its source, and resolve it. If I can step back and lovingly observe my pain, if I can calm down enough to let it inform me of its causes and the needs to which it can direct me, there is some chance I can find my way to relief. Pain is a perfect compass, if I can take the time to watch where its needle aims.”

Similarly, “The sense of being lost is valuable, says Lolma Olson, president of Sage Consulting (http://www.sageteam.com). "You learn something about yourself that you couldn't have learned otherwise. When you finally find your sense of direction, you're a different person, a better person."

"Unexpected solutions and creative ideas come out of a murky state where purpose and focus are temporarily suspended," observes William Bridges in his book, In The Way of Transition (http://www.wmbridges.com/resources/books.html) He calls this state the neutral zone, or the wilderness.

A divorced, destitute black woman in Nairobi started planting trees in her backyard in 1977, as a small, personal step towards "making Kenya green again" and kept on going. Since then she’s inspired impoverished villagers to plant 30 million trees across Africa, founding the Green Belt Movement (http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/biographies.htm)

Gathering momentum with others, she stopped construction of a highrise in a major park, was knocked unconscious by police and, this month, became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace prize (http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/2004).

Learn how planting trees promotes world peace, and gives women more freedom and safety. (http://www.lanternbooks.com/detail.htmlid=159056040X&OVRAW=Learning%20Nairobi%20%22Wangari%20Maathai%22&OVKEY=wangari%20maathai&OVMTC=advanced)

Think you have too little time or money to make a difference? (I am reminding myself as much as you.) Let’s keep Wangari Maathai’s story on the top of our minds as we make choices in putting “first things first.

“I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me. All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet. It must be this voice that is telling me to do something, and I am sure it's the same voice that is speaking to everybody on this planet who is concerned about the fate of the world.”
- Wangari Maathai

“The behavior that is rewarded is the behavior that is repeated,”
- Dr. Michael LeBoeuf, behavioral psychologist.

Take The Maniac Pledge
The CEO of WD-40 CEO Garry Ridge used these rules to boost profits and camaraderie.

• I am responsible for taking action, asking questions, getting answers, and making decisions.

• I won’t wait for someone to tell me.

• If I need to know, I am responsible for asking.

• I have no right to be offended that I didn’t get this sooner.

• If I am doing something others should know about, I am responsible for telling them.

See the rest of the story (http://www.darden.edu/batten/clc/Articles/MagnificentManiacs.pdf)


Stay on the High Road

The Rotary Club’s timeless “4-Way Test” for ethical living is unavoidably simple. Try it.
(http://www.rotary.org/newsroom/downloadcenter/pdfs/502en.pdf)

It asks four questions:

Of the things we think, say or do:
1. Is it the TRUTH?
2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

*Your biology is your biography,* says medical intuitive and author Carolyn Myss (http://www.myss.com/).

To get a vivid glimpse of the potent effect of your feelings look at Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto’s (http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/eprofile.html ) stunning photographs of water that had been *treated* with words.

On some vials, he would place words like *love* and *peace.*

On others, he would put phrases like, *I want to kill you.* Then he would freeze the water.

As it emerged from its frozen state, he took photographs of the crystals.

On the vials where the words were life-affirming, the crystals were lovely and perfect. On the ones where the words were harsh, the crystals were either partially formed or in chaos (http://www.soundtherapy.co.uk/research/water.php ).
Learn more in his book *Messages from Water,* (http://www.cymaticsource.com/water.html).

Emoto asks, “If our bodies are more than 90% water, what happens when we say (or think, since these words were not spoken) harsh things to or about ourselves or others?”

Telling your story and listening to others' stories is often how we heal and draw closer to each other, as Rachel Remen demonstrates in her exquisite book, Kitchen Table Wisdom (http://sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=KT&Category_Code=T2F ), a wonderful gift, especially for finding the meaning and contentment in life, through times of illness or heartache.

Perhaps the greatest present you can give is deep listening, so your friends feel understood and appreciated.

She’s one of my all time heroes. She’s perhaps most well-known as the national security adviser on the TV show "The West Wing”, Anna Deavere.

Smith is also the creator and performer of "Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992," (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/stageonscreen/twilight/index.html ) involving a collage of voices from the riots that exploded following the verdict exonerating police officers who beat Rodney King. Smith interviewed nearly 200 people, looking for a way to represent the event on stage.

She asked a linguist for ways to listen for the story to tell. "I'm looking for the poem that a person has," she says, "so when I'm conducting an interview, I'm waiting for the rest of their language to move out of the way, for this poem to come forward."

The linguist gave Smith three questions:

1. Have you ever come close to death?

2. Have you ever been accused of something you did not do?

3. Do you remember the circumstances of your birth?” She says the exercise "taught her how to listen."

Learn more about the nuances of verbal communication in her book Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines*
(http://www.ebookmall.com/alpha-titles/Talk-to-Me-Smith-Random-cr.htm)

On Regis Philbin’s TV show, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” a contestant can call his smartest friend or ask the audience for help with the answer. Contestants are more apt to get the right answer when they ask the audience.

The insight? Calling on the collective intelligence can get you smarter support.

Cultural critic and cofounder of the ezine Feed, Steve Johnson came to the same conclusion in his book Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software (Scribner, 2001).

He found that intelligence resides at the street level, whether you are observing harvester ants - capable of great coordination or quick improvisational response to attack, despite their limited cognitive skills - or workers in the primitive factories of 19th-century England. Johnson found that groups could achieve extraordinary feats through decentralized thinking or what is often called emergent behavior.

More bluntly, that means that even simple agents following simple rules can create sophisticated structures. In the Digital Age, this is a powerful concept because of the Web’s capacity for facilitating far-reaching group intelligence.

As massive proof of this theory consider the most popular e-commerce site, E-Bay. The E-Bay community rewards people who play by the rules, and banishes those who do not. In fact, the collective intelligence of the E-Bay users has raised the level of their collective game over time, to the benefit of all players. Some participants have build an entire business for themselves that could not have existed before the emergent intelligence of the E-Bay model.

This finding is especially important in our post-7/11 world, when we want to live a life that matters. More that self-styled solo star performers, we seek out those who want to create opportunity and community together. We want to find healthier ways to communicate to connect.

Pods are another way for people to feel more connected and capable, even in a larger group, and to reap the benefits of their collective intelligence. Transform a larger organization such as a company, college student body, synagogue, association or civic club into 8 to 10 person pods of diverse people with specific goals and Rules of Conduct.

Like the ants, we can accomplish more together, when we feel known and appreciated. We are more nimble in changing direction when we’ve established one in the first place. People in pods tend to feel a deeper affinity with each other and for their common purpose.

Further they are more likely to demonstrate more confident, higher-performing behavior. The University of California campus at Santa Cruz, was created around pods of students who are then part of colleges within the larger campus. Compared to the other UC campuses their students have fewer reported health problems and accidents, and a higher sense of well-being.

In the early 1990s, George Colony began organizing his company into pods of 8 or 10 people from different disciplines. Colony is chairman and CEO of Forrester Research, Inc., one of the largest Internet research firms. Says Colony, “The pods are a way to mitigate the alienation of size as our company grows. It’s like being in a squad of people in the military. You get so that you are willing to die for the guy next to you.”

In his book The Tipping Point, author Malcomb Gladwell writes that the human brain is wired to have no more than 150 relationships. The deeper the affinity and rewards people feel in those relationships, the more optimistic they feel about their participation.

The more optimistic one feels, the better one performs.

Thus the group creates a reinforcing upward spiral of smarter mutal support. That’s probably why people are more likely to excel, not in solo tasks, but when they are part of a small group with a specific goal and deadline, be it a school play, cause fundraiser or new product launch.

In times of turmoil and greater uncertainty, when people are more likely to seek affinity, we have grand opportunities to test these ideas. We desire camraderie more than competition. We want to make a difference with others

Find or form a pod around your greatest passion and see emergent intelligence in action.

Want to learn more? Here’s further reading:

~ Living a Life That Matters: Resolving the Conflict Between Conscience and Success by Harold S. Kushner (Knopf, 2001)

Kushner writes of the two worlds in which many of us live, that of commerce where competition prevails and there are more losers than winners, and the world of faith where compassion is paramount and you win through sacrifice and assistance. In that world, there are more winners than losers. He offers a path of faith for living in both worlds.

~ What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America by Tony Schwartz
(Bantam Books, 1966)

~ The Psychology of Attitude Change and Social Influence by Philip Zimbardo, Michael Leippe, (McGraw-Hill Higher Education,1991). Zimbardo is the current president of the American Psychological Association who warned in a San Francisco Chronicle guest editorial this week that the continuous high volume coverage of terrorism may be playing in to the hands of ther terrorists, “

Emotion-arousing communications create anxiety, learned helplessness, and an inability to function effectively in everyday activities - unless the target population is also given specific, concrete channels of action that can be performed to cope with the implied threat.”

His book offers ways to “maintain your resiliency, personal courage and self efficacy.” I think it can also help you remain more conscious about your choices in these stressful times.

~ Irrational Exuberance by the Yale economist Robert J. Shiller (Broadway Books, 2001). Shiller offers the dotcom bubble and the April 4, 2001 market drop as examples that our economic decisions are not, as often presumed, rational but deeply emotional. It’s all about the context. The group feeling about a situation - pessimistic or optimistic- not a change or lack of change in the situation determines the group;s buy or sell behavior. You can apply Shiller’s insights to most any decisionmaking situation in your life.

~ Spin This!: All the Ways We Don’t Tell the Truth by Bill Press (Pocket Books, 2001).
Before he went to work as co-host of CNN’s Cross-Fire, Bill Press lived here on the coast of Marin County, just above the Golden Gate Bridge, and worked for a California state Senator Peter Behr, for whom I later worked. In November Press came out with an engrossing book, for which he was interviewed for my local newspaper, The Pacific Sun: “Spin isn’t flat-out lying because it contains an element of truth, no matter how tiny. Spin is more like a white lie or plain old BS.”

Bill traces spin from the Illiad through the Old Testament and up to the personal ads in The Washington Post. “There’s even a master spinner on TV who claims his program is a ‘spin-free zone.’ Now that’s past spinning. Its just plain lying.” This humorous book skewers all sides.

One chapter offers his spin “translations”. Example: Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill on nuclear power: "If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear power is really very good." (translation: "If you set aside the mountains, Switzerland is really like New Jersey").

~ Conversation by Theodore Zeldin (Hidden Spring Books, 2000). Zeldin is an Oxford University historian, philosopher and revered BBC radio personality. Here’s an excerpt, with permission from his essay, “United Kingdom Questions”:

“How shall I know that, just as this bridge was built by people who wished to stop ancient enemies hating and fighting each other, you find it rewarding to be a bridge yourself, between individuals who fail to recognise what they have in common, and what they could do better together than alone?

How shall I know that you do not judge people by their religion, or even by their beliefs, and that you are much more impressed by how they put their beliefs into practice, whether with dogmatism, or humility, or compassion?

How shall I know that you applaud people not for their victories over others, but for the thought they have given to their failures, for the courage with which they handle their disappointments, for their ability to continue to laugh and hope?”

Read the complete essay at
(http://culture.coe.fr/clt/europabridge/en/enzeldin.htm)

` The Deeper Wound: Preserving Your Soul in the Face of Fear and Tragedy is a book coming out this month by Deepak Chopra (Harmony/Three Rivers Press, 2001) which will include his essay which appeared as a full-page advertisement in the New York Times soon after September 11th (he wrote the book in 10 days). I am sure his book will provide food for thought and lively discussion in your pod.

Like eating popcorn, the habit of reading chiasmus is impossible to resist, as Dr. Mardy Grothe (http://www.chiasmus.com) has demonstrated to several of us devoted subscribers to his free newsletter.

Here’s some recent favorites, culled by Mardy.

"The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him."
- Voltaire


One afternoon, John F. Kennedy and his crusty father Joseph were proudly watching First Daughter Caroline at play.

As they sat, no words passed between the two men for quite some time. Finally, the elder Kennedy observed thoughtfully, "Caroline's very bright, Jack."

Then, after a pause, he added, "Smarter than you were at that age."

JFK adopted a similar demeanor and said, "Yes, she is."

Then, after a pause of his own, he added: "But look who she has for a father."


On May 6, 1862, Henry David Thoreau died at age 45 in his family home inConcord, Massachusetts. Thoreau was a deeply spiritual person who read the Bible and the sacred writings of other religious traditions, but herejected the trappings of organized religion.

As he lay dying of tuberculosis, friends and family gathered around him. When Thoreau's aunt, a strict Calvinist, asked, "Henry, have you made your piece with God?" he replied: "I was not aware we had ever quarreled."

When speaking in Istanbul, I learned that Kare means square in Turkish. Kare-kare is a favorite national stew I was told in Manila, yet there are many other meanings to my name I discovered later after diving into Webster's extraordinary Rosetta edition http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org

When you language lovers are not able to getaway to another physical world, yet crave a mental vacation, take your own path on this magic site and explore, not simply a name or word’s origin and definition but also find related, images, crosswords, rhyming words, quotations, expressions, commercial and literary usage, anagrams, even Internet keyword frequencies, translations and meanings in multiple languages...with 400 more languages promised before the end of the year.

See more of my Favorite Links for resources to communicating to connect at http://www.sayitbetter.com/fav_links.html
and articles at http://www.sayitbetter.com/articles.html

• ''I had a doorbell moment this week.'' Patricia said to Tracy. Both have sons serving in the same Marine unit in Iraq. She is describing the fear that grabs her the moment her doorbell rings unexpectedly, thinking that the officer on the other side has come to tell her that her son is dead. Tracy understands.

Hint One: Through shared experience, expressed aloud, we adopt “shorthand” expressions and feel understood, closer and often even comforted.

• When Tracy’s son, Derrick was deployed, she knew that those who would most understand her feelings were other mothers in the same situation so she started a support group and web marineparents.com

Read more in Cynthia Gorney’s moving article in The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/magazine/29MOTHERS.html?th&emc=thst.

Wrote Gorney, “Draped over a banister in Tracy's house was an unwashed T-shirt Derrick had dropped during his last visit home. I thought Tracy was apologizing for her housekeeping, which I had already seen was much better than mine, but she cleared her throat and said that what I needed to understand was that she hadn't washed the T-shirt because if the Marine Corps has to send you your deceased child's personal effects, it launders the clothing first. ‘That means there's no smell,’' Tracy said.”

Hint Two: Smell is the most directly emotional sense. Nothing else comes close. Use smell as memory anchors of your shared experience

• “Tracy's closest friends in the world right now are other parents whose sons and daughters have served in Iraq or are serving there now.

Hint Three: Your strongest emotions right now can lead to your closest sources of support.

• “Tracy knows that the grandfather clock in Patricia's house chimes nine times when the other clocks say it's noon because the grandfather clock is set to Baghdad time.

Tracy knows that Patricia has figured out how to tell if someone is in her driveway by squinting at the reflection off a certain glass-covered picture in the dining room, so that if it should ever be two men in uniform, Patricia will know they have arrived before they start ringing the bell and before she is obliged to look directly at them and hear what they have come to say.”

Hint Four: The specific detail paints the picture that people will see in their mind’s eye and \shapes how they will feel and remember what you say.

Become a more compelling, trusted and frequently-quoted expert, using the behavioral insights and techniques in my e-book, LikeABILITY: How to Come Through Conflict to Create a Happier, Higher-Performing Life for Yourself – With Others!® http://sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=LE&Category_Code=KP

• Each time anyone, not just your loved ones, is talking with you, remember the line in the movie “Shall We Dance?”, where Susan Sarandon’s character says, “We all want a partner to witness our lives, so that our lives will matter to someone.”

• Look for Dr. Mardy Grothe’s http://www.DrMardyGrothe.com latest book: Viva la Repartee: Clever Comebacks & Witty Retorts from History's Great Wits & Wordsmiths.

• “Peace is the result of the small stitchery of everyday actions, most of them unconnected to any of the others. Each carried out in a long train of other actions and not noticeable particularly, even to the actor. Peace, like health, is the condition we find un-remarkable. Peace, like health, is commented on only in its absence. It is what all organisms aspire to – unstressed play, growth and rest. And yet we long for it. The daily living in the world, from hurrying to a job to fretting over a tardy child, from fearing to fly to fearing the bomb down the street, generates a great longing. And yet, what we long for is small, is unremarked upon when we have it, is unnoticed even; is peace.”

- Will Kirkland, The Ruth Group http://www.cpesf.com/ruthgroup

It’s a sweltering summer evening in Coleman, Texas, some 53 miles from Abilene. A couple sits with the wife’s parents out on the porch of their home, moving little.

They are companionably sipping lemonade, and playing a slow game of dominoes. The conversation is sporadic and comfortable, seeming to float slowly over the single fan that struggles to mitigate the104 temperature.

Now, let me tell you. This is a fictional parable, set in 1974, created by a professor.

Yet what happens next, in this little story has inspired countless articles, scientific papers and discussions and continues to capture the interest of people today.

It’s brought up in boardrooms, classrooms, team training, marital counseling and even firefighting http://www.deervalleypress.com/abeline.cfm – and it may help you enjoy the rest of your summer, with your family and friends.

Here’s what happened.

The wife’s father suggests they drive over to Abilene to eat at a cafeteria they have been to before. The wife says, "Sounds like a great idea." Although he has reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinking that his preferences must be out-of-step with the group the husband responds, "Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go." The mother-in-law then says, "Of course I want to go. I haven't been to Abilene in a long time."

The drive is hot, dusty, and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is as bad. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted.

Not meanng it, but to be polite, the wife announces, "It was a great trip, wasn't it?"

After a short pause, the mother-in-law answers that, actually, she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic.

The husband responds, "I wasn't delighted to be doing what we were doing. I only went to satisfy the rest of you."

The wife then says, "I just went along to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that."

The father-in-law then says that he only suggested it because he thought the others were bored.

The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably, but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon.

This is called The Abilene Paradox
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0787902772/103-6111212-3967058?v=glance

In social psychology this behavior is explained as “social conformity,” our desire to stick with what we think the rest of the group wants, something we discern through indirect cues we think we observe. It is also called groupthink
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink> that can lead to poor decisions, or worse yet, bullying behavior
http://www.bullyinginstitute.org/home/twd/bb/bbstudies/abilene.html

The creator of this parable, Jerry Harvey, used it to describe how individuals act to mistakenly believe they have reached agreement and actually speak against their own desires. He thinks this behavior happens because our fear of being left out, separated or shunned.
We also tend to believe that any decision or action is better than no action at all.

The exception proves the rule. Some groups act the opposite, such as the Thousand Oaks City Council here in California that’s been openly bickering for years http://www.latimes.com/news/local/ventura/la-me-oaksgoals21

If you’d like to avoid these extremes, here’s some ways you can
help your group make decisions that feel better for everyone:

1. When you act and speak in a genial way, most people will feel comfortable:
- hearing what you have to say, and

- being honest in their reactions

- even disagreeing, rather than going along with something they do not want to do.
-
- Sounds obvious, but making this a practice can demonstrate to you that people will react positively to the obvious attempt at good will

2. Unless you feel strongly about something, offer a suggestion for “us” rather than making flat “I” statements. Say, for example, “What if we…?” rather than “I want to…”

3. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Be: honest and clear about:

- the intensity of your feelings,

- the action you suggest, and

- the reason for it.

For example, if you feel strongly that the committee should rotate leadership of meetings, then you might say, “To share the work and to get to know each other better, what if we took turns leading the meetings?

Of course I’d enjoy hearing other suggestions from you about how we might make our new team work as positively, and productively as possible when we get together.”

Remember America's national motto for guidance, E pluribus unum: From many voices, one better decision.

Learn How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable http://sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=HTD&Category_Code=T2F

or to negotiate http://sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=HTD&Category_Code=T2F

or to make meetings work better http://sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=HTM&Category_Code=T2F

or to be heard, like and supported
http://sayitbetter.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=LE&Category_Code=KP

Also peruse these articles on conflict resolution http://www.sayitbetter.com/articles.html#conflict_resolution.
and on connecting with others http://www.sayitbetter.com/articles.html#connecting

Most people form their basic musical tastes by the age of 20. If a new kind of music is introduced after age 35, there’s a '95 percent chance you will never choose to listen to it, according to Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky.

Thus, many of your preferences are predictable, based simply on your age.

That’s because your nostalgia imprinting is established at an early age and rarely changes over time. From their research, Morris Holbrook of Columbia and Rutgers professor Robert Schindler say there seems to be a critical period for preference-formation, during which people "imprint" on popular products.

But mere exposure isn't enough to spur nostalgic bonding, according to Schindler. "It has to do with depth of emotional experience. When something is powerful to you, it creates an enduring bond in your psyche."

Read it at http://cms.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20041118-000001.html, a rebuttal, of sorts at
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007001 and the discomforting realization that, because of one’s age, one may know the ‘wrong” trivia http://www.bottledair.org/archives/000783.html.