Usable Insight - Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts
Thursday, May 8, 2008 >>
In matters of love with a divorced man,
never believe what he says;
Only believe what he does
and does without protesting
and without your nagging him.
Beware the lonesome, divorced man who waxes poetically and romantically about how he has never felt so wonderful as he does with you and how he can see spending the rest of his life with you, traveling with you, having you meet his kids, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Read my lips! He may have great intentions when he experiences that initial relief to the loneliness he had been feeling, but the chance of his following through on them is slight. And then when you start asking him later on what happened to all those great plans and promises he made without your asking him to, he tells you to stop nagging him and the chance of his following through goes to nil.
So what’s a woman to do when she hears such wonderful promises that lead her to start thinking of a future with this guy? You may not like my answer. Play it coy, smile sweetly, touch his hand tenderly and say: “We’ll see, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
If he gets defensive and says: “What? Do you think I’m just bullsh*ting you?” respond with, “No, you’re just paying for the sins of the last few who did.”
And by the way, if he is vehement and becomes hostile about your not believing him, he probably is bullsh*ting you. After all someone who doesn’t have anything to hide, has nothing to fear, and nothing to get so angry about.
(c) 2009 Mark Goulston
Usable Insight - The Dealmaker's Son
Thursday, May 1, 2008 >>
Dr. G: So which of your kids are you worried about?
Jack: My 17 year old son.
Dr. G: Does he know you’re worried or does he just feel you’re frustrated with and disappointed in him?
Jack: Hmm, I don’t know how he feels.
Dr. G: Maybe you should.
As long as your disappointment in your child’s performance and achievements supercedes their own, they will not be able to get past it.
When they feel you’re disappointed for them, they feel you care; when they feel you’re disappointed in them, they feel they’re a bad kid.
If your kid is basically a good kid and not living up to his or her potential, and giving you attitude when you bring it up to them, you don’t want to confuse stubbornness with fear or depression.
You’ll never know if you don’t ask and you’ll never ask if you don’t care. If that’s the case, shame on you and tough break for them.
© 2008 Mark Goulston
If this speaks to you or someone you know contact Mark Goulston
Usable Insight - The Rage of Angels
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 >>
A previous Reuters blog, Is Your Child Depressed or Anxious? began with:Mother: Do you think he'll put his fist through the wall?
Father: Let's hope it's not his head!
And so begins another evening of pillow talk between the parents of an angry, sullen teenager.
In that blog I spoke about how a significant part of adolescent misbehavior and moodiness comes from untreated clinical anxiety which often masquerades as depression.
Most mental problems have biopsychosocial causative factors and in that previous piece I addressed how biological/genetic factors can affect mood in adolescence which results in negative, counterproductive mindsets (psychology) and behavior.
Well just when you (as parents) thought it was safe to say it was all biological, there are social components that are causative as well. Certainly the bullying that leads to the tragic shootings that we unfortunately hear about every few months as well as peer pressure to act in ways that can be calamitous to teenagers are well known.
What is well known, but kept private is a dynamic psychotherapists see frequently in families.
That occurs when one parent is overbearing and overly controlling (either the mother micromanaging her child's schoolwork and college application process or the father pushing the child to have more drive, motivation and be more aggressive in athletics) and the other is ineffective at keeping the over-the-top parent in check. This results in many teenagers feeling resentment towards the overbearing parent and contempt mixed with pity for the other parent who can neither stand up for the child of for themselves to the over-controlling one.
Among one of teenagers' best traits is a deep sense of justice but along with it unfortunately comes a sense of outrage regarding the injustice of this family dynamic.
To check if this may be what's going on with your sullen teenager, ask them in a matter of fact way while going for a drive or during some activity (since they hate unsolicited "heart to heart" talks which always feel like a lecture):
- "What's the most frustrated you have ever felt with your mom/dad or me?"
- "How bad was it for you?"
- "What did it make you want to do?"
- "What did you do?"
Then say (and mean it): "I'm sorry, I didn't know it was so bad?" Allow for the tears of relief you might unleash in them for finally getting this off their chest.
Finish with: "When I see you doing or not doing something that I believe could hurt you or your future, how do you want me to be with you? I mean, do you want me to say nothing? To wait and let you find out for yourself? To ask your permission to tell you what I see? Or what?"
Then whatever they say, use that approach.
(c) 2008 Mark Goulston
Usable Insight - Obama/Clinton - Looking for Leverage in All the Wrong Places
Thursday, April 24, 2008 >> It’s not what you can do (Obama) or what you will do (Clinton),
it’s what you’ve already done
that has made a positive, lasting and measurable difference
that earns you leverage.
I was trying to figure out my mixed feelings after the Pennsylvania primary and where my ambivalence towards Obama and Clinton comes from.
I think it derives from the dissonance that both candidates trigger in me. Dissonance occurs when what you see and hear doesn't match what you feel or "What are you going to do FOR me?"/"What are you going to do TO me?"
I see and hear what both Obama and Clinton are saying, and I think the mixed feelings I have towards each are as follows:
Obama = Can do but hasn't done yet
Clinton = Been there, done what?
Obama lacks the track record and experience. Clinton has the experience, but lacks the track record of being effective in making a positive, lasting and measurable difference.
So I guess it comes down to the Devil you don't know (Obama) vs. the Devil you do (Clinton, and for that matter McCain) which makes for a devilish decision come election time.
© 2008 Mark Goulston
Usable Insight - In the best interest of your child
Friday, April 11, 2008 >>
Children get mannerisms and attitudes from both parents
but develop their inner calm and feeling of well being
from how much their parents like, trust and respect each other.
Increasing research shows that a significant part of a child’s mind and personality is influenced not by how their parents react to the child, but by how their parents respond to each other.
What becomes frustrating and at times demoralizing to children is not so much that mothers and fathers disagree or argue (as they inevitably will), but that parents continue to argue over the same things and never definitively resolve them once and for all.
When children observe parents arguing without resolution they see emotion and reason locked in a “zero sum” fight instead of cooperating with each other. When they then internalize into their personality that emotion and reason cannot work together, their inner sense of calm and well-being is replaced by restlessness. It is as if at any moment their own emotion and reason are on the brink of doing battle in their mind reminiscent of what they observe between their parents. And this destroys inner calm and well being.
As the lack of cooperation between the emotion and reason in their observed world can create chaos in their life, the lack of cooperation between emotion and reason in their own mind can create flaws in their developing personalities.
The best example of how emotion and reason can work together between a mother and father utilizes “tag team parenting.” This is when one parent being better at logical problem solving tells the child to go to the other for comforting if that is what the child seems to need. And conversely when the other parent who is better at emotional comforting tells the child to go speak to the other for help with solving a problem if what the child needs more is good advice.
© 2008 Mark Goulston
Usable Insight - Help Wanted: American President
Monday, April 7, 2008 >>
Help Wanted: American President
Qualifications: Must be playing with a full deck
With the media's teeth firmly embedded in the necks of the three Presidential candidates, it's become increasing unclear what we can truly believe or not believe about them. But one thing is clear. The ambivalence that voters feel toward Obama, Clinton and McCain tells us more about ourselves than about them.
The reason for that ambivalence is that there is something that each possesses that appeals to us, but there are other qualities about each of them that cause us to pause and be wary.
In order to relax our guards, sign on the dotted line, and put our faith in a Presidential candidate, he or she will need to engender in us: Trust, Confidence and Respect.
So here's the rub. Obama has inspired (unless the new spate of allegations ruins it) trust and respect, but not confidence (given his lack of experience); McCain has also inspired trust and respect, but not confidence (given his lack of broad based experience and, sorry to admit the obvious, his age); Clinton has instilled confidence (due to her and Bill's combined experience, but sorry Hillary, you ain't very inspiring), but not trust or respect.
Until a candidate spontaneously evokes all of these three qualities, he or she will continue to trigger dissonance in us. Dissonance occurs when what we see or hear doesn't match what we feel, a.k.a. What are you going to do for me?/What are you going to do to me?
These elements are equally important in a CEO, especially of a public company, where all eyes are upon them.
If a CEO doesn't instill all of these, how can they do so?
I developed the PEP CEO Challenge to solve such a dilemma. But it is not for the "faint of heart" or a CEO who in the words of Jack Nicholson, from "A Few Good Men," "Can't handle the truth."
To use it as a CEO, ask your people, directors, stockholders, customers/clients, vendors to anonymously rate how much Passion, Enthusiasm and Pride they feel about your services, products, company and YOU on a scale of 1 to 10. Then ask them to suggest what you and your company need to do to increase their rating if it is anything less than 10-10-10.
(c) 2008 Mark Goulston
Usable Insight - Don't Confuse a Depressed Teenager with an Anxious One
Thursday, April 3, 2008 >>
Mother: Do you think he'll put his fist through the wall?
Father: Let's hope it's not his head
And so begins another evening of pillow talk between the parents of an angry, sullen teenager.
If your child is angry, negative, brooding and avoids people and you're thinking depression, think again.
More and more research shows that in a majority of cases where adults or adolescents have a mixture of anxiety and depression, the anxiety comes first and in most cases causes the depression. That anxiety causes such people to withdraw socially, self-medicate with alcohol or pot, and eventually to have it cross over to poor school or work performance. It's these disastrous effects that intolerable anxiety has on their lives that causes them to feel depressed, it's not the depression itself.
This is important to keep in mind, because although many of anti-depressant medications (such as Lexapro, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor) are also effective on anxiety, anxiety is a different entity than depression and requires a different approach.
If you treat the depression and miss out on the underlying anxiety that's causing it, people with it will not do as well.
Unfortunately one of the worst combinations that adolescents can have is what I refer to as the "Triple A - lethal cocktail of adolescence" = Anxiety, Alcohol and Arrogance. The anxiety and alcohol use are quite treatable, but it is that "leave me alone," refuse to accept help arrogance that keeps adolescents from getting the help they need and getting better.
Please feel free to share this with your adolescent if you think it will help.
Good luck. You'll need it.
© 2008 Mark Goulston
Usable Insight - A College Rejection is not the End of the World...or Your Life
Wednesday, April 2, 2008 >>
After the initial disappointment of not getting into their top choice wears off,
most college students feel like failures not from the rejection.
It comes from internalizing the feeling they have let their parents down.
These are the parents who were over-invested in the result from the start,
who can't get over their disappointment
and will have a hard time hearing and accepting this.
- Dean of Admissions, Ivy League College
In my blog, "Did Your Kid Get Rejected from College?" I talked about turning college rejection into an opportunity for poise. I spoke too soon.
"Mark, you could provide a real service to students and their parents if you could suggest two things to them. I can't do it, because I am currently fielding the 'why not my kid?' calls that I am being flooded with. Few of them are ready to hear it and certainly not from me," a Dean of Admissions at an Ivy League college told me yesterday.
He explained that most college students that don't get into their top choice, feel deeply upset and disappointed at first. It is natural and even healthy to feel those feelings and even vent to their parents their upset. At that point parents should respond with: "Oh God, that's awful I can tell how upset you are and I'm sorry." Then the parents should stop talking and let their kids continue to vent. In most cases they will get it out of their systems in a matter of one to several days.
After their upset has peaked and is calming down, they should say something like: "I'm really excited about the choices you have from the colleges that did accept you and the next four years you're going to have will be amazing in ways you can't imagine." You don't want to say this too soon. If you do, it's as if you are trying to talk them out of being initial upset, which they have earned the right to feel after all the work they put in at high school and going through the application process.
The second suggestion had to do with something so very painful and so very unnecessary that he sees so often. Within a few days, children are usually ready and able to move on past their disappointment. They begin to envision and enthusiastically look forward to going to the college(s) they were accepted to.
What gets in the way are parents who can't get past their own disappointment in the college rejection. Rather than the parents and children accepting that college acceptance is very arbitrary and capricious, the parents continue to look chagrined and downcast. They say they feel badly for their children, when the parents are the ones feeling more upset and who can't move on. He said that in such situations, students tend to look at their parents and internalize their mother and father's disappointment into feeling as if the child has failed them.
The Dean concluded: "Getting parents to separate their own disappointment from that of their child's is the single greatest obstacle to the child getting over and past it."
(c) 2008 Mark Goulston
Usable Insight - Did your kid get rejected from college?
Tuesday, April 1, 2008 >>
Are you down because your kid didn’t get into the college of their (and your choice)? Having trouble accepting defeat? Can’t let it go? Want to rip anyone’s throat out who tells you, “It’s not the end of the world”?Here is the real silver lining.
This is going to be one of the greatest opportunities that your child and you will ever have for poise. And poise doesn't show until you are faced with disappointment, rejection or failure. It's the ability to be bummed out without acting or even feeling bummed out.
If you look around you and all the way up to the Presidential campaigns and the current President, you will see how rare a quality it is. When you have it people admire and respect you and want esteem from you.
One of the greatest advantages of true poise is that you can have so much influence with so little effort. That is because you are so centered and so solid that lesser people know in their hearts that they can’t manipulate you and often stop bothering to try. One of the best things about poise is it also makes the people around you want to be the best that they can be.
When I think of poise I think of John Wooden, the most successful basketball coach in history who coached UCLA to 10 NCAA titles. He did it with knowledge, ability preparation and poise, all of which overflow from the building blocks to his Pyramid of Success. He has said that never (and his players back this up) in his entire career used a swear word. His explanation was not so much that he was being prudish, but that he felt that when people got frustrated and swore, it took away from their focus and execution (and poise). His view was to remain centered as a person and as a team and so dominate the other teams that you cause them to swear and lose their focus, poise and cool.
Another person I think of is Warren Bennis, one of the foremost authorities on leadership in the world and someone who is brimming over with poise. Recently I heard him say at a meeting at USC honoring him: "One of the greatest advantages of having so many nice things said about you, is that it gives you something to live up to." That is not just poise, that is charm. I am privileged to have Warren as a mentor.
So...yell, blame, complain, whine, feel sorry for yourself OR seize this opportunity for poise. The choice is up to your child and to you.
(c) 2008 Mark Goulston
Usable Insight - Gore/Obama '08, Obama/? '12
Sunday, March 30, 2008 >>
A Presidential prediction from the world of emotional intelligence
If you haven’t noticed, more people act (or more accurately react) from emotion than reason. If you need evidence of that, you are not only out of touch with the world at large, but out of touch with your world. Just ask any of people around you, who find you to be so logical, but oh, so out of touch (Hillary, are you listening? Probably not).
And now for a prediction.
Neither Clinton nor Obama will receive enough delegates to capture the Democratic nomination on the first ballot in August. That will then throw the convention open to nominating its ultimate ticket.
By that time, the Democratic party will feel as the rest of the country feels that Obama is great, but just too inexperienced to do the job. Clinton, despite being married, will feel too much like that crabby, spinster aunt who comes to Thanksgiving, because you can’t find a way to uninvite her.
Given those two powerful qualities, McCain will seem like the only grown up for the job. And unless he self-immolates a la Howard Dean, he will be viewed as a less lousy alternative than either Obama (for his inexperience) and Clinton (for her negative personality). That said, McCain will not be seen as someone that voters want, but merely someone better than the other options.
Enter Nobel prize winner, Global Warming (a.k.a. “visionary”), non-pushy, doesn’t need the money or job Al Gore. By the time Democratic convention rolls around in August, the unattractiveness of Clinton’s ambition and to a lesser extent, Obama’s, will have negatively impacted people desire for either. What will be fresh is someone that voters pursue and want instead of people they feel stuck with.
At that point Al Gore will be approached as a possible candidate and receive counsel from his family and friends to the extent of: “Al, what do you need this for? Your life and influence has been much more positive and wide ranging than anything you ever did in politics? Why would you want to now re-enter the “zero sum” back stabbing world of politics?”
Al will respond with: “My core value and life has been to be of service. My daddy did and so have I for most of my adult life. I like being an educator on the problems of global warming, but I may actually have more leverage to help that and other initiatives as President. And besides, I will agree if elected to only serve one term, where one of my most important roles is to mentor Barack Obama to be the real President who makes change happen after I leave office in 2012.”
And if this happens, as they say in fairy tales, “America will live happily every after.”
(c) 2008 Mark Goulston