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Saturday, February 4th, 2012 • No Comments so far • Posted under Awareness, Body/Mind, Change, Coaching, Curiosity, Discovery, Fear, Generosity, Listening, Love, Meditation, Perception, Relationship, Spaciousness, Trust
 Social intelligence refers to your competency to successfully engage others, leading to mutually satisfying relationships. It includes the ability to listen deeply and communicate profoundly with widely diverse individuals and groups. It involves seeing the world from others’ perspectives, the ability to collaborate on problems and co-create outcomes, as well as the ability to effectively compromise, allowing your desires to be subsumed for the benefit of the relationship, all without sacrificing your worth or dignity. Social intelligence generally is not a fixed attribute. Rather, it is an ever evolving complex of information processing skills, which can be modified to alter attitudes and behavior. Social intelligence should not be conflated with social skills, which constitute only a subset.
According to Daniel Goleman, in Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships, parent-child responsiveness creates the path for parents to help their children “learn the ground rules for relationships — how to attend to another person, how to pace an interaction, how to engage in conversation, how to tune in to the other person’s feelings, and how to manage your own feelings while you are engaged with someone else.” These rules form the foundation for competent social living. According to Goleman, children lacking synchronous parenting are at risk of growing up with disturbed attachment patterns. Children raised by attuned parents tend to be secure; while anxious parenting yields anxious children and aloof parenting produces avoidant children. The attachment style of a parent predicts the child’s social style with about 70% accuracy. Keep Reading »
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012 • No Comments so far • Posted under Awareness, Balance, Change, Coaching, Curiosity, Discovery, Fear, Generosity, Listening, Love, Meditation, Perception, Relationship, Silence, Spaciousness
 I thought that I would take a little break from our conversations about parenting. But, as I sit here thinking about what I’m about to write, I discover that it is not much of a break at all. The next installment in the parenting series concerns relational or social intelligence. What we are about to review here is an obscure, but very interesting little book, Listening Below the Noise: The Transformative Power of Silence, written by writer and novelist Anne D. LeClaire (2009). And, the connection is this — those qualities which arise in the socially intelligent, such as empathy, compassion, generosity, and kindness, often manifest to others through their powers of listening. And at its heart, listening rests upon a foundation of ego-less silence and focused attention on, and connection with, another.
Almost 20 years ago, Anne LeClaire found that she was mistaking a busy life for a rich one. Then beginning in January 1992, she decided to set aside the 1st and 3rd Monday of each month for silence. And, for those 24 hours she did not speak. In her words, Keep Reading »
Friday, January 27th, 2012 • No Comments so far • Posted under Awareness, Balance, Body/Mind, Change, Coaching, Curiosity, Discovery, Generosity, Happiness, Love, Perception, Relationship, Uncategorized
 Somatic intelligence refers to your ability to observe what is happening in your body. Furthermore, it includes your ability to include what your body is telling you into your understanding of what is happening in the moment and how best to respond to it. This intelligence may reveal something very different about what’s happening (alternative perceptions) and appropriate responses to them than either your intellect or your emotions. By the end of this conversation, I hope you come to see how important this intelligence is in contributing to your parenting efforts.
I want to separate out somatic intelligence from certain human habits or manifestations, which may appear to reflect somatic intelligence but do not. First, there are those who are impeccably dressed and coiffed, based on an understanding that appearance creates a favorable impression on others. This may be accompanied by practiced body movements, voice training and demeanor reinforcing that initial impression. Second are the bodybuilders whose every muscle has been driven, with or without chemical assistance, to optimal massing. Third are the indefatigable trainees, ceaselessly running, biking, swimming, climbing, rowing and so on. If you’ll note, each of the above seeks to develop the body for some particular manifestation or outcome. That may, or may not, include understanding of body, its temperament,well-being and status for their own sakes. I was once coaching an individual who ran long distances on a regular basis, but used the running time to “solve” work and personal problems. I asked him whether or not he occasionally fell owing to the distraction of his problem-solving. He admitted, with some embarrassment, that he frequently did, tripping over objects, changes in elevation or his own feet. His body was on autopilot and clearly not the subject of awareness. Keep Reading »
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 • No Comments so far • Posted under Awareness, Balance, Body/Mind, Change, Coaching, Curiosity, Discovery, Happiness, Hope, Love, Narrative, Optimism, Perception, Pessimism, Relationship
 What emotional states are you bringing to your parenting? Another way of asking the same question is: “Who is showing up to parent?” Let’s review the answer to this question from three temporal contexts. First, what is the background emotional tone of your life? You can find it embedded in your narrative – the story you tell yourself about yourself. Do you see the world generally as a hostile place from which you constantly seek safety? Are the causes of bad things that happen to you permanent -Â they always will be there, affecting your life?
According to positive psychologist, Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness, “If you think about bad things in terms of ‘always’ and ‘never’ and abiding traits, you have a permanent, pessimistic style.” When good things happen, pessimists see the cause as transient, resulting from specific factors or circumstances. Quite the opposite, when optimists suffer a setback, they see it as temporary. On the other hand, to optimists, good events are attributable to permanent causes, such as personal traits and abilities. Remember that your narrative consists of beliefs. Your beliefs may or may not rest on fact. But one thing is true - how you see the world will affect how you bring the world to your child. In Seligman’s view, your narrative’s outlook determines whether or not you will be able to maintain hope. As Seligman elaborates,“People who make permanent and universal explanations for good events, as well as temporary and specific explanations for bad events, bounce back from troubles briskly and get on a roll easily when they succeed wants. People who make temporary and specific explanations for success, and permanent and universal explanations for setbacks, tend to collapse under pressure — both for a long time and across situations — and rarely get on a roll.” Imagine, for the moment, the consequences of parenting without hope. Keep Reading »
Friday, January 20th, 2012 • No Comments so far • Posted under Awareness, Body/Mind, Change, Coaching, Continuous Partial Attention, Curiosity, Discovery, Perception, Relationship, Transition
 My first child, Meredith, was born when I was 32 years old. I was in the 6th year of my sole proprietorship law practice, which was just beginning to receive the recognition of the real estate community and the press. We had bought our first home only a few years before and had begun to “nest” in preparation for our first born. Both Nancy and I were then and remain voracious readers. On a table by Nancy’s side of the bed, a small stack of books on birthing and babies began to grow. Nancy then was a full-time lawyer. But she had decided to take an extended maternity leave after our first child’s birth. Her career would wait. Her baby books occasionally would find their way to my book stack, where I would thumb through them, only to return them to Nancy as soon as possible, as I had so many more pressing matters to which I had to attend.
I was wrong in not taking time to better prepare myself for parenthood. Unfortunately, our species’ survival has managed to couple our greatest period of fertility with a period of high egotism and minimal insight. Maybe the trend toward later aged, first births marks the beginning of a new era – fewer births but wiser parents. We need to become more cognitively intelligent in our parenting. When I reference cognitive intelligence, I mean something more than carrying around a lot of facts and figures in your head. Intelligence is the flexibility to take what you know in a particular field, here parenting, make observations about what is transpiring and synthesize what you know with what you observe to create a coherent understanding. From that understanding you make accurate predictions and identify possibilities for action. The more you know in advance, the more insightful your perceptions, and the greater range of possibilities present themselves. Keep Reading »
Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 • No Comments so far • Posted under Awareness, Balance, Body/Mind, Change, Coaching, Curiosity, Discovery, Generosity, Happiness, Love, Perception, Relationship, Transition
 I left the last post with the observation, “Become aware of who you are, because ‘who you are’ is what you give to your child.”
There was a time when I used to “bet” my wife, Nancy, when we used to accompany our children to various “kid parties,” like birthdays, school events and the like, that I could spot the children of lawyers, simply by the way they conducted themselves. I was a bit full of myself then and, in the last decade or so, I have been taught quite a bit about the complexity of our species and its behaviors. But I did experience some rather uncanny results. Nancy was the primary caregiver, so I didn’t know many of the children. But, at any particular gathering, I might spot some engaged child, focus on him/her for a few minutes, declare my conclusion to Nancy, that this child was parented by a lawyer, and voilĂ , my conclusion would be confirmed. This wasn’t as insightful as you may think. Many of the parents at our children’ a school were lawyers. Certainly not all, or even a vast majority. But I would guess that of all parenting couples, probably 20 to 25% had one parent in the legal profession. So what was it that I was seeing that led me to these conclusions? And, what difference did it make that I could make such an assessment? Keep Reading »
 In researching our forthcoming book, #DOG Tweet – 140 Perspectives on What Our Dogs Teach Us About Being Human, which I am co-authoring with my life partner and wife, Nancy, I recently was rereading John Bradshaw’s book, Dog Sense. A thought that came to me in my first reading, from the chapter “How Puppies Become Pets,” returned about the parallels between raising a puppy and raising a child. Bradshaw describes two critical periods in a puppy’s upbringing that will shape its future as a pet. First, he describes the sensitive period, ” when dogs begin to learn about people” and who they can trust. Bradshaw notes that once the puppy is 12 weeks old, “it will start avoiding animals or types of people, even objects, that it has never met before.” Second, he describes the juvenile period, which continues until puberty (about one year). In this period, the puppy’s character still remains very malleable, but “the experiences it has during this time can have a profound effect on its personality for the rest of its life.” Bradshaw notes that “as the dog gets older and more set in its ways, its capacity to deal with change gradually diminishes.” He concludes, “Thus, in general, dogs that fail to develop both knowledge and coping skills [during these sensitive and juvenile periods] become especially vulnerable to developing rather nonspecific anxieties and will tend to adopt strategies based on avoidance, or even aggression, when they are confronted with something unfamiliar that they feel they can’t deal with.” Keep Reading »
 Giving up meat on our recent trip to Morocco was not exceptionally difficult. Finding suitable substitutes for the meats omitted from my diet was another thing altogether. At home, I am able to limit my meat intake to generally one meal a day because there are so many fulfilling vegetarian alternatives. I can always eat fish. I’m allergic to cow’s milk, but there are ample goat milk alternatives to provide me with an array of exceptionally tasty cheeses, which can be substituted into lasagna, pizza, quesadillas, enchiladas, and omelets. Then, there are bean curds, tofu, and soy products which yield protein that can be spiced up and, although lacking in meat’s texture, serve aesthetically to fill the meat deficit. No such luck in Northern Africa. Vegetarianism is the stuff of tourism. It is satisfied through the steaming and spicing of vegetables, largely starches and tubers, including potatoes, carrots, parsnips and other white vegetables, predominately cauliflower. Despite the array of spices used in their preparation, the meals start to repeat themselves. Despite the abundance of sheep and goats, there are few milk products, including cheeses which are so abundant in neighboring Spain. As I previously mentioned, you also take your chances with fresh vegetables as water quality is deficient by US standards, such that an evening’s salad may result in a night clinging to porcelain, as I would learn. Keep Reading »
Most coaching clients come to me because they find themselves “stuck” in some aspect of their lives. My work, as a coach, is to identify the ineffective behaviors; trace their source to the client’s underlying beliefs and judgments that support the behaviors; help the client to find alternative ways to perceive the situation giving rise to the inappropriate habitual behavior; and explore alternative behaviors, based on new perspectives of the situation. Over the course of the coaching program, it is my design to leave the client in a position to carry out this process on his/her own as new “blockages” arise. Coaching is not designed to give the client a fish, but to teach the client how to fish.
 Part of our training as coaches involve submitting ourselves, as clients, to a year-long coaching program. From that experience, I learned the intimate relationship amongst awareness, perception, curiosity and discovery. Through practices such as meditation, yoga and qi gong, I began to acquire the ability to slow down and become more attentive to the present moment. That expanded awareness exposed opportunities for alternative perceptions on what might be transpiring. Those alternative perceptions disrupted my egocentric notions of there being only one “right way” to overcome difficulties or expand opportunities and made me curious to explore the alternatives. From those explorations, I was rewarded with many new discoveries, allowing me to adapt to changing circumstances, with new behaviors. I recognize that the foregoing is an oversimplified recital of a much more complicated process. But, I wanted to frame the conversation we’ve been having about my recent trip to Spain and Morocco and my renewed exploration into the issue of vegetarianism. Keep Reading »
 In my November 24 post, Veg or No Veg, I advised that I would subsequently return to the subject of awareness in the context of my approach to vegetarianism and here we are. Before proceeding, I must note that I’m using experiences, arising from my recent trip to Spain and Morocco, with a certain degree of trepidation. In my work as a coach, I am careful to avoid bringing much of myself and my experience into the coaching conversation, because coaching is not about the coach, it is about the client. Being too self-referential risks drawing your attention away from the client, unconsciously imposing your own beliefs and judgments into the conversation, and allowing your ego to dominate. Its funny, I am undertaking a year-long speaking program, under the auspices of the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association, in which an analogous tenet has been set forth — “It’s about the audience, not you.” Keep Reading »
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Social intelligence refers to your competency to successfully engage others, leading to mutually satisfying relationships. It includes the ability to listen deeply and communicate profoundly with widely diverse individuals and groups. It involves seeing the world from others’ perspectives, the ability to collaborate on problems and co-create outcomes, as well as the ability to effectively compromise, allowing your desires to be subsumed for the benefit of the relationship, all without sacrificing your worth or dignity. Social intelligence generally is not a fixed attribute. Rather, it is an ever evolving complex of information processing skills, which can be modified to alter attitudes and behavior. Social intelligence should not be conflated with social skills, which constitute only a subset.
