Your Pleasure is My Pleasure... Pleasure has a bad rep.  It connotes hedonism, selfish behavior, narcissism, and abandonment of higher principles.  No gold stars for pleasure.  No pain, no gain is part of our national consciousness.  And if eating butter gives you pleasure, and you give in, you are probably obese as well as weak willed. Here and now, let’s begin to clean up pleasure’s linguistic back eye. What if I claim that acts of...

How to Enjoy Difficult or Obnoxious People... JOY or peace at any moment can be interrupted unless you know certain strategies to maintain that even cruise control.  We’ll have fun playing around with five new strategies.  There is no one-size-fits-all  approach to these people, but with judicious decision making and five  options you will be able to find at least one to keep you entertained. Then you can select the one you want to insert inside the TAG...

Unblocking an Impass Between Your Partner and You... So you want to go to the mountains on your vacation and the other wants to go to the ocean with beaches and fishing and lots of sunshine.  You hate sunshine.  You blister. So s/he wants Chinese food on your night out and you want fried chicken. So s/he wants the thermostat at 75 and you want it as 68. These things turn up in most relationships sooner or later.  You can fill in your own content.  There are strategies...

Spellbinding: Genie Z. Laborde talks about her new... (The following is a part taken from a new book by Genie Z. Laborde in which she applies Influencing with Integrity principles to the arena of personal relationships.) Try something new When I began this book, it was going to be a ‘How-To’ book on improving relationships. At that time, I was counseling couples, including a psychiatrist, a CEO, a Ph.D., an R.N. and many other professionals. They were all experts...

How to Find your Favorite Sense... Here’s a way to find out your favorite sense. (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic) Which of the following responses would you be the most likely to use? 1. In response to the question, “How was your day?” a. Today was a good day. b. Our project  looked  more complicated today. c. The sound of people disagreeing kept interrupting me. d. I think I’m in the wrong job 2. What was the most important event...

10 Questions to Discover How Your Child Learns Bes... These questions are not definitive, only indicative. We all seem to have one sense that we prefer to learn new things. This favorite sense shows up early for most children. This favorite sense is the one that is most often used to learn new things. However, we use a second sense now and then to acquire new information so we are not one-dimensional. However, recognizing your child’s favorite sense whether seeing,...

The Right Time to Potty Train... Fortunately, or unfortunately, I had six children in eight years, and was so busy that I waited until one brought me a dry diaper, and said, in a polite, complete sentence, “Would you please change my diaper?  I’m wet.” Most people want to begin this process sooner than that.  With my second husband, we adopted a daughter, and our Polynesian nanny, Sanni, taught me some strategies I had never considered...

Love is Energy... This love energy is what creates, holds and nourishes your relationship. To keep your relationship energy at its peak, communication is essential. Communication is often blocked by two people who have different PERCEPTUAL PREFERENCES—who use different senses to make sense of their world and to create their individual reality. Each person’s favorite sense-see, hear or feel-dictates what s/he notices in the...

Sometimes it Hurts a Lot... When Marianne, pale and fragile as a Magnolia blossom, opened the door into my office, her customary cherries and cream complexion was tinged with green. Her confident competence as financial consultant had also disappeared. In a shaky voice she said, “I think I’m going to throw up. Could you keep me the key to the rest room?” I gave her the key and suggested she take a deep breath. “Tell me what’s...

Four Words to Open Up Positive Communication durin... And those words are: “I may be wrong.” … After the three physiological needs of food, shelter and sex are covered, I think the next human need is to be right, and for others to view our position as right.  Winning an argument is just another way to prove that we are right. One day I noticed what a strong need this was for me, so the next day I began ending all my opinions with “I may be wrong...