We have officially entered the “Holiday Season.” I started writing this post on Thanksgiving, which will be followed by Christmas and the start of the New Year. These are supposed to be joyous times. At this point, I have seen a lot of Thanksgivings come and go. For most of my life, it was easy to think of things for which I could truly feel grateful. This year, that’s not the case. Of course, there are things for which I am grateful, but my concerns about the state of our nation have put a damper on my gratitude. This is, . . . → Read More: Thanksgiving, 2017
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 Comments are closed  Blog  assassination, Big Enders, Buddhism, Christianity, Christmas, Civil Rights, Donald Trump, global warming, graduate school, holiday season, human history, Islam, Jonathan Swift, joyous times, Korea, Little Enders, Martin Luther King, music, my tribe, New Year, not with a bang but a whimper, political unrest, President Kennedy, range wars, religion, Richard Nixon, Shakespeare, social activism, T.S. Eliot, Thanksgiving, The Hollow Men, Vietnam, Watergate, WWII When Martin Luther King said, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” (in his I have a dream speech), he was, of course, referring specifically to racial disparities. Unfortunately, racial disparities haven’t disappeared, and perhaps even more unfortunately, our culture has added a variety of other disparities by which we judge people. Like skin color, they are all superficial in nature and say nothing about the content of their character. The first thing that occurs to me is the bias many hold . . . → Read More: Content of Character Comments are closed Blog ancestors, bill of goods, border wall, Bosnian War, cast the first stone, country of origin, culture, do it anyway, fear, feel the fear, Feelings Buried Alive, fences, future, gay, gender, genocide, husbands, I have a dream, Karol K. Truman, lesbian, LGBT, loving our neighbor, Martin Luther King, medieval, Mexico, military budget, MLK, NLP, past, present, racial disparities, revenge, revenge is sweet, Richard Bandler, royalty, second-class citizen, sexual orientation, skin color, slavery, Susan Jeffers, transgender, walls, wives, zombies The impetus for this blog is the recent spate of race-based violence we have experienced following the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. The history of the US has, of course, a long record of race-based violence. How could it be otherwise when slavery was present from our earliest days. It is easy to forget, for example, that the White House was built by slave labor. I am old enough to remember early TV news coverage of what were deemed “race riots” in the 1950s and ’60s. The principal minorities in the town where I grew up (Los . . . → Read More: What a Week Comments are closed Blog 1950s, 1960s, Alton Sterling, Anton Sterling, Athletes, Beatles, BET Awards, Blacks, Bob Dylan, Civil Rights, College of Wooster, Erick Garner, Ft. Campbell, Ft. Sam Houston, James Bradley Rogers, Jessie Williams, Long Binh, loosies, Los Angeles, Martin Luther King, Pete Seeger, Philander Castile, Philandro Castile, protests, race, referred publications, riots, Rogers and Hammerstein, slavery, University of Illinois, University of Redlands, US history, Vietnam, Vietnam War, Watts, we shall overcome, White House, white privilege, You've got to be carefully taught The question, “Are we there yet,” is a cliché of traveling with children. We expect adults, even those grown weary with traveling, to have a better understanding of how long it takes to get from Point A to Point B. This blog entry is about our collective journey from racism to a “postracial” culture. It was prompted by recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, following yet another police shooting of an unarmed black teenager. The policeman, as is usually the case, was white. One such shooting isn’t the real issue, of course. The problem is that this one was just one . . . → Read More: Are We There Yet? Comments are closed Blog are we there yet, Black Muslims, Brown v. Board of Education, Cherokee, College of Wooster, DNA, English, equality, ethnicity, Ferguson, Filipino, Hadrian, Hadrian's Wall, interracial dating, James Brown, Los Altos, Martin Luther King, Mexican, Missouri, Mt. View, Muhammed Speaks, Nashville, Norwegian, Palo Alto, Pict, Pitt, police, police shooting, post-racial, postracial, race, race riots, racial, racism, Roman Emperor, San Jose, Santa Clara, segregation, Stanford University, Sub-Sarahan Africa, Supreme Court, Swett's Restaurant, U.S. Army, University of Illinois, University of Redlands, Vietnam, Watts, white privilege, white separatist Quite a few NLP trainers and Master Practitioners suggest that we would do well to avoid “why” questions. In some cases, the reason “Why” may not be the best question to ask is obvious. Imagine answering the following questions: Why is the sky blue? Why were dinosaurs so big? Why don’t you love me anymore? Why do you think that? In some cases, “why” is basically asking, “what is the reason,” and when the reason is complex (blue sky, dinosaur size), each response is likely to produce another “why” question. That’s also true when the reason is unknown (don’t . . . → Read More: Why Ask Why? Comments are closed Blog action, American business, Bean Counters, beliefs, Bob Lutz, boil water, Car Guys, cheap, Connirae Andreas, Core transformation, Core Transformations, core values, cost, elevator speech, how, I have a dream, ideas, inspiring, iPhone, leadership, loyalty, marketing, Martin Luther King, MBA, MLK, molecules, NLP, Pez, products, questions, Robert A. Lutz, sales, services, serving men, Simon Sinek, thermodynamics, wellspring within, what, when, where, why The three principal questions everyone has when encountering something or someone new are (a) What’s familiar or “like me,” (b) What’s not familiar or not “like me,” and (c) What’s important about…. When it comes to people, the cliché has been, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Whether we’re talking about cultures, philosophies, or people, the main question is, what constitutes being “of a feather.” One of the metaprograms in NLP is usually referred to as “same/different” or “match/mismatch.” This metaprogram addresses whether someone’s first tendency is to look for things that match or are the same as what . . . → Read More: Understanding, Rapport, and a Better 2011 Comments are closed Blog amygdala, army, broccoli, content of character, different, domestication, Don Miguel Ruiz, Einstein, enemy, fear, Haley Barbour, Martin Luther King, matching, mirroring, neuroscience, Pogo, rapport, same, Vietnam |
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