Internet Dating Over 50?

Are you an age 50+ couple who has made contact through the Internet and would be willing to meet in person for the first time in Morning America's studios in New York City on June 7th? Or do you know such a couple?

If so, mailto:TPBlake@aol.com.

They are also looking for a few over 50-age couples in the New York area who met online and are still dating.

Of course they need to know right away.

If you're a woman over 50 who's dating, or wants to, my ebook "Midlife Dating Survival Manual for Women" is just what you need. If it all seems bewildering and you don't know how to begin ... or your efforts so far haven't been very rewarding ... or you'd like some support and encouragement and some great practical tips, as well as data on who's out there, what they want, where they go, and what to expect ... order your copy HERE and pay just $9.95.

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE

If you like Napoleon, check out this amazing graphic work by an engineering student.

Memorial Day

Fantastic ... and best of all it's titled, "Is this the way to
Armadillo?" Way to go Supreme Cmd Forces al-Faw, Lucky Pierre, and Sargeant Parr from Runcorn, Cheshire

Brits Goofing Off - this video spoof filmed by a bunch of
privates from the Royal Dragoon Guards serving in Iraq (now back in Germany), crashed the Brits Army server.

For the story of the video, go here.

Here's the original Peter Kay for Comic Relief, featured on the Amarillo Tourist site: http://www.captiveimage.us/Gallery/Music/AmarilloVideoViewer.html


Let's keep going through the wind and rain ;)

In answer to questions, those appearing in the Peter Kay video (not in this order) are:
Tony Christie
Michael Parkinson and Ronnie Corbett (It's Ronnie Corbett who falls off)
William Roache and Anne Kirkbride – Coronation Street
Jim Bowen
Bernie Clifton
Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen
Bez and Shaun Ryder of The Happy Mondays
Heather Mills McCartney
Jimmy Saville
Sooty and Sweep
Keith Harris and Orville
Ghandi lookalike

Can You Help?

From today's mailbag:

>Dear Susan:
>
> "Time Zones"--great piece. I've enjoyed so much of what you've
> been writing.
>
> Do you know the title of a book that talks about life choices
> and quantum physics (theory?mechanics?)? It seems like the
> type of book you would recommend. I began looking into it--I
> believe it was available as an e-book--but lost the link when
> my laptop crashed.
>
> Looking forward to your next message.
>
>Sincerely,
>L.S.

If you know the name of this book please mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc and let me know!
Thanks,
Susan

Where is Love?

The new technology of brain studies has added so much to our understanding of emotion, though we still have a long way to go. However, MRIs and fMRIs show us the effect of emotions in (on) the brain, so there's a way to see and measure what goes on.

One grand emotion is LOVE. Of course falling in love is wonderful. It feels wonderful. It's a great antidote to the blahs, the blues, and whatever else ails us. When we're in love everything is wonderful -- inside and out.

We also know it's a great antidote to depression. People who divorce, for instance, may rush into an affair with someone, anyone, just to get those feel-good chemicals racing again. Midlifers may flee to an affair to ease their transition away from youth. And some residential drug rehab facilities keep males and females separated during their treatments, lest they "fall in love," and lose the impetus to work on their programs, addiction often having depression as an underlying factor.

British researchers decided to investigate what region of the brain makes a person fall in love, or feel like they're in love. They studied volunteers who claimed to be "truly and madly" in love -- generally in a relationship of about two (2) years.

The results? When they looked at photographs of their beloveds, their emotional response registered as increased blood flow to four (4) specific areas of the brain, all of them in the limbic region. At the same time, blood flow decreased in the neocortex, an area affected by depression. Also, however, the "thinking" area, and of course we know that people "in love" don't always thik straight.

For the full article, go here.

For coaching, call 210-496-0678.

THE MIND-BODY CONNECTION

Read anything interesting lately?

Today's mailbag included an article by Michael Brooks in a recent New Science,com about
13 THINGS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE.
It's fascinating - check it out HERE.

The first thing that doesn't make sense is THE PLACEBO EFFECT.

The "sugar pill." YOu've heard about it maybe even seen it work, or had it work on yourself. I learned about it in high school. Then when I got to college, I babysat for a family that had a 4 month old girl who had what was then called "colic." My first time to babysit, the mother matter-of-factedly showed me a bottle of phenobarbitol, I think it was ... she explained that it stopped the colic, but that they no longer had to give her any, they just placed the tip of an empty eye dropper on the baby's tongue, and she would quiet. Now there's a placebo, thought I.

Here's what the article report:
1 The placebo effect
Induce pain several times a day in someone. Control the pain with morphine until the last day of the experiment. Then replace the morphine with saline solution and ... the saline takes the pain away.

Now researcher Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy did this experiment and added a twist -- he added naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.

It other words, just when you think the effect is "all in the mind," it really isn't. The naxolene appears to show that the effect is biochemical.

The article continues:

Benedetti has since shown that a saline placebo can also reduce tremors and muscle stiffness in people with Parkinson's disease (Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 587). He and his team measured the activity of neurons in the patients' brains as they administered the saline. They found that individual neurons in the subthalamic nucleus (a common target for surgical attempts to relieve Parkinson's symptoms) began to fire less often when the saline was given, and with fewer "bursts" of firing - another feature associated with Parkinson's. The neuron activity decreased at the same time as the symptoms improved: the saline was definitely doing something.

We have a lot to learn about what is happening here, Benedetti says, but one thing is clear: the mind can affect the body's biochemistry. "The relationship between expectation and therapeutic outcome is a wonderful model to understand mind-body interaction," he says. Researchers now need to identify when and where placebo works. There may be diseases in which it has no effect. There may be a common mechanism in different illnesses. As yet, we just don't know.

To read more about the mind-body interface, read:
MOLECULES OF EMOTION : THE SCIENCE BEHIND MIND-BODY MEDICINE, Candace Pert, Ph.D.
The list price for this book is $15.00. To purchase it from Amazon.com
for $10.20, a 32% discount, go directly HERE.

And After Mother's Day ... What Then?

From today's mailbox:

"Everyone is walking around like they're in a daze, sleep-walking, and talking about how tired they are, and wanting to sleep all the time. Clients in different states, not just here. Is there something going on?"

SUSAN'S REPLY: Whatever it is, it's really going on ... and it's far-reaching. I coach and train all over the world, and people I've talked with over the past two weeks, the ones who didn't cancel, oversleep, or "forget" their appointments -- have had one thing on their mind: fatigue. That term "sleepwalking" isn't a bad one for what's going on.

This is similar to 'horses in a burning stable,' but not exactly. Horses in a burning stable refers to the fact that -- and I can't believe people were at one time puzzled by this -- horses let each other know the stable's on fire without the use of words. There was a time when people would laugh if you said horses communicated, because they don't use words, like humans, but now we know so much more, and obviously they do communicate. All mammals do, and herd animals MUST be able to ... they live in herds.

I believe this sort of collective emotional transfer has a name and has been studied. (It might be morphological fields). One example is the 100th monkey project, where one monkey learns something, and then more learn it, and then the whole band knows it, and then all of a sudden this learned thing jumps - and the monkeys across the lake suddenly know. It seems to be tranferred "through thin air."

It's also been an explanation for why the same new idea will pop up simultaneously at different places in the world, in the minds of different people. Ideas, thoughts and feelings "jump" from one person to another.

However this is more like a MOOD that's all over the place.

What could be the explanations? We're not having any worlwide disaster or war at this time. Could it be the pollen? The pollen count in south Texas is only about middle-range today There are probably innumerable locations where it's very low, and the weather and conditions are "perfect." Epidemic? Heavens no, though a lot of people are sick. Everybody stayed out too late last night partying and didn't get enough sleep? ho ho ho

What else is going on?

Well, Mother's Day just passed, and there is nothing with more emotional valence in our lives, from the day we're born till the day we die, than our mothers.

EQ ... is Patience. It's managing emotions that make you want to rush, hit, swear, and make poor decisions.

If all goes well, our emotional intelligence increases with age - up to around 50 or so. That's what the research in EQ shows. That's also what we know from looking around us, the researchers say, and the it levels off. Of course inproving in this area is optional. You can give yourself a better chance by getting some coaching.

There are some jobs that require a lot of emotional intelligence. All jobs require some; in others, managing your emotions is of the essence. Age discrimination is a legal issue and a serious one, but what I'm talking about here is the kinds of jobs that self-select by age. When I worked in the property management industry, we liked younger people to work at the apt. complexes because it required a lot of running around, but we couldn't get someone very young who could stand the heat of dealing with the public under those conditions. We hired all ages. The ones who stayed were generally in a specific age range.

Computer helpline people are under that sort of pressure. Read this and see if you could be patient and understanding with someone like this ... at the end of a long day ... after getting yelled at by your own boss ... or being fussed at by your partner because your were required to do too much overtime (this was a night call) ... and when you sat in a hot and airless cubicle and had a headache going into the call?

This is going around the Internet as humor, but it is also someone's job, and a job that requires a lot of emotional intelligence. This man or woman (we don't know which) lost it and it cost him or her her job. They weren't able to manage their growing frustration ...

THE HELPINE CALL FROM HELL

> This is a true story from the WordPerfect helpline. Needless to
> say, the help desk employee was fired; however, he/she is
> currently suing the Word Perfect organization for "Termination
> without Cause."
>
> Actual dialogue of a former WordPerfect Customer Support employee
> with a caller:
>
> Customer Support: "Ridge Hall computer assistant; may I help
> you?"
>
> Caller: "Yes, well, I'm having trouble with WordPerfect."
>
> CS: "What sort of trouble?"
>
> C: "Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words
> went away."
>
> CS: "Went away?"
>
> C: "They disappeared."
>
> CS: "Hmm. So what does your screen look like now?"
>
> C: "Nothing."
>
> CS: "Nothing?"
>
> C: "It's blank; it won't accept anything when I type."
>
> CS: "Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out?"
>
> C: "How do I tell?"
>
> CS: "Can you see the C: prompt on the screen?"
>
> C: "What's a sea-prompt?"
>
> CS: "Never mind. Can you move the cursor around on the screen?"
>
> C: "There isn't any cursor, I told you, it won't accept anything
> I type."
>
> CS: "Does your monitor have a power indicator?"
>
> C: "What's a monitor?"
>
> CS: "It's the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV.
> Does it have a little light that tells you when it's on?"
>
> C: "I don't know."
>
> CS: "Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where
> the power cord goes into it. Can you see that?"
>
> C: "Yes, I think so."
>
> CS: "Great. Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it's
> plugged into the wall."
>
> C: ".......Yes, it is."
>
> CS: "When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there
> were two cables plugged into the back of it, not just one?"
>
> C: "No."
>
> CS: "Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and
> find the other cable."
>
> C: ".......Okay, here it is."
>
> CS: "Follow it for me, and tell me if it's plugged securely into
> the back of your computer."
>
> C: "I can't reach."
>
> CS: "Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is?"
>
> C: "No."
>
> CS: "Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way
> over?"
>
> C: "Oh, it's not because I don't have the right angle - it's
> because it's dark."
>
> CS: "Dark?"
>
> C: "Yes - the office light is off, and the only light I have is
> coming in from the window."
>
> CS: "Well, turn on the office light then."
>
> C: "I can't."
>
> CS: "No? Why not?"
>
> C: "Because there's a power outage."
>
> CS: "A power... A power outage? Ah, Okay, we've got it licked
> now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff
> your computer came in?"
>
> C: "Well, yes, I keep them in the closet."
>
> CS: "Good. Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it up
> just like it was when you got it. Then take it back to the store
> you bought it from."
>
> C: "Really? Is it that bad?"
>
> CS: "Yes, I'm afraid it is."
>
> C: "Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them?"
>
> CS: "Tell them you're too stupid to own a computer."
>

Email for coaching - sdunn@susandunn.cc .

When the Gurus Speak

SUSAN DUNN IS YOUR EQ COACH, HERE TO ASSIST, INSPIRE, SUPPORT AND TRANSFORM YOUR EXPERIENCE OF YOURSELF, YOUR LIFE, YOUR RELATIONSHIPS, YOUR CAREER AND YOUR WORLD THROUGH THE MAGIC OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE COMPETENCIES (EQ).

"We have gone too far in emphasizing the value and import of the purely rational. For better or for worse, intelligence can come to nothing when the emotions hold sway."
- Daniel Goleman

When reading quotes from Daniel Goleman, use your EQ and notice his use of "can" and "may." These aren't absolutes ... i.e., when emotions hold sway, your cognitive intelligence MAY or CAN come to nothing. We know this about fear and anger ...both these emotional states shut down our ability to think reasonably, or even well. So can lust. These are the states when we do and say things and later say "What came over me?" or "What was I thinking?" or "That wasn't like me," or "The devil made me do it."

When he's using "can" or "may," he's using it in the putative sense; talking about possibilities.

He's best known for the subtitle of his book, "Emotional Intelligence" which is: "Why It Can Matter More Than IQ". He isn't saying that is DOES matter more than IQ, particularly not that it matters ALL THE TIME more than IQ. As we here at EQ Central are fond of saying, emotional intelligence is not the end-all be-all any more tha cognitive intelligence; it's the interface between thinking and feeling.

Any state of great "excitement" may render our thinking brains inoperable! That's what EQ is all about. Staying in good management, understanding what's going on, and making wise choices.

Strong emotions can also allow us to do tremendous things. Goleman's book begins with the story of the Chaunceys, who were traveling on a train with their 11 year old daughter who was confined to a wheelchair with cerebral palsy. When the train hit a faulty bridge and crashed into a bayou, they were able to push their daughter out a window to safety before they themselves perished.

We hear of people lifting cars up that have fallen on their loved ones, reacting in split seconds to save their own lives of the lives of someone they love, killing beasts with their bare hands, and even what many of us do all the time -- working long, hard hours at difficult jobs because we care about our families.

Peter Drucker said we knew nothing really about motivation; we just wrote books about it. However, we know the most important thing: motivation is not a thinking word. It's all about feelings.

One small example. Studies over the years have shown what most managers are unable to grasp in the day-to-day workplace: that the number one thing employees care about is being appreciated. It matters in most cases more than the title, more than the money, and more than the prestige.

Now I have a question for you? If you're a manager of people, including around a household, what can you do to let them know you appreciate them?

Emotional intelligence is about self-awareness. Start with yourself. What would make you "feel appreciated"? Send me your examples -- sdunn@susandunn.cc . I'll post them!

To subscribe to my ezines, go here. You will find several selections there. Why not choose them all?

TAKE THE EQ MAP AND FIND OUT WHAT YOUR EQ IS. THEN GET COACHING TO IMPROVE. YOU'LL LOVE THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES IN YOUR LIFE.