Isolation is hard on your health

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"Isolated people have vastly increased rate of premature death from all causes and are 3-5x likelier to die early than people with strong social ties." -- Dean Ornish
Want to increase your social skills? Take THE EQ COURSE (tm). Email me at sdunn@susandunn.cc for information.

Other reasons to increase your emotional intelligence (EQ)?

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute is convinced there's a link between emotions and health. They've granted $30-million to Duke Univ. Medical Center to study 3,000 coronary patients who test high on depression and social isolation to try and enhance recovery.

"Adults remain social animals; they continue to require a source of stabilization outside themselves. That open-loop design means that in some important ways, people cannot be stable on their own -- not should or shouldn't, but can't be...Stability means finding people who regulate you well and staying near them." --Thomas Lewis, M.D.

[In EQ Emotional Intelligence tests] ... Substance abusers' key deficits turned out to be problem solving, social responsibility, and stress tolerance. Spousal abusers primarily lacked empathy and had poor impulse control and an inflated self-regard." -- US Air Force

How to Manage Change in Hard Times: Don't Micro-Manage

Micro-Managing breeds more distrust ...

On the Project Management blog, Jonathan Gilbert, PMP, director of client solutions for ESI International talks about Managing Change Through a Downturn:

“Trust needs to be the underlying environment in any change initiative,” advises Gilbert. “Currently, there is a paucity of trust in organisations, as organisational members question the need for downsizing, and organisation leaders wonder how hard everyone is really working. My experience tells me that when times get tough, leaders tend to deal with the massive disequilibrium of tough times by micro-managing, which breeds even more distrust.”

Read the article for Gilbert's three steps for successful change initiatives.

Gilbert then lists his four top skills for improving your abilities to manage change successfully:

1. Deep listening: the ability to hear and empathise with the people being impacted by the change
2. Emotional intelligence: a facility to understand the physiological, neurological and emotional responses that we all have to change in our lives
3. Questioning: the ability to ask questions that allow people to have their own insights about what the change really means (as a leader, you cannot tell people what insights they should have – they have to arrive at them on their own)
4. Patience: an ability to suspend urgency for a time while people work through their responses to change because everyone will adapt to change at different rates.

Good words. To improve your emotional intelligence, take The EQ Course.

Christmas Gifts for Older Gents

From today's mailbag - what to buy an older gentleman. There are some great, empathic ideas in here.

7 Top Christmas Gifts Of 2007 For Older Men
By Peter Crump

He's a little older now, his hair is greying a little, or alot, and he's a bit slower than he used to be.

But you love him more than ever and you need a hot Christmasgift for him this year and you're completely out of greatChristmas gift ideas.

Here's 7 top Christmas ideas for an older man.

1. An LP to iPod converter. If he's like me he still has asecret stash of LPs tucked away somewhere that he loves tolisten to, but doesn't any more because his equipment is broken,or just too old. How about a turntable that converts his LPs into a format to play on an iPod or Nano, with software to help eliminate those annoying pops and crackles that are so common on LPs?

2. An iPod or Nano. Chances are there's no point in giving hima turntable to convert his old LPs into a format to play on his iPod or Nano, because he doesn't have one. Get him an iPod andhe'll understand why the kids love them so much. Or get him numbers 1 and 2 together for his Christmas gift and he can listen to his old LPs anywhere he wants.

3. A 35mm slide or negative to digital converter. So he canconvert all his old slides and negatives to digital format.Digital photos are so useful, there's so many things he can dowith them. And he can convert all or some of his old slides andnegatives to digital, load them all on his computer and they'reall there, ready for a slide show.

4. A gutter cleaning robot. He's getting a little past climbingup on the roof now and would rather employ someone else to cleanall those leaves out of the gutters.

Why not save him the money and give him a gutter cleaning robot for Christmas. It cleans leaves, small branches and dirt out of his gutters. Designed by roboticists from the US army, it's controlled by a hand held remote and runs on rechargeable batteries.

5. A peaceful progression wake up clock. Rather than the rude awakening he probably gets from his clock/radio alarm now there's an easier way. Half an hour before wake up the clock starts to glow slightly, brightening slowly and warming releasing aromatherapy aromas into the bedroom atmosphere. Then a slow increase in personally chosen sounds of nature, culminating in an alarm at wake up time.

The perfect Christmas gift for the man who's earned the right to a peaceful wake up. And it can work in reverse to encourage him to sleep if he doesn't sleep as well as he used to.

6. An acoustic ear warmer. Like me he probably doesn't hear quite as well as he used to, and feels the cold more than he used to. Give him some ear warmers that allow him to hear clearly. Designed to allow sound to pass through so he isn't always asking you to repeat what you said.

And suggestion number 7 for a top Christmas gift idea for your favorite older man this Christmas. A remote controlled beveragebuggy.

It's a scale model dune buggy that has holders for 2 16 oz cansor bottles of his favorite drink. He holds the remote and sendsthe dune buggy to the fridge where one of his willing accomplices put his 2 drinks in it to send back to him. It's a laugh and it allows him to consume whatever he wants to drink without getting off the chair. After all, he's earned it.

Now there's 7 quite unique Christmas gift ideas for the older man this year. So I don't want to hear excuses that you can't think of a single idea, ok?

About the Author: Peter calls himself The Mens Gift Guru andpublishes a website called Find That Gift For Him athttp://findthatgiftforhim.com/, all about mens gifts, includingChristmas gifts for men at http://findthatgiftforhim.com/category/christmas_gifts/ where you can read about these and other great Christmas gift ideas.

People who feel your pain -- literally

Extreme empathizers feel your pain - More Health News - MSNBC.com

People in this experiment have something called mirror-touch synesthesia. When they see another person being touched, they experience a tactile sense of touch. Evidentally for them, it triggers the same part of the brain as actual touch, and this connection helps explain how we understand what other people are feeling.

Bush Bids Farewell to Blair

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE NEWS

Bush Bids Farewell to Blair - http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=894182007
As Bush says goodbye to Blair, meeting with him for the last time in their official capacities, The Scotsman writes: 'Even detractors of the president concede he has a high "emotional intelligence" quotient, diffusing awkward questions with humour - a tactic deployed more articulately by Mr Blair.'


Meanwhile, NewScientist.com news service reports of a DEVICE THAT WARNS YOU IF YOU'RE BORING OR IRRITATING.

What took them so long? you ask. I have some people I'd like to send this too!

Assuming that we care, we rely on social cues and emotional intelligence to alert us to when we are doing this to others, and autistic individuals lack the ability to read these cues and that's how this device will help.

Called an "emotional social intelligence prosthetic device," it is being developed at MIT. A small camera will be pinned to the side of a pair of glasses which will then be connected to software that can read the emotions these images show. If they aren't "engaging" the other person, the computer will vibrate.

It can supposedly show whether someone is agreeing, disagreeing, concentrating, thinking, unsure or interested. It tracks such things as "movements of the eyebrows, lips and nose, and tracks head movements such as tilting, nodding and shaking."

So far the machine is reading it right 64% of the time with regular folks, and 90% with actors. The article did not say how they were assessing what the people's emotions were -- an interesting point.

One of the problems the researchers also face is training autistic people to look at the faces of the people to whom they are speaking ... an interesting point as well.

If all this makes you think about nonverbal communication, empathy and emotional intelligence, and you'd like to learn more, take the EQ course - www.susandunn.cc/eqcourse.htm . You will find it fascinating to improve your emotional intelligence.

Timothy Bickmore, of Northeastern University in Boston, evidently a dedicated teacher, is quoted as saying: "I would love it if you could have a computer looking at each student in the room to tell me when 20 per cent of them were bored or confused."

Queen Elizabeth II to attend first Kentucky Derby

FOX Sports - Horseracing - Queen Elizabeth II to attend first Kentucky Derby

What a great title for an article. It's so eye-catching and heart-warming.

"Firsts" -- they are the biggest -- the very biggest events in life.

Recently I took my granddaughter on her first real plane trip (she had been on that 55 min. one from Dallas to San Antonio). Well, this one was from Dallas to D. C. We had planned a "field trip" tour for her to see the nation's capital, and were focused on all the things she would be able to see for the first time, but what she was most excited about was looking out the plane window. For the entire trip - up and back - she never took her eyes off the window of the plane.

All your own "firsts" are wonderful, and when you are with someone else on a "first," it can be just as wonderful, if you have the emotoinal intelligence competency of empathy, that is.

It takes you back ... it makes you remember how you felt on that same "first." Oddly I don't remember my very first plane trip, I remember my first trip AFTER I had take Geology in college. I looked at the ox bows especially (and was quick to point them out to my granddaughter). Every time you see something for a first time, you stretch something in your brain. Then when you revisit it, with new learning, you see it with new eyes again. And then when you use emotional intelligence and experience it with another person on their first, you can feel again the thrill you had.

New things are essential to emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence includes empathy - understanding that other people have feelings, and being able to imagine what they might be feeling.

It relies on nonverbal intelligence, another emotional intelligence competency. My granddaughter might have been afraid on her first real plane trip. Many are. How did I know she wasn't (besides her words)? Well it's all their in the nonverbals, a large part of emotional intelligence and how we express our emotions. Eye contact is always a big sign. "She couldn't take her eyes off" the plane window.

Well, I would like to be there when the Queen of England see her first Kentucky Derby -- the sport of kings, and a tradition for which we owe the UK a big debt.

She's seen a lot in her day, more than most of us perhaps. I wonder ...

You can increase the boundaries of your life, and deepen your enrichment greatly with emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence allows you to enjoy vicariously the experiences of others.

Learn it today ! Go to www.susandunn.cc/EQcourse.htm . With emotional intelligence you will learn what the Spanish say -- la vida es corta, pero ancha -- life is short, but wide.

Remember? And what you remember is the feelings ... remember your

First kiss
First time you rode your bike
First day of school
First fight with your lover
First job
First day at college
First date
First train trip
First trip out of the country
First new language you learned
First great art you saw
Your first opera

Eyes and ears wide open??