Regular readers of this blog know that to illustrate an idea, I usually utilize a comic strip or a brief parable. To fully integrate all of the ideas that appear in the blog, I’ve created a coming of age trilogy of novels that is set in Brooklyn that my students over the years have coined The Cool Steve Stories, because one of the main characters…
The chief executive officer (CEO) in the Dilbert comic strip is the bald-headed guy. He has been having quite a few conflicts with his workers. After trying some new approaches to resolve these conflicts, he decides to see if touching might help: Apparently, one of the CEO’s workers likes the way it feels when he is patted on his head. I don’t think I would…
This week we have a special treat, a guest blog post by Dr. Robin Lynn Treptow, PhD. Dr. Treptow describes herself as a peace psychologist who lives in Montana with her family. She believes that sustainable world-wide peace is achievable via psychological wisdom, and she labors one-on-one in each human interaction towards this goal. Here’s a little background to Dr. Treptow’s post: A couple of…
If you follow the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, you know that Calvin, from time to time, does some things that upset his Dad. And it is often not hard to understand why his father might become angry at some of Calvin’s actions. Here we see Calvin’s dad blowing up in anger. My wife and I raised two sons, and I wouldn’t be honest if…
Audrey is at a fine restaurant with her parents celebrating her law school graduation. “Well, your mother and I are so proud of you, Audrey,” says her father. “Thanks, Dad!” “Now you know, Audrey, I think it best that you begin your career in my Wall Street firm,” says her father. “Dad, we discussed this already. I’m going to get a job in the Department…
On this blog, we have been discussing how we can move from anger to challenge. In one post, to help to move in the direction of challenge, I asked you to think of conflict as a great sea. I explained that there is a region of the Sea of Conflict that is known as Anger. There, storms are particularly likely to churn up, and some…
In my last blog post, THE ABCs OF POWER: THE LETTER “A” I presented some ideas about the nature of power. The key points are: 1. power consists of our skills to achieve our desires 2. when we feel confident that we can achieve our desires, generally speaking, we feel less defensive when someone throws insults at us 3. to better handle name calling, insults…