Upon winning the Master’s Golf Tournament, Bubba Watson  said, ” I don’t want to be famous or anything like that.  I just want to be me and play golf.”

What a great lesson!

“What you see is what you get” is a good rule to remember when it comes to personal relationships.

 
Another good rule to follow is that if you want to form a lasting relationship with someone, start by being basically happy with whom he or she is. It is courting disaster when you allow thoughtless, abusive or angry people into your life assuming that under your influence they will change. Don’t do it! You’ll typically be disappointed and the affect on your life could very well be disastrous.  I call this the Fundamental Relationship Error (FRE).

 
What is likely to happen is that we will change our behavior to accommodate these people, rather than the other way around. Notice that this doesn’t solve the problem.  Change is not something we can force on other people. Lasting change comes from within. And, when people are pushed from outside forces, they will push back. You could say how you would like it to be, hoping this opens the door to why you said that!

 
If, in significant ways, the people in our lives are not what we believe they should be, pressuring them to change will not typically be effective, in fact they will resent it. Change will not happen if we are convinced we are always right, or if we believe that the fault lies always with the other person. We have to adjust our approach and maybe change our attitude, without affecting our core values.  My friend Howard Schechter says, “Go vertical!”  This means look inside yourself.

 
Possibly, if we were to allow these people the dignity of being who they are without interjecting our criticism, we might find change happening naturally of its own accord. One thing, however, is certain: when we give up blaming and criticizing others, our relationships with them improve enormously.

I was reading an article about challenges couples experience in communications.  Most of the article was about what goes wrong – a list of ten problems.  The implications were that men and women differ in their wants.

Here arew the solutions offered.

◆ Techniques to Improve Dialogue

You start out with all the best intentions, but things seem to go wrong time and again as you and your partner unintentionally hurt each other’s feelings as the conversation progresses. The most important thing to remember is to respect one another, and try to be honest with your partner. Also, when you support your opinions and feelings with concrete information, you can make your message clearer. If you simply express your hopes or feelings without giving clear examples, your message can become ambiguous and cause misunderstandings. Think about how you can deliver your message in a way your partner would find more palatable. The following dialogue techniques may help.
1. Express your feelings: Say clearly what you are feeling. People tend to beat around the bush when they have to talk about negative feelings and end up fudging the point. This causes misunderstandings and complaints, making it difficult to have a sincere conversation. Therefore, it is important to be aware of your own feelings and express them precisely.
2. Express your needs: Say what you want. Most people want their partner to read their mind and do what they want, which has little chance of success. Express what you want for both you and your partner.
3. Explain you actions: Tell your partner what you are doing, what you have done and what you will be doing so that both sides understand one another better.

I address this in my book on making relationships last.

“The right side of your brain, neurologists say, is where the capacity for empathy resides. And, empathy, it appears, is the key to building long-lasting, powerful and solid relationships.

Empathy is described as the ability to recognize and understand another’s situation, feelings, concerns and motives. It’s often described colloquially as: “putting oneself in another person’s shoes” or “seeing things through someone else’s eyes.” It is NOT walking on eggshells, being “soft” or simply placating someone.

Empathy creates bonds of trust; it gives us insights into what others may be feeling or thinking; it helps us understand how or why others are reacting to situations; it sharpens our judgment and informs our decisions.

Think of empathy as a type of research. It’s paying attention at a deeper level. It’s using skills of perception to be able to read between the lines for cues of an individual’s unspoken priorities, fears, hopes and biases. Oftentimes, the full story lies underneath what’s being said. Knowing this can transform decision-making because the picture of an issue or a dynamic will be more complete.”

Bonds of trust are essential to longevity in relationships.  http://www.facebook.com/doug.ross2#!/pages/Loving-Relationships/135796953144714

Sylvia Natzel writes more on Empathy including business applications.

In most leagues, kids don’t face live pitching from a peer until they are 9 – 10 years old.  It’s usually called “kid-pitch”.  Many have good arms.  You can tell by the way they throw across the diamond as infielders or in to a cutoff man from  the outfield.  Dads, especially if they have done some coaching, often work with their kids anticipating the kid-pitch opportunities.

When you watch a game, you can see that there are wide differences in this skill.  Some boys throw like major leaguers, and others do their best but look awkward.  It is hard to consistently throw strikes, and thinking of the pitching motion makes them throw differently than they would at other positions, and the result is not very encouraging.

Here is what I suggest to do to get over this awkwardness.  Start in the outfield, near the fence, and have them throw to a flelder at second base.  Maybe make 10 throws.

Next, have them stand at third base and throw across the diamond to the first baseman.  Again, 10 throws.

Third, have them stand at second base and throw to the catcher at the plate. 10 more throws.  If the boy can do all those things fairly well, he can be a pitcher!

The final part of this drill is crucial.  Have the kid stand just beyond the pitchers mound and throw to the catcher at the plate.  Tell him what he is to think about is throwing a fast runner out at home plate.  5 throws.

Then move him to the mound and say still to throw the runner out at home.  10 throws.  Now you know if you have a pitcher or not.  When hitting practice comes around, say “why don’t you throw some, Tommy.  Throw it like you did when you wanted to throw the runner out at the plate”.

My grandson goes to a coach who puts the pitchers throwing motions together one step at a time.  He is teaching the “pitching motion”, and the kid is doing the five steps one at a time and when it comes to the throw it is nothing like the throw from the outfield. He’s lost the sense of the wholeness of any long or hard throw and instead is posturing.

I never pitched until I was a sophomore in college.  There were two guys ahead of me at first base, and one thing I enjoyed doing at practice and before games was making long throws with one of our better outfielders.  He warmed up for every game with me, and I learned to throw it back to him just as hard as he threw to me.  Our coach once asked me if I wanted to throw batting practice, so I did. He wanted me to throw hard, game conditions.  In that year I played few innings, pitched batting practice, and coached third base!

As a junior, I was a pitcher and first baseman, playing first when the one guy ahead of me was hurt or at a track meet! Half-way through the season I got a pitching start.  I actually had a no-hitter through 6 1/3 innings!!  I attribute this success to the long throws I did every day at practice with my outfielder teammate, Larry Bennetch.

Some of the leagues provide great information for parents and grandparents.  Here is a recent message to all of us!

The vast majority of dads and moms that make rides home from games miserable for their children do so inadvertently. They aren’t stereotypical horrendous sports parents, the ones who scream at referees, loudly second-guess coaches or berate their children. They are well-intentioned folks who can’t help but initiate conversation about the contest before the sweat has dried on their child’s uniform.

In the moments after a game, win or lose, kids desire distance. They make a rapid transition from athlete back to child. And they’d prefer if parents transitioned from spectator – or in many instances from coach – back to mom and dad. ASAP.

Brown (pictured below at podium), a high school and youth coach near Seattle for more than 30 years, says his research shows young athletes especially enjoy having their grandparents watch them perform.

“Overall, grandparents are more content than parents to simply enjoy watching the child participate,” he says. “Kids recognize that.”

A grandparent is more likely to offer a smile and a hug, say “I love watching you play,” and leave it at that.

Meanwhile a parent might blurt out …

“Why did you swing at that high pitch when we talked about laying off it?”

“Stay focused even when you are on the bench.”

“You didn’t hustle back to your position on defense.”

“You would have won if the ref would have called that obvious foul.”

“Your coach didn’t have the best team on the field when it mattered most.”

And on and on.

Sure, an element of truth might be evident in the remarks. But the young athlete doesn’t want to hear it immediately after the game. Not from a parent. Comments that undermine teammates, the coach or even officials run counter to everything the young player is taught. And instructional feedback was likely already mentioned by the coach.

“Let your child bring the game to you if they want to,” Brown says.

My own book has othger suggestions along these lines.  Click here.

The Future of Brain Transplants

• By Peter Tyson
• Posted 08.26.10
• NOVA scienceNOW

Will we ever grow replacement brains or do whole-brain transplants?

Need a new body part? Tissue engineers are now growing human bladders, lungs, and other organs in the lab with the hope that, someday soon, such organs may replace diseased organs in people. Transplant surgeons, for their part, routinely place donated kidneys, hearts, and other organs into patients whose own organs are failing. They have transplanted hands, arms, even, famously, a face.

This has left me wondering, where does the brain come into all this? Will we someday grow replacement brains or do whole-brain transplants? Three questions leap to mind: Why would we? Could we? And should we?

On bad days, we may feel we’d like a brain transplant, but what are the prospects realistically? Some experts have actually put their minds to it. EnlargePhoto credit: © Henrik Jonsson/iStockphoto

I must admit to feeling a bit squeamish with the whole idea, which you might agree has a sizeable “yuck” factor. And I felt a little sheepish when I called experts to ask them about it. Would they dismiss me out of hand, beseeching me not to waste their time with a subject best left to science-fiction writers? But with science and medicine advancing at a dizzying pace, and with questionable medical procedures of the past as cautionary tales, it seemed like a subject worth addressing, if only perhaps to reject it as untenable, unconscionable, or simply too ghastly to contemplate.

Why would we?

First of all, why? What medical justification could exist for growing a new brain, or part of one, and placing it in someone whose own brain, or part of it, was removed?

The Rest of the article

Thanks to my friend Bill Pettibon for sharing this with me.  Bill is a NeuroPsychologist in Sarasota, FL.

I remember sending funny little notes to girls when we were in 4th grade.  I mean, what the heck does a nine year old think this is all about?

“Roses are red, violets are blue, I wish you liked me, Be-cause I like you.”

A few years later I got it! “Be my Valentine!”  Sixty years later. “Please let me be your Valentine?”

What I am thinking is that the thing to do is to quietly and with focus, say I’m going to be your Valentine.  Do this in your mind.  You won’t need to tell the person, because if you act like their Valentine, they will know you love them. ” I will be your Valentine!”

Here in the US of A, California beaches lead the league in Bocce tournaments. I won the World Championship and lost it a year later on Stinson Beach.  Marcus Hauser of Austria, current champ,  is open to a challenge  in his country, though beaches are very rare there!

Read my somewhat business oriented book (contracts and agreements) by clicking here.  The title is Beach Bocce Champion: Be A Winner! 

For the Kindle version, click here.