Say it Better

The Body Has a Mind of Its Own

Why do people “still feel fat after losing weight? Why do you duck your head when you drive into an underground parking garage? Why are kids so enthralled by video games? “ It’s the maps in the brain that rule your instinctive behavior – and you change your brain.

Just as MapQuest has content and software to customize a map to your immediate need, your brain is full of flexible maps of your body. They enable you to navigate your world, improve at a sport o or get stuck, replaying the same emotional script in new situations. The good news is you can literally alter your brain to change your feelings and behaviors. Learn how in a book out this September by veteran neuroscience writer, Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee, her son, also a science writer. To pique your curiosity, read Sandra’s preview.

I was amazed at the many ways people have altered their bodies or had altered experiences, using their "minds" after reading the studies collected by Esalan co-founder (and fellow Sausalitan), Michael Murphy in The Future of the Body. He says, "We live only part of the life we are given." That phrase became the title of a book he co-wrote later with George Leonard that offer a program of exercises, mediation and visualization that helped me to (sometimes) "quiet the chattering mind."

Bad Luck and Trouble

At the ATM machine the ex Army investigator discovers someone’s deposited money into his account. Naturally, he proceeds to decode the numbers in the amount of the deposit to discover the message meant for him. From the explosive opening scene the story lives up to Johnny Winter’s song, “…When my bad luck quit me, man my trouble just began” yet you’ll want to stay for the wild ride. As Maxine Clarke explains, (the main character) “Jack Reacher is the fiction twin of TV's Jack Bauer.” Lee Child’s smart, tightly-plotted mystery is a gripping reminder of the power of lean, taut, language to grab and hold attention. Indulge yourself. Read it as a primer to help you fight the bull in anything you write next.

Turn Conferences Inside Out

Ballrooms with rows of chairs, cloth-covered tables, the panel or expert speaker up front (we'll talk at break). It's been that way for over 30 years. As a former journalist and full-time speaker for several years I've never understood the lack of change in conference and meeting formats - especially in this peer-powered New Normal World. Every once in awhile someone suggests radical changes to the meeting professionals, most recently Eliott Maisie.

Quick and Dirty Tips

You can actually enjoy cleaning up your writing with breezy, wildly popular, savvy and lucky Grammar Girl Mignon Fogerty. Count me among her legion of fans. (Not to be confused with other quick and dirty tips.) Imagine! One million downloads of her podcast - before her book comes out.

“Poverty is often not personal.

If your next-door neighbor's child was dying and you could save her for $100, you wouldn't think twice. But a child 10,000 miles away whom you have never met, that's just different.

About 29,000 kids die every day of preventable causes--29,000! These kids have names and faces, hopes and dreams. Their parents love them as much as we love our kids. We've got to make poverty personal. Stalin once said: ‘A million deaths is a statistic, one death is a tragedy.’ We must try to see the face of the one child,” World Vision president, Richard Stearns told Guy Kawasaki.

The specific detail provides the general conclusion not vice versa. That detail is more credible, emotional and memorable and thus more likely to motivate people to take action.

How palpably personal and specific is your story in your call for action?

The Kind of Anger That’s the Biggest Killer

Staying angry is akin to holding on hard to a vibrating pole. Winston Churchill once said, “A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.” It's not just a matter of character but of survival.

Here's the surprise. The effects of anger on health have more to do with how long the bouts last than how frequently or intense they are, according to Steve Stosny, author of You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore.

It’s the long-lasting, even low-grade simmers that damage your body and psyche. To paraphrase Stosny, the normal experience of overt anger lasts only a few minutes. But the subtle forms of anger, such as resentment, impatience, irritability, grouchiness, etc., can go on for hours and days at a time. Persistent, prolonged angry times mean you have a five times greater chance of dying before age 50.

Anger elevates blood pressure and the possibility of stroke, heart disease, cancer, depression, anxiety disorders and it depresses the immune system.

People who are frequently angry also have more aches and pains or get more colds and bouts of flu or headaches or upset stomachs.

Angry people are more likely to attempt to numb their upsetting feelings by smoking, using drugs or drinking, or through compulsive behaviors like workaholism and perfectionism.

Writes Stosney, “Because anger acts as an amphetamine on the entire central nervous system, it always produces a physiological "crash." This crash often feels like depression when the issue that evoked the anger is not resolved.” The good news, according to Stosny is that you don't have to talk about it to improve your mood and marriage, yet here's this if you do.

Ready to test your level of anger or resentment? I think I'll share these insight next weekend at CLA. There are ways to disagree without being disagreeable.

How a First-Timer’s Book Sales Are Soaring

It’s by courting bloggers that infectiously interesting Tim Ferris has managed to get his first book, so high on the charts the moment it debuted. Steve Rubel tells how 4-Hour Workweek screamed to the top. I visited Ferris’ blog two weeks ago and stayed for a 20-minute visit. That’s what can happen with generous content sharing on such viral topics as body redesign (with before and after photos). Ahem, of course it’s his fresh ideas about how to invoke the old 80/20 Rule and Parkinson’s Law to have more playtime that you’ll want to see first, right?

See Authors in Video Vignettes

Authors with Simon and Schuster are getting a captivating new way to connect with would-be readers of their books. The publisher is partnering with trailblazer, Brad Inman's Turn Here, to create author videos. This is especially good news for authors and avid readers because Turn Here uses professional filmmakers and videographers.

It launches in June.

Publishers’ use of social media is still new as they tip toe into interactive opportunities to bond with readers. Yet, years ago Waterfront Media began partnering with publishers to create member-based web sites around certain blockbuster books, and it has proved quite profitable for all partners. Amazon is a "sort of" early adopter.

Also see Rohit Bhargava’s five case studies of savvy book marketing.

“Is it more important to be competent

… or likeable?” Guy Kawasaki asks Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success.

She answer, “People would actually rather work with someone who is incompetent and likeable than competent and unlikable. Most people nod in agreement when they read this. It’s the unlikable people who form arguments in their head.

But there’s more. At work, if you are unlikable, people start thinking you are less competent. So stop thinking you can skate by on your genius IQ because you can’t. You need emotional intelligence as well. This situation is so pronounced that there are special-education classrooms rife with kids who could read when they were three. Social skills matter as much as intelligence when it comes to long-term success, even for the geniuses.”

Her book excerpt provides helpful follow-up advice. After all, if you throw mud you’ll get dirty.

Trunk is an “author, columnist, former executive serial entrepreneur “– leading what Marci Alboher would describe as a slash life. I’ll bet Marty, Dick and Pierre and will also enjoy this lively, timely book.

Go Blank to Gain Focus

You can reduce stress and increase your ability to focus through practicing meditation a new study shows. No a surprise to those who have long practiced stilling their minds yet gratifying to hear of new research that buttresses what is a sometimes derided way to spend time.

Remarkable Dr. Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, says it is the “ability to release thoughts that pop into mind that frees the brain to attend to more rapidly changing things and events in the world at large." Plus the practice improves your immune system and your ability to read others changing facial expressions. Downside? It takes three months of intense training to make the shift. But worth it, eh?