In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like reveal three critical lessons that can be learned from Mel Gibson’s meltdown.

First a quick update:

****  Mel Gibson’s rant: Listen to the radio interview I gave to Russ Morley of news talk 850 WFTL for insights and analysis:

http://patrickwanis.com/RadioInterviews.asp

**** Lindsay Lohan’s real issues -  read my comments to Gil Kaufman of MTV news:
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1643256/20100708/story.jhtml

Now, let’s talk about what can be learned from Mel Gibson’s meltdown.

The media has been rife with playbacks of an audio recording of a phone call between Mel Gibson and his girlfriend Oksana Gregorieva – mother of their 8-month old child and mother to James Bond star Timothy Dalton’s 12-year-old child. The recording contains Mel Gibson speaking astonishing profanity, making racist remarks, misogynistic comments and a death threat against Oksana. It’s also been alleged that Mel Gibson had hit her in the face earlier this year resulting in broken teeth. Oksana refers to that alleged assault and Gibson does not seem to refute it on the tape.

Let me begin by clearly stating that there is no justification whatsoever for hitting a woman or making a death threat against a woman. Of course, the police in certain situations will disagree with the comment about hitting a woman, as evidenced in recent cases in the past thirty days: a policeman in Seattle punched a young woman in the face during a scuffle; El Reno police Tasered an 86-year-old disabled grandma in her bed because the old woman “took a more aggressive posture in her bed” and; an 87-year-old woman died after being shocked with a Taser by a sheriff’s deputy – she was waving around a pellet gun and not an actual firearm.

The first point here is that the Mel Gibson incident has again raised the issue of domestic violence. In the phone call, Oksana, who is apparently in Mel Gibson’s home during the call says she is scared for her life and the life of her child but she fails to report the prior assault incident to the police; nor does she report the death threat, nor does she leave his house immediately and seek safety somewhere else, such as in a woman’s shelter.

  Continue reading “3 lessons from Mel Gibson” »

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like discuss the question “What were you thinking?” and explain why almost all of our decisions are emotionally driven and how the understanding of that is a key to success.

First a quick update:

**** The Psychology of Anger: Listen to the interview I gave to Jim Peake of MysuccessGateway.com about anger – what anger really is, the emotions that lie beneath anger, how to safely release anger and why simply trying to manage anger isn’t the solution.

http://patrickwanis.com/montel/PsychologyOfAnger/Packages.asp  

Now, let’s talk about our emotions and the way they affect our decisions and behavior.

What do all of these people have in common?

King David and Bathsheba

Samson and Delilah

Sen. Gary Hart and Donna Rice

Jim Bakker and Jessica Hahn

Sen. John Edwards and Rielle Hunter

Sen. Chuck Robb and Tai Collins

Gov. Elliot Spitzer and Ashley Dupre

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Christina Beatty

Robert Moffat and Danielle Chiesi

Yes, the above is a list of powerful men who had affairs and eventually suffered a downfall but it is also a list of men who were led by their emotions. Of course, it will be argued that men are the first to cheat but famous women have also cheated, strayed and betrayed such as LeeAnn Rimes who left her husband Dean Sheremet for Eddie Cibrian or Jennifer Lopez who had an affair with Ben Affleck while married to Chris Judd or Julia Roberts who had an affair with married cameraman Danny Moder.

But this newsletter is not about those types of scandals. The above simply serve as extreme examples of the way emotions rule us and can ruin us.

Contrary to what we would like to believe – that we are highly advanced beings – humans are still controlled by their emotions. Think for one moment about your response to the above examples; did you give a pass to anyone of those people in the above list because he or she might be a favorite of yours and is your decision and response based on logic or emotion?

  Continue reading “What were you thinking?” »