The fear to forgive

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to discuss the fear to forgive.

First a quick update:

****  Twitter updates – Follow me on Twitter if you want to have access to regular insights and revelations and receive instantly the link to the  my weekly newsletter and articles and features in the media.
Twitter: @Behavior_Expert

Now, let’s talk about the fear of forgiveness.

I am writing this newsletter from Australia where I am taping a couple of TV shows and visiting family.

It was Sunday afternoon. And feeling like I needed a mental break, I decided to seek out sunlight, fresh air and wide open spaces.

I headed to the beach and was enjoying a walk on the pier at Seaford. I was taking a photo of the sun glimmering on the water when a lady stopped and said, “Your photo won’t work because you are shooting into the sun.”

‘That’s okay. I am shooting down into the water’ I responded.

From there, a conversation began and knowing that I was based in the US, she mentioned her interest in Cesar Millan the “Dog Whisperer” and asked me if I believed in his work and TV show.

‘Yes. Cesar has great success because he helps the dog owners transform and teaches them that their dog is responding to their emotions. If the owners are anxious, nervous and out of control, so too, is the dog.’

“My first dog used to speak to me almost like a human. I mean, he would grunt and turn his head away” she said.

‘So like you, he too, had a dominant personality’, I said smiling

She tried to deny it but then admitted she was testing me to see how accurately I could read her.

“What job do you think I used to do?”

Without knowing anything else about her, I said ‘I see you working with children or as a nurse with children, caring, nurturing and protecting them.’

Wanting to further test me, she denied it and then eventually admitted that she had been a teacher for over 35 years and gave special attention to troubled children and battled the educational system to teach her way.

“What else to you read about me?”

‘You are angry and you don’t trust anyone and that’s why you became dominant – to protect yourself and to protect children.’

“Well, you have to. You either sink or swim!”

She opened up and told me of her hatred for men because she had been abused by her father and her husband.

Continue reading “The fear to forgive” »

Our obsession with youth and beauty

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to reveal our misguided obsession with youth and how it is creating misery, depression and broken relationships.

First a quick update:

****  Protecting Your Children From Drugs – Did you know that parents play the biggest role and are the single most critical factor in determining delinquency, youth violence, and drug abuse – even greater than environmental community factors? Also, boys who have very low self-esteem in the sixth or seventh grade are 1.6 times more likely to meet the criteria for drug dependence nine years later than other children. The root cause of each youth’s behavior is the result of the relational conflict within his/her family. What can parents do to protect their children from drugs and help children who have fallen victim to drugs? Listen to the interview and discussion between myself and Aaron Huey from Fire Mountain Sober Living Home for Teens in Colorado. Read more here: http://patrickwanis.com/RadioInterviews.asp#protectfromdrugs

Go straight to the interview here:
http://patrickwanis.com/Protecting_Children_From_Drugs.asp

Now, let’s talk about how our misguided obsession with youth & staying young is causing misery, unhappiness and broken relationships. Recently, a storm arose in France and the US over French Vogue magazine’s adult-styled photographs of 10-year-old child model Thylane Loubry – topless, pantless and nude.

Magazines and advertisers have been promoting fashion images of girls who are many years below the age of consent and are portrayed to look sexy, thus further reinforcing a beauty-based value system that alienates adult women by promoting the idea that the younger the woman, the more appealing she is.

In 1999, at age 17, Britney Spears became famous with her pig tails and sexy school uniform in the video “(Hit Me) Baby One More Time” and later being sporting a bra and panties on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

In 2010, “Glee” stars Dianna Agron and Lea Michele posed for a GQ magazine spread, set in high school, sucking lollipops, with their legs wide open. The same year, supermodel Miranda Kerr posed topless in school girl clothes for French fashion magazine “Numero.”

The overall message blasting out is that if you are a woman and you want to be attractive and appealing to men, then you need to be really young – a teenager – and sexual.

The sexualization of young girls promotes the message that it is okay for regular men to be sexually attracted to underage girls. But western society is also placing greater value and greater emphasis overall on youth and being young. Music, television and film idols and stars are becoming younger and are expected to look that way or otherwise be quickly tossed away.

Britney Spears was 17 when she became famous, Miley Cyrus was 15 when she posed topless for Vanity Fair magazine and Justin Bieber was 14 when he became a teen heartthrob. Yes, we have always had young idols in pop music and culture but today, youth is sold as the ideal; something to constantly strive to attain and maintain – even when we have passed our youth. It is sold in commercials and advertising, in film and in television programs – in the form of clothes, food, beverages, cosmetics and surgery. And when we see older women on the television, such as the ‘Housewives’ series, we see them struggling and immersing themselves in plastic surgery in the hope of looking young.

We have progressively torn down the value of knowledge and wisdom gained through life experience. Instead, we have replaced it with the idolization and obsession with youth – staying young and looking young – the ‘constant quest for youth syndrome.’

Continue reading “Our obsession with youth and physical perfection” »

Prove you love me

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to discuss why some people create situations to test your love for them.

First a quick update:

****  Why women love bad boys – Read my insights into the key motivations women are attracted to bad boys: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/why-women-love-bad-boys/

And watch the interview I gave to Australia’s The Morning TV Show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9lp1gZTgtQ

****  “The fear of commitment” – What’s behind the fear of commitment?  Why are you attracted to players?  How can you deal with the power struggle in relationships?  Read the transcript of the interview I gave to Lucia, host of The Art of Love Radio Show:  http://patrickwanis.com/blog/fear-of-commitment/

Now, let’s talk about how to respond when someone tests your love for them.

A few years ago, The Montel Williams TV show sent me to Michigan to spend four days with a family to help them through a crisis. This was a blended family – the husband has two daughters, the wife one daughter and the husband and wife have a 2-year-old daughter together. The two daughters were violent towards the step mother and their step sister. One of them, Chelsea, tried to strangle her step sister three times and kicked her step mother in the stomach when she was pregnant. Chelsea is just 14! She had the appearance of a thirty-year-old woman who has been a junkie – almost no life in her tiny, skinny body which looked like the body of an eight-year-old girl. Her eyes sunken, wearing heavy black eyeliner, and emanating such an overwhelming sadness that the TV crew and producers wanted to just cry and hold her.

Chelsea and her sister were abused and sexually abused by various family members (not dad or the step mother.) It is not truly possible for anyone other than the victim to fully understand the pain and resulting effects of abuse on a child. Yes, I can write and reveal some of those symptoms and effects but they cannot reveal the real or full extent of the pain or trauma. Only the victim knows the depths of the pain.

Abuse will also create anger, fear, feelings of betrayal, the constant feeling of imminent danger and the loss of trust.

Continue reading “Prove you love me” »

Children absorb your emotions

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to reveal how children are like sponges and absorb your emotional state.

First a quick update:

****  Australian TV: Why do women love bad boys? I will be live from Hollywood on Australia’s The Morning TV Show Thursday 9 AM (Aussie time) revealing the answers.

****  Why do women desire bad boys? – Read my quotes and insights on MSN.com:
http://glo.msn.com/relationships/love-lessons-1534338.story

****  “Summer Heat – Summer Lovin” – Read what I said about the link between summer and factors of attraction in the article for College Magazine: http://www.collegemagazine.com/editorial/1265/Summer-Heat-Summer-Lovin

****  Justin Bieber’s bad behavior – Is Justin Bieber another example of the Fame Factor suffering from delusions of power, grandeur, and denial? Read my quotes and insights on FOXnews.com: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/08/09/justin-bieber-earning-reputation-for-hollywoods-biggest-brat/

****  Is Twitter and tweeting bad for your brain? Read about the benefits and the negative impact that Tweeting has on your brain and mental performance: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/is-tweeting-bad-for-your-brain/

Now, lets’ talk about children and how they are just like sponges and they absorb everything around them – including your emotions.

“He’s just a child; he won’t understand.”

That’s a comment often made by an adult who thinks that because a child’s brain hasn’t fully developed he therefore won’t be affected by either a comment or an event that is occurring – sometimes right in front of the child.

It is true that the human brain doesn’t fully develop until around the age of mid 20s – the last part of the brain to mature is the executive/decision-making center – the frontal lobes of the brain. However, that doesn’t stop children at a very early age from making conclusions, forming beliefs and experiencing and holding onto emotions, pain and trauma.

In my newsletter “It’s not your fault” http://patrickwanis.com/blog/its-not-your-fault/, I discuss the movie “Good Will Hunting” as an example of the way children blame themselves for their parents’ actions.

Will Hunting (played by Matt Damon) is a young boy who happens to be a genius but there’s one block to his success – his belief about himself.  On the outside, Will Hunting portrays arrogance and self-confidence. But underneath, Will blames himself for the abuse his father dished out to him – his father would hit him almost nightly with a metal wrench. As an adult, Will Hunting subconsciously believes that it was his fault for what his dad did; ‘there must have been something wrong with me for my father to hit and abuse me.’

Will Hunting is an example of the way children take on a belief and make a conclusion about their self-worth and deservedness. But children also absorb the emotions of their parents as well as taking on responsibility for the actions and emotions of their parents.

Ray is 35 and his entire life he has been dating women that are sad, depressed and need rescuing. When asked what attracted him to these types of women, he became perplexed and confused.

“I don’t know why I like these women” Ray told me. “I mean, it’s not like they make me happy. The opposite is true; they drain me and bring me down.”

Eventually Ray saw the similarity between these women and his mother who he remembers as always being “sad, depressed and in her own world.”

Ray was subconsciously trying to rescue these women, to make them happy, just the way he wished his mother would be. But what Ray wasn’t consciously aware of, was the way he had absorbed the sadness and depression that his mother felt. He had taken on her pain and subconsciously believed that it wasn’t right for him to be so happy when his mother was so sad. He saw that she didn’t and couldn’t have fun and so he, too, believed that he wasn’t meant to have fun either. Ultimately, Ray had absorbed his mother’s emotions and pain.

Comedian and actor, Jim Carrey reveals a similar story when describing his childhood and explains the motivation that led him to become a comedian:

Continue reading “Children absorb your emotions” »

See it my way

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to discuss the power of seeing things from a new perspective.

First a quick update:

****  “The Second Coming of Christ?” – Yet another self-professed guru, Mahendra Trivedi enters the foray of gurus, cults and brainwashing with claims that he can heal and cure diseases such as advanced cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and chronic headaches. His promotional and marketing materials compare him to Jesus Christ but the only US institution to research Trivedi’s alleged gift and ability found no substance to his claims and people close to Trivedi claim he is a scam artist, a cult leader and a fraud with some women accusing him of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Listen to the revealing interview I gave to Michele Morrisette of PurQi.com http://www.purqi.com/ Click here:
http://patrickwanis.com/RadioInterviews.asp#guruscultbrainwashing

Now, lets’ talk about changing your life by changing your perspective.

In 1965, British pop group, The Beatles had a number one hit with the song, “We can work it out”:

Try to see it my way,

Only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong.

While you see it your way

There’s a chance that we might fall apart before too long.

The song was inspired by Paul McCartney’s experience with his girlfriend who was moving and Paul was trying to convince her that they could still be together in spite of the distance.

Accordingly, Paul does what most of us would do when trying to convince someone, tell them to see it our way, ‘view it from my perspective.’ And that is a natural response; the belief that ‘if the other person could only see it my way, then everything would be okay.’ The problem is that the other person is thinking exactly the same thing which results in arguments. And that explains the lyrics added to the song by John Lennon:

Life is very short, and there’s no time

For fussing and fighting, my friend.

I have always thought that it’s a crime,

So I will ask you once again.

It is true that our perspective needs to be shared and discussed, and we need to have a voice and express our feelings and emotions, but, the key to all persuasion and influence is to understand the other person, to see things through their eyes. Only when you truly understand the other person’s needs, values and priorities is it possible to respond in a way that can bring about change.

However, this article is not about influence and persuasion.

Continue reading “See it my way” »