All – Page 6 – Senia Maymin, Ph.D.

Office Hours start Wed 5-7pm EST

Posted on Monday August 11, 2008 by Senia

Hi, I am trying something new.
I will have office hours Wednesday, 8/13, 5-7pm.

If you’d like to:

Have a free, brief coaching session about a specific topic.
Investigate what a month-long coaching with me might be like
Learn about the latest research-based tools for increasing happiness, productivity, and success

PHONE NUMBER: 1-877-SENIA-01 (1-877-736-4201).

This means that I will be open to discussing any issues you have on your mind.
Call in anytime 5-7pm New York-time, and leave a message if I am on the phone with another office-hours session. More on coaching.

My best,
Senia

Live in/near NY? Have kids? Want to have a better life? (For national TV)

Posted on Monday August 4, 2008 by Senia

Hi, I am working with a news organization that is interested in following a person for a few weeks who has some major issues going on – can be career (my specialty), finding a job, changing jobs, finances, relationship issues, less major health issues.

Here’s the proposal. If there are some urgent things in your life that are not going well, this national TV program wants to follow you for a few weeks – while you and I have a few coaching sessions. Can coaching improve your life, especially when there are strong needs, and urgent-seeming things on your plate? The program would film a few of our coaching sessions, and might interview you on film, as well as might document some parts of your life on film. The process should be a few weeks.

You must:
* Live in/near NY. We would meet a few times in my office (65th, 2nd).
* Have children. The program would like to make sure that we’re following a family in which the adult is figuring out a few things and likely balancing that with family time. Men encouraged to apply also.

Please email me (seniacom@senia.com):
1) what is your life situation right now that you believe coaching may be able to help you?
2) where do you live? how old are your kids?

I will be taking down this posting once enough people have responded.
Thank you very much,

Senia

The “Golden Rule” of Negotiating

Posted on Monday August 4, 2008Monday August 4, 2008 by Senia

What’s the one most important thing to know or do when negotiating:
* with your colleagues about the direction of the business?
* with your boss about getting a promotion?
* with your friends about going to the restaurant you want to go to?

See my answer here at Coachology – I’m the featured question today. Would love to read your thoughts and your comments – let’s start a discussion over there. Best,

Senia

A Bunch of Healthy Food Habits

Posted on Tuesday July 8, 2008Wednesday July 9, 2008 by Senia

Hi folks,

It turns out that when health news rains, it pours. Recently, these studies and news sources have come out:

Eating while watching TV makes you fat – “Studying childhood obesity, University of Toronto nutritionist Harvey Anderson found that kids who watched TV while eating lunch took in 228 extra calories than those who ate without the television on,” says today’s Reuters report.
Eat less, live 5 years longer – While the studies are not yet conclusive and while more studies have been done in animals than in humans, directions point to this suggestion: “Eat 15 percent less starting at age 25 and you might add 4.5 years to your life, says Eric Ravussin, who studies human health and performance at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana,” reports MSNBC today.
Keep a food diary and lose twice as much weight – “It’s not fun to write down what you eat; it just works,” said study co-author Dr. Victor J. Stevens at Kaiser Permanente Center in Portland, Oregon. The study followed almost 1,700 men and women who were either overweight or obese. The average weight was 212 pounds. In 20 weeks, the group who did not keep a food diary lost 9 pounds on average. The group who did keep food diaries? 18 pounds on average! And how should you keep a food diary? It doesn’t matter, says Dr. Stevens – a notebook, PostIts, on your computer – any method works as long as you write things down shortly after your eat. This report from the today’s Washington Post.

What does all this tell us? Eat less, and be aware when you’re eating (not in front of the TV, and write things down if you want to lose more). Good things to know.

Also safe things to know as we head into summer and ripe low-calorie fruit here in North America. Between watermelons, blueberries, peaches, and nectarines, lower calories are certainly possible in the summertime. Choosing fresh vegetables and fruit over processed pizza is quite inviting in July and August.

Bon appetit!

Tanabata – 7-7-08 – Make a Wish Today!

Posted on Monday July 7, 2008 by Senia

This is one of my three favorite holidays.
It is a love story in Japan.

WHAT TO DO:

1) Get a piece of paper and write down a wish
2) Tie it to a plant or an outside tree by 7pm tonight (that’s my addition – 7pm on 7/7)
3) Your wish will come true if it does not rain today where you are

Here’s the story as I wrote about it two years ago. It is a colorful, wildly fun holiday in Japan!

(Images from here).

THE TWO STARS:
Tanabata means “Festival of the stars.” This is a story about the two stars Altair (the boy) and Vega (the girl) which are the main stars in two constellations, Aquila the eagle and Lyra the musical lyre:

Altair and Vega are also two of the three stars of the Summer Triangle, and appear closest to each other in the summertime. (Images from here and here).

THE LOVE STORY:
There was a girl named Orihime – she was the daughter of the Sky God and she wove beautiful weavings. One day, she looked out of her window and saw the oxen-boy, Hikoboshi, and they fell in love. They spent so much time together that she didn’t have any time to weave, and so the Sky God separated the two, and allowed them to only meet each other on the seventh of the seventh.

Why is the Milky Way involved? “In the Chinese Calender, there is almost always a half moon on July 7th and they believe ORIHIME and [HIKOBOSHI] use that half moon as a boat to meet each other over the great river in the sky, AMANOGAWA [the Milky Way],” reports this site.

YOUR ROLE:

As long as the Milky Way does not overflow, everyone’s wish will come true on this day. So you can put on your bright summer cotton kimono, called the “yukata,” and you can go dancing in the parks, and you can write your wishes on brightly colored paper (as Dave describes here!) and tie them to a plant (in Japan, it would be a bamboo tree). And finally, you make that wish wholly and deliberately, and then you let go….

Losing a Laptop in NYC (and "thank you" about Publicani!)

Posted on Wednesday June 11, 2008Monday June 16, 2008 by Senia

There is one aspect of gratitude that makes me change my mind again and again, and really opens my eyes.

I was in New York yesterday to see a play reading with two of my friends. The play was fabulous and included intriguing interaction between the characters. But then…. we went back to the car after the play, and the back small window of the car was smashed in, glass everywhere on the back seat: the trunk had been popped and my friend’s computer had been taken. Also, some small valuable musical instrument pieces were missing – the mallets used to play a variety of drums, including handmade mallets for timpani playing designed by a retired percussionist. How this could have happened on a busy street was a mystery.

So my friend – being a positive psychology practitioner (we tend to hang out together) spent the remainder of our ride back out of the city asking, “What is good about this?”

Well:
* We were all alive
* None of us was involved in the actual event
* The iPod wasn’t taken because they probably didn’t see it
* The camera wasn’t taken because we were carrying it to the show
* Most of the important things on the computer had been backed up
* It was a cleaning out of older things like a spring cleaning
* It was a reason to clean out the car including a thorough scrub and wash

I almost didn’t write about this because I don’t like using bad events as examples, and yet, they are real. This event reminds me of Kathryn Britton’s article and of Bob Emmons’ advice:

Kathryn Britton wrote that one of the most important concepts of gratitude is being grateful for those bad things that did not happen (like falling during a hike and bruising, but not having a broken leg – being grateful for having the leg) – just reading this in Kathryn’s article changed my thoughts about the concept of gratitude.
In an interview for the IPPA newsletter, I asked psychologist Bob Emmons, “If people were to practice only one concept from Gratitude research, what concept would you recommend that they practice?” Bob answered, “Gratitude journaling, especially writing about what they normally take for granted or imagining what their lives would be like if the event/circumstance had never happened or they had never met the person they wrote about.”

In both cases, Kathryn and Bob describe that being grateful about things that you have been spared from, saved from, have passed by, and have left behind – that kind of grateful really can affect your sanity and state of mind.

—–
Thank YOU for buying copies of Publicani!
It is now Amazon.com Sales Rank: #210,475 in Books (yesterday, it was 800,000+)

My father wrote an amazing book – “Publicani”

Posted on Monday June 9, 2008 by Senia

This is the first official announcement on my site about my father’s book.
You can get it on Amazon for $7.95. It’s by far one of the best books I’ve ever read.

My dad – Zak Maymin – wrote a book called “Publicani.” Publicani is a term for a government official and tax-collector in biblical times. It is set in the near future, when one family fights against the government after the government tries to take something from one of the family members. It’s a major action-adventure book. And it’s really – more than anything – a page-turner. You want to keep reading to see how it turns out.

Get the book HERE on Amazon.

The book has received great reviews:

A Riveting, Entertaining Read
Thriller, science fiction, satire, plea for human dignity and liberty, mysticism, novel about families: you can answer All Of The Above, but you canâ€™t stop turning the pages.
A fascinating twist on eminent domain, a futuristic political thriller from start to finish
Politically, we are already in the world of the publicani
Gripping, Thought-Provoking

I look forward to hearing what you think about the book! Please enjoy it!

Senia

Never seen this: Amazon is down

Posted on Friday June 6, 2008Friday June 6, 2008 by Senia

I’ve never seen any major website be down for this long. I’ve been pinging Amazon for about an hour, trying to get to a book, and it’s down.

Here’s the latest from the NYTimes twenty minutes ago about it:
Amazon Down

Main points:
* “On an Amazon discussion forum for sellers, a post … says that the company is “currently investigating an issue that has impacted the availability of the Amazon.com website.” “
* “Back in 1999, eBay went down for 22 hours, costing it millions in revenue.”

QUESTION FRIDAY: Anticipating or Defensive?

Posted on Friday April 25, 2008Sunday May 11, 2008 by Senia

If I told you I could teach you two sets of skills – one anticipating and the other defensive – which would you choose first? Which would you be more excited about learning?

I’ll give you concrete examples. I was teaching some great MBA students this past week, and my colleague and I were teaching them both types of skills.

Anticipating:
* How to have a good-communications relationship so that misunderstandings are less likely to happen, and good interactions are more likely to occur?
* How to increase the strength of your immune system by being more aware of the good things going on around you?
* How to use your strengths more to bring you more productivity and enjoyment?

Defensive:
* When something bad happens – like your boss calls you into his office with no warning, and says, “I have a concern,” how do you react and how do you handle yourself?
* When someone seems to lose trust in you, what do you do?
* When everything seems to go wrong, how do you pick yourself back up and put yourself together and keep going?

Which of these sets of questions attract you more?
I’d be very interested!

Thanks,
Senia

Talk at Kiwanis Club

Posted on Thursday April 24, 2008Thursday April 24, 2008 by Senia

I had so much fun giving a talk at the Kiwanis Club recently.

What a fun group of people. My talk was right after their lunch, and they were laughing and joking all throughout their lunch. And then they had the formal part of their meeting, including a new inductee. And finally, they did “Happy Dollars”!! Have you heard of this?! A Kiwanis member walks up to a hat at the front of the room and puts in a Happy Dollar for something that’s going right in life, “Here is a Happy Dollar for the new inductee,” “Here is a Happy Dollar because this great piece of news happened to me this week,” etc. That was a fun activity to listen to.

I’m putting up these notes because I’ve started doing quite a few talks, and I’d like to have a record of what happened at each of these talks. So, here’s this one:

* We did the Magic Trick.
* Then I asked people to pair up in twos, and to describe a recent experience they had when they gave or received a compliment.
* Then I asked people what some of the components were of a “good compliment.” I got answers including these: sincerely, enthusiastic, positive. These words then turned out to come up again and again as I was describing ACR and positive emotions. I could also refer to “what Lisa said” and “as Doug pointed out earlier”.
* Then we talked about the potential benefit of compliments, and more generally of positive emotions.
* I gave the examples of anagrams, water and 90 seconds, and (did I talk about?) seeing on the periphery (could have mentioned liver surgeons).
* Then the fun stuff: psychological capital and the (made them guess) 3:1 through 12:1 ratio.
* Finally, I described and we semi-practiced in a large group the technique of ACR.
* We ended with “Speed Appreciation” in pairs with the elbows and wrists touching.

Cool. That was an entire session.