Mary: “I want to move near my grandchildren, but how on earth will I move myself up there alone?” You: “Just call a moving company. What is your PROBLEM?”

Abby: “I hate being an entrepreneur, but you have no idea how hard it is to get back into a corporation with all downsizing. You: “Just call a career coach. What is your PROBLEM?”

Millicent: “I ought to get a raise, but how on earth do I ask him for one?” You: “Just ask. What is your PROBLEM?”

Antonio: “How on earth do I tell my wife I’m in love with another woman?” You: “Just tell her. What is your PROBLEM?”

Liu: “I hate this house. I hate it.” You: You’ve been saying that for 3 years now. What is your PROBLEM?”

What is PROBLEM when solution is so EASY?

++Easy to us who are on outside. ++Easy to us who are not emotionally involved and can therefore be objective ++Easy for us who are not hamstrung by ambivalence (indecision) and can think clearly ++Easy for us because we can think logically, and steps are obvious IF decision has been made AND there are no emotions involved.

How do you ask for a raise? Gosh, there must be 50 ways to ask for a raise.

Remember that great old song by Paul Simon, “There Must Be 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”? He’s talking with a woman …

She didn’t. She continued to dig herself deeper into a hole, spending more time and energy on personality conflict than on her work, getting worse all time at her job … in what appeared for all world like “a drop in cognitive functioning,” until, not surprisingly, she was fired. We know emotions can affect cognitive functioning; that’s what Emotional Intelligence is all about. Now there’s more scientific confirmation.

The article on www.newscientist.com , based on research reported in Nature Neuroscience, must be read carefully. It’s called “Brains Drained by Hidden Race Bias.”

The article begins, “People with implicit racial prejudices are left mentally exhausted after interacting with someone from a different race, perhaps because they are trying to quell their feelings.”

This is based on finding that “areas in brain associated with self-control [executive function] light up in white people with implicit racial biases when they are shown images of black people.” (They “light up” under MRI brain scanning.)

Let me direct you at this point to site to study research design and conclusions and form your own opinion -- http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994388 .

The researchers ascertained which white subjects were racially prejudiced against black people, had them interview with a black person “on a controversial subject,” and then gave them a “thinking” test. It should be noted a “controversial subject” would add more emotion to equation.

Results obtained through MRI brain scans which are giving us so much information about intelligence, emotions, and their interaction, showed that “the subject’s mental resources [were] temporarily drained by their efforts to suppress their prejudices.”