VENTING

Even the most level-headed among us deal with anger and frustration at some point. A common reaction? Venting. We've all done it. But what's the best way to handle being on the receiving end of someone's vent session? Harvard Business Review's Mark Goulston explains.

Disclaimer: It's probably not a good idea to read this before you eat.

I still remember how it felt when, as a medical student, I drained my first abscess in a patient. We called the procedure "I & D" which stands for "Incision and Drainage." (I told you not to read this just before you eat!)

When you do an I & D, you locate what is the most protruding and bulging part of the abscess, wipe it off with alcohol, then pierce it with a scalpel. At that point the pus comes out first, followed by any blood. After this procedure, you may put the person on an antibiotic. Over time, the wound heals from the inside out. If you don't drain the abscess first, and just start with the antibiotics, the undrained pus may prevent the wound from healing.

Today as a practicing business psychiatrist and CEO advisor, I've noticed that when you're faced with an upset customer, client, employee, shareholder, child, parent, spouse, or friend, it can actually feel like they're bulging with emotion and about to explode. Your instinctual and intuitive reaction may be to try to calm them down, urge them to cool off, suggest it's not worth getting so upset about. And sometimes that may work. But in cases where they're really upset, you may need to drain their emotional abscess just as you would have to do with a physical abscess. In those situations, asking them to calm down before they've vented will be about as useful as skipping straight to antibiotics before cleaning their wound.

And yet a lot of people don't know how to listen to someone venting. Usually, people take one of two attitudes. Option 1 is to jump in and give advice—but this is not the same as listening, and the person doing the venting may respond with "Just listen to me! Don't tell me what to do."

Option 2 (usually attempted after Option 1) is to swing to the other extreme, and sit there silently. But this doesn't actively help the person doing the venting to drain their negative emotions. Consequently, it's about as rewarding as venting to your dog.

The way to listen when someone is venting is to ask them the following three questions:

What Are You Most Frustrated About?

This is a good question because when you ask them about their feelings, it often sounds condescending. And if you start out focusing on their anger, it sounds as if you're coldly telling them to get a hold on themselves, which may work, but more often will just cause the pressure inside them to build up even more. However, asking them about their frustration is less judgmental and can have the same effect as sticking a scalpel into their abcess.

Let them vent their feelings and when they finish, pick any of their words that had a lot of emotion attached. These can be words such as "Never," "Screwed up," or any other words spoken with high inflection. Then reply with, "Say more about "never" (or "screwed up," etc.) That will help them drain even more.

What Are You Most Angry About?

This is where their emotional pus drains. Again let them finish and have them go deeper by asking them, "Say more about _________ ." Don't take issue with them or get into a debate, just know that they really need to get this off their chest—and if you listen without interrupting them, while also inviting them to say even more, they will.

If you struggle to listen when someone is venting because intense negative feelings make you feel upset yourself, try this: Look them straight in the left eye (which is connected to their right emotional brain) and imagine you are looking into the eye of a hurricane, allowing whatever they're yelling to go over your shoulders instead of hitting you straight in your eyes.

What Are You Really Worried About?

This is like the blood that comes out of wound following the pus. It is as the core of their emotional wound. If you have listened and not taken issue with their frustration and anger, they will speak to you about what they're really worried about. Again push them to go deeper by asking them: "Say more about ___________." After they finish getting to the bottom of it, respond with, "Now I understand why you're so frustrated, angry, and worried. Since we can't turn back time, let's put our heads together to check out your options from here. Okay?"

Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone

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As I've written before, when people are upset, it matters less what you tell them than what you enable them to tell you. After they get their feelings off their chest, that's when they can then have a constructive conversation with you. And not before.

How to Listen When Someone is Venting | Harvard Business Review

Mark Goulston, M.D., F.A.P.A. is a business psychiatrist, executive consultant, keynote speaker, and co-founder of Heartfelt Leadership. He is the author of Just Listen and co-author of Real Influence: Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving In (Amacom, 2013). Contact himhere.

SURE VISION

Hab.2:3 For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end--it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.

What do you need that you have not received?

       Have you received food enough for today?

       Have you had Water today when you were thirsty?

        Have you looked for the path that leads to the building of your faith?

        Have you seen the helpers God has sent to encourage you?

Jesus told His disciples, Act 1:7 " And He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has put in His own authority."  Neither is it up to you to know.  What is up to you know is what God has done formyou today and for you to ask what you have done fornHim.

Jim

YOU CAN FLY!

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  -  Rom 7:15

We all have this trouble. You can do everything right and still not defeat a sin, or wind up doing something wrong. You can read your Bible every day, pray, have a group of friends around you who’ll speak the truth in love to you on a regular basis, assemble with Christians at every opportunity and still - get caught up in sin.

You can have all the right equipment to accomplish a job or a task, but if you do not have the experience, right attitude, etc. about it, it still will not work. One of the things my Dad taught me to do when I was little was how to take apart and reassemble carburetors. Dutifully, I did so having all of the right tools and putting each thing back in place exactly where it had come from. Yet, it still didn't work right.  Why? Because I didn't have the experience and the spirit to know how to make the proper adjustments to it.  

To defeat habitual sin in your life, it is the same principle. You can have all the right equipment, do all the right things, even put them in the right places!  But, it won’t matter without the Holy Spirit and God's presence there with you in the process.  Suppose you were walking on the beach and saw a dead seagull that had died less than a minute earlier. If you picked the bird up it wouldn't be much different than its live counterparts. It would  still be warm, have the same muscles, bones, feathers, and wings. But if you toss it up in the sky, it’ll drop right back down to the ground, because there is no life in the equipment. It  isn't in the feathers, wings, or bones that make the bird, it is the life God puts in it. Without God in your heart and the desire to be with God and have God be in you with every fiber of your being - your spirit won't fly, even if it has all the right equipment. It is the Spirit of God living within us, beating in our hearts, and our love for Him with all that we are and have, that makes our lives successful and empowers us to overcome sin. 

At the end of the day, you can’t depend upon yourself and what you can do to defeat sin. You need the Holy Spirit’s power, Christ's love and blood, and God's forgiveness.  

 I say, then, Walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.  For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary to one another; lest whatever you may will, these things you do. - Gal.5:16,17

Do you allow God's Spirit to live through you? Are you trying to overcome a wrong in your life, or change your life, but afraid of the Holy Spirit’s power in your life?  That fear, is the evil one telling you that you can't do what God is calling you to do - that you don't have the capability. What God is telling you is to let go and trust Him - and you can FLY!

Jim

Hast Words

 Job 6:25 Saturday, April 27, 2013 Be listener, not a talker(Job 6:25) Prov 29:20 Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him. Don't presume guilt Job 11:2-6 MKJV1962 2 Should not the multitude of words be answered? And should a man full of talk be justified? 3 Should your lies make men silent? And will you mock and no one make [you] ashamed? 4 For you have said, My doctrine [is] pure, and I am clean in Your eyes. 5 But who will grant that God would speak, and open His lips against you, 6 and would tell you the secrets of His wisdom, that sound wisdom [is] manifold? Know therefore that God forgets for you [some] of your iniquity. Mat 7:1-2 MKJV1962 1 Judge not, that you may not be judged. 2 For with whatever judgment you judge, you shall be judged; and with whatever measure you measure out, it shall be measured to you again. Don't judge God ( Job 40:1-2 MKJV1962 1 And the LORD answered Job and said, 2 Shall a reprover contend with the Almighty? He who reproves God, let him answer it.) Prov.21:30 There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the LORD. - Sent from MySword 

Cleopatra's Half Sister

Bones Of Cleopatra's Murdered Half-Sister Identified,

Archaeologist Says

By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior

Writer

Published: 02/26/2013 12:57 PM EST on

LiveScience

A Viennese archaeologist lecturing in North

Carolina this week claims to have identified

the bones of Cleopatra's murdered sister or

half-sister. But not everyone is convinced.

That's because the evidence linking the

bones, discovered in an ancient Greek city,

to Cleopatra's sibling Arsinoe IV is largely

circumstantial. A DNA test was attempted,

said Hilke Thur, an archaeologist at the

Austrian Academy of Sciences and a former

director of excavations at the site where the bones were found. However, the 2,000-year-

old bones had been moved and handled too many times to get uncontaminated results.

"It didn't bring the results we hoped to find," Thur told the Charlotte News-Observer . She

will lecture on her research March 1 at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.

The Ptolemy's bloody history

Arsinoe IV was Cleopatra's younger half-sister or sister, both of them fathered by Ptolemy

XII Auletes, though whether they shared a mother is not clear. Ptolemic family politics

were tough: When Ptolemy XII died, he made Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII joint

rulers, but Ptolemy soon ousted Cleopatra. Julius Caesar took Cleopatra's side in the

family fight for power, while Arsinoe joined the Egyptian army resisting Caesar and the

Roman forces. [Cleopatra & Olympias: Top 12 Warrior Moms in History ]

Rome won out, however, and Arsinoe was taken captive. She was allowed to live in exile

in Ephesus, an ancient Greek city in what is now Turkey. However, Cleopatra saw her

half-sister as a threat and had her murdered in 41 B.C.

Fast forward to 1904. That year,

archaeologists began excavating a

ruined structure in Ephesus known as the Octagon for its shape. In 1926, they revealed a

burial chamber in the Octagon, holding the bones of a young woman.

Thur argues that the date of the tomb (sometime in the second half of the first century

B.C.) and the illustrious within-city location of the grave, points to the occupant being

Arsinoe IV herself. Thur also believes the octagonal shape may echo that of the great

Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World . That would

make the tomb an homage to Arsinoe's hometown, Egypt's ancient capital, Alexandria.

Controversial claim

The skull of the possible murdered princess disappeared in Germany during World War II,

but Thur found the rest of the bones in two niches in the burial chamber in 1985. The

remains have been debated every step of the way. Forensic analysis revealed them to

belong to a girl of 15 or 16, which would make Arsinoe surprisingly young for someone

who was supposed to have played a major leadership role in a war against Rome years

before her death. Thur dismisses those criticisms.

"This academic questioning is normal," she told the News-Observer. "It happens. It's a

kind of jealousy."

In 2009, a BBC documentary, "Cleopatra: Portrait of a Killer," trumpeted the claim that the

bones are Arsinoe's. At the time, the most controversial findings centered on the body's

lost skull. Measurements and photographs of the incomplete skull remain in historical

records and were used to reconstruct the dead woman's face .

From the reconstruction, Thur and her colleagues concluded that Arsinoe had an African

mother (the Ptolemies were an ethnically Greek dynasty). That conclusion led to splashy

headlines suggesting that Cleopatra, too, was African.

But classicists say the conclusions are shaky.

"We get this skull business and having Arsinoe's ethnicity actually being determined from

a reconstructed skull based on measurements taken in the 1920s?" wrote David Meadows,

a Canadian classicist and teacher, on his blog rogueclassicism .

Not only that, but Cleopatra and Arsinoe may not have shared a mother.

"In that case, the ethnic argument goes largely out of the window," Cambridge classics

professor Mary Beard wrote in the Times Literary Supplement in 2009.

Without more testing, the bones remain in identification limbo.

"One of my colleagues on the project told me two years ago there is currently no other

method to really determine more," Thur told the News-Observer. "But he thinks there

may be new methods developing. There is hope."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience . We're also on

Facebook & Google+ .

8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries

The 6 Most Tragic Love Stories in History

Gallery: In Search of the Grave of Richard III

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material

may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior

Writer

Published: 02/26/2013 12:57 PM EST on

LiveScience

A Viennese archaeologist lecturing in North

Carolina this week claims to have identified

the bones of Cleopatra's murdered sister or

half-sister. But not everyone is convinced.

That's because the evidence linking the

bones, discovered in an ancient Greek city,

to Cleopatra's sibling Arsinoe IV is largely

circumstantial. A DNA test was attempted,

said Hilke Thur, an archaeologist at the

Austrian Academy of Sciences and a former

director of excavations at the site where the bones were found. However, the 2,000-year-

old bones had been moved and handled too many times to get uncontaminated results.

"It didn't bring the results we hoped to find," Thur told the Charlotte News-Observer . She

will lecture on her research March 1 at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.

The Ptolemy's bloody history

Arsinoe IV was Cleopatra's younger half-sister or sister, both of them fathered by Ptolemy

XII Auletes, though whether they shared a mother is not clear. Ptolemic family politics

were tough: When Ptolemy XII died, he made Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII joint

rulers, but Ptolemy soon ousted Cleopatra. Julius Caesar took Cleopatra's side in the

family fight for power, while Arsinoe joined the Egyptian army resisting Caesar and the

Roman forces. [Cleopatra & Olympias: Top 12 Warrior Moms in History ]

Rome won out, however, and Arsinoe was taken captive. She was allowed to live in exile

in Ephesus, an ancient Greek city in what is now Turkey. However, Cleopatra saw her

half-sister as a threat and had her murdered in 41 B.C.

Fast forward to 1904. That year,

archaeologists began excavating a

ruined structure in Ephesus known as the Octagon for its shape. In 1926, they revealed a

burial chamber in the Octagon, holding the bones of a young woman.

Thur argues that the date of the tomb (sometime in the second half of the first century

B.C.) and the illustrious within-city location of the grave, points to the occupant being

Arsinoe IV herself. Thur also believes the octagonal shape may echo that of the great

Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World . That would

make the tomb an homage to Arsinoe's hometown, Egypt's ancient capital, Alexandria.

Controversial claim

The skull of the possible murdered princess disappeared in Germany during World War II,

but Thur found the rest of the bones in two niches in the burial chamber in 1985. The

remains have been debated every step of the way. Forensic analysis revealed them to

belong to a girl of 15 or 16, which would make Arsinoe surprisingly young for someone

who was supposed to have played a major leadership role in a war against Rome years

before her death. Thur dismisses those criticisms.

"This academic questioning is normal," she told the News-Observer. "It happens. It's a

kind of jealousy."

In 2009, a BBC documentary, "Cleopatra: Portrait of a Killer," trumpeted the claim that the

bones are Arsinoe's. At the time, the most controversial findings centered on the body's

lost skull. Measurements and photographs of the incomplete skull remain in historical

records and were used to reconstruct the dead woman's face .

From the reconstruction, Thur and her colleagues concluded that Arsinoe had an African

mother (the Ptolemies were an ethnically Greek dynasty). That conclusion led to splashy

headlines suggesting that Cleopatra, too, was African.

But classicists say the conclusions are shaky.

"We get this skull business and having Arsinoe's ethnicity actually being determined from

a reconstructed skull based on measurements taken in the 1920s?" wrote David Meadows,

a Canadian classicist and teacher, on his blog rogueclassicism .

Not only that, but Cleopatra and Arsinoe may not have shared a mother.

"In that case, the ethnic argument goes largely out of the window," Cambridge classics

professor Mary Beard wrote in the Times Literary Supplement in 2009.

Without more testing, the bones remain in identification limbo.

"One of my colleagues on the project told me two years ago there is currently no other

method to really determine more," Thur told the News-Observer. "But he thinks there

may be new methods developing. There is hope." 

Warrior's Grave

 Archaeology Daily News - Treasure Filled Warriors Grave Found in Russia 

New Excavation

 BiblePlaces Blog: New Excavations at Ashdod-Yam 

New Excavations at Ashdod-Yam

A new excavation is beginning this summer at Ashdod-Yam that you may want to consider joining. If its location on a beautiful Mediterranean beach appeals to you, you can skip the rest of this post and sign up here.While the site was settled for several millennia and includes an impressive Early Islamic and Crusader fortress (see photo below), the excavation will focus on the Iron Age enclosure with particular interest in the late 8th and early 7th centuries (the time when Hezekiah and Manasseh were ruling in Judah). The project’s website lists five goals for the planned five seasons of excavation:To understand the history of the site during the period of Assyrian domination and hopefully to discover an Assyrian emporium.To learn about the sea trade that occurred at the site.To study pottery from the first half of the 7th century.To discover evidence of Greek mercenaries stationed at the site on behalf of Egypt.To shed light on the Philistines after their conquest by Babylon in the 6th century.The excavation website provides more information about the history of the site, excavations during the 1960s, and a diagram of the ruins. You can also see a list of the extensive staff and support the project through a donation. The home page includes some impressive images of the site. The excavation is co-directed by Prof. Angelika Berlejung of the University of Leipzig and Dr. Alexander Fantalkin of Tel Aviv University. Registration is now open!