Emotional Intelligence and Soul Mate
Aug 1, 2018 Education, English, Health, Local, Spiritual
Using Emotional Intelligence to find our Soul Mate
by Tyrone Dixon
Copyright © July 2018
All Rights Reserved.
Translated into Spanish by: Nina Vergara
When it comes to romance many of us struggle with finding our soul mate. There are many variables to consider when discussing romantic relationships, and why two people may or may not be compatible. Or why we just can’t seem to find the “one.”
The first thing I would invite you to do is think of romantic relationships in terms of it being a science, as opposed to a Fairytale, which many of us grew up believing it is. You know the “knight in shiny armor” coming to save the “distraught princess,” and then both of them going on to “live happily ever after?”… Right.
True romance involves establishing a deeper connection with your partner through consistent behavior, which allows trust to be present for both parties, and a safe space to be comfortable in expressing oneself without fear of retaliation or judgment.
Are you starting to see why you should look at romance relationships as more science than Fairytale? If not, consider this fact; 50% of the time when we say we are ready for our soul mate, we are not in a spot to fully commit ourselves to the other person (we may be unemployed, going through financial hardship, depressed, not over our previous romantic relationship, etc.).
After working with several clients on past, present, and future relationships I was able to come up with a list of thing we can look for in an ideal romantic relationship:
1. Ideal partner – someone who has developed the skills to be with another person, and work on themselves at the same time. Once we feel we have found the ideal partner, the remaining characteristics on the list will let us know if the relationship can be transitioned to a deeper connection (soul mate).
2. Maturity – is this person able to take responsibility for their actions? Or are they always looking to place blame on others/circumstances?
3. Open and honest – can we talk to this person about difficult things? Are we comfortable sharing our deepest secrets with this person?
4. Integrity – does this person’s words and actions align?
5. Does this person challenge us to take calculated risks?
6. Respect for our goals – one partner’s goals or life vision does not exceed the others.
7. Are they committed to understanding us? – are they aware of what we have in common? Do they have an appreciation for our differences?
8. Unconditional acceptance – accepting us for who we are, and a willingness to continually strive for growth individually & together.
I invite you to use this list going forward when you are working to establish a romantic relationship. It can save both partners time, 
prevent highly stressful situations, and most of all help us to avoid heartbreak.
Peace and Love,
Tyrone Dixon works as a Certified Professional Coach in the Syracuse Community through his business ArozeThrough Concrete Coaching. He was born and raised on the South and West Sides of Syracuse. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from SUNY Buffalo. It is his pleasure to be a “writing contributor” for CNY Latino, and write about the topic of Emotional Intelligence (EI). He loves the City of Syracuse and believes that exposure to Emotional Intelligence can help change the direction of the individuals living in some of our “high poverty” areas. Can you imagine how much better our city would be if people were taught how to manage their feelings without hurting someone? Or if we could teach people to be proactive in identifying situations they are not comfortable in?.
Cycles of Stigma
Aug 1, 2018 Culture, Education, English, Local, Political
Cycles of Stigma: How Prohibition Makes Sex Work and Drug Use Even More Dangerous
by Maximilian Eyle
June was Pride Month in America, and this year’s theme in New York City was “Defiantly Different”. It represents a chance to push back against the stigma surrounding LGBTQ identities and lifestyles while celebrating the diversity of self-expression that exists within the LGBTQ community. When we talk about stigma in this context, it is usually regarding a lack of acceptance of the individual’s sexuality on the part of the family or by society. What is less frequently acknowledged is that the manifestation of this stigma often sets off a chain reaction as the individual struggles to cope with the trauma of their sexual identity being denied or ridiculed.
When we think about where LGBTQ culture shines brightest, big cities come to mind. Metropolitan areas like New York City act as magnets for members of the LGBTQ community nationwide due to the more progressive mentality toward sexuality and the greater availability of support resources. The stigma associated with non-heteronormative lifestyles in many areas of the U.S., particularly rural communities and small towns, often makes it unpleasant and even unsafe to live openly there.
As these stigmatized people seek a new life in a more accepting environment, they often carry heavy burdens. Some are material, like the struggle to survive financially in an expensive and foreign environment like New York City. Others are emotional, like the memories of having been spurned by friends and family where you grew up. Though there may be less anti-LGBTQ sentiment in a metropolitan area like New York, many who come to such a large city find themselves unable to survive financially.
For members of the transgender community, their ability to conceal their sexual identity can be more difficult than for gays or lesbians. When faced with this added barrier to entering the “traditional” workforce, some will inevitably turn to sex work as a means of survival. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey studied this and other issues among 6,400 transgender adults nationwide between 2008 and 2009. It found that, “An overwhelming majority (69.3%) of [transgender] sex workers reported experiencing an adverse job outcome in the traditional workforce, such as being denied a job or promotion or being fired because of their gender identity or expression.”
Because prostitution is illegal in the vast majority of the United States, legal and social repercussions face those who choose this line of work, needlessly stigmatizing them and making their lives less safe. They are forced to enter the black market, put themselves at risk for arrest, and are limited in their ability to receive access to contraception, STD testing, and other essential healthcare resources. Though heterosexual prostitution is also stigmatized, the taboo tends to be greater for gay or transgender sex workers.
If the person has been arrested for drug use, finding a traditional employment path will be particularly difficult if not impossible. Again we see the damaging influence of stigma appear – this time in the context of drug use. The War on Drugs has conditioned society to regard substance use as a moral failing, much like many anti-gay groups view LGBTQ lifestyles as morally wrong. Our justice system advances this perspective by incarcerating and punishing these individuals, adding the inescapable and institutionalized stigma of a criminal record.
Just as prohibiting sex work makes it even more dangerous, the most dysfunctional and destructive aspects of drug use are usually products of prohibition rather than of the substance itself. Consider overdoses, which almost always result from the user’s inability to know the content, purity, or strength of what they are ingesting. In the U.S., where nearly 65,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2016, users are buying their drugs on the black market. They cannot know what they are consuming, and their purchases fuel a black market worth over $100 billion annually. In Switzerland, where the government started giving opioid users access to pharmaceutical heroin and other opioid substitutes dispensed in a clinical setting, their overdose rate dropped by half and the rate of HIV infection dropped by 65%. Furthermore, the rate of new users there has declined. This harm reduction practice puts users in contact with medical staff without the pressure to change their lifestyle or usage.
The long history of stigmatizing members of the LGBTQ community increases the rate of trauma and abuse. (77% of transgender sex workers experienced harassment during childhood after expressing their transgender identity.) The continued discrimination that is present as transgender people enter the workforce forces them to find alternatives in the black market, bringing with it further stigma and legal peril. The consequences of this are dire. The attempted suicide rate of transgender sex workers is over 60%.
The legal system’s practice of legislating morality via the 
criminalization of drugs as well as sex work only serves to exacerbate the potential dangers of these behaviors by limiting the available resources and adding to the stigma felt by drug users and sex workers. Compassion, not punishment, should be the underlying philosophy behind our public policy. The social and legislated stigma felt by people who are drug users, sex workers, LGBTQ, or a combination thereof, is a cruel burden that must be lifted before we can truly hope to help the most at-risk members of our communities.
Maximilian Eyle is a native of Syracuse, NY and a graduate of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He works as a media consultant and writes each month about a variety of issues for Spanish-language papers across New York State. Maximilian has a love of Hispanic culture and learned Spanish while living in Spain where he studied and worked as an English teacher. He can be contacted at maxeyle@gmail.com.
Genius Olympiad at SUNY Oswego
Aug 1, 2018 Education, English, Environmental, Local
by Miguel Balbuena
On June 13 I served as a judge at the Genius Olympiad, held at the State University of New York at Oswego. The Genius Olympiad is an annual competition that this year drew more than a thousand participants, from over 70 countries belonging to six continents, most of whom presented projects in six broad categories: business, robotics, science, visual art, music and creative writing.
In order to pinpoint their application area to this olympiad, students submitting proposals had to be aware that some of these categories had subdivisions. For instance, the category business was broken down into entrepreneurship, and social responsibility; the category science into environmental quality, ecology and biodiversity, resources and energy, human ecology, and innovation; the category visual art into photography, short film, poster design, and satirical illustration, and; the category music into solo performance, group performance, and singer, and; the category creative writing into short story, essay and poetry.
Due to my strong background as a Renaissance man, i.e., a polymath or omnivore, I met the eligibility criteria to be a judge in any of the fields stated above, except robotics, about which I don’t know anything about. I chose to evaluate short film because it was the field that first stuck out when I read the judging application. I thought it would be fun to see how current students managed to express their ideas in the video format.
The contest rules said that these intellectual games were “open to all international and U.S. students studying in grades eight through twelve (or the equivalent),” from 12 year-olds on up. In addition, these rules required an adult supervisor per underage student. Finally, they allowed students to bring other guests.
Before attending this program, I had never been to SUNY Oswego. I have three friends who graduated from this institution of higher learning but they never went into great detail about their lives while studying there. One of them, my former housemate Joe Niles, confided to me that he felt isolated there. That was the extent of my prior knowledge about SUNY Oswego. Somehow, a notion had crept into my brain. It was that this university was a small one at a windswept location on Lake Ontario southern shore. But, on the aforementioned pivotal June date, as soon as I set foot on its campus, I was hit in the face by reality. Although I was right in that it was lakeside, it turned out that was situated on a sprawling
690-acre campus.
The Olympic Games took place in the Marano Campus Center, the school’s version of a student union facility. This center is the largest of the 46 buildings on campus. By itself, this particular building was bigger in square footage than whole colleges such as Crouse Hospital School in Syracuse, for example.
The judging sessions ran from nine thirty in the morning to three thirty in the afternoon with only an hour intermission to get past large long lines of people hungry for lunch, at the Cooper Dining Hall. Thus, time was at a premium, which meant that I wasn’t able to visit buildings other the Marano Center and Cooper Hall. Besides, it began raining hard. Both the center and hall impressed me as having being constructed having practicality in mind rather than aesthetics.
Upon arrival to my final destination, I found sheer pandemonium at the Marano Center. It was swirling with students, chaperones, guests, judges, administrative staff and visitors from the general public, to the point that it was even hard to walk down the hallways. Fortunately, I made it in one piece to the sport arena within the center, where I had to check in and pick up the judging forms and guidelines as well as my credential as a judge, which will allow me to get ahead of the line for the complimentary lunch in view that I had to rush back to participate in the afternoon film screening session. But there was a mix-up. The staff member in charge had given me the science forms instead of the short film ones. Finally, I was told by this staff person to go to an auditorium upstairs to retrieve the correct forms.
It was certainly a high honor for me to have been able to watch and assess films from countries as diverse as Albania, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam. But, at the same time, it was a hectic experience as the roughly 50 videos of eight-minute length apiece run at a breakneck pace with just a few seconds of break between them.
About the author: Miguel Balbuena is a writer in the academic, scientific, journalistic and literary fields (in the fiction and non-fiction genres).
My child
Aug 1, 2018 Education, English, Local, Spiritual
A MOMENT OF REFLECTION
by Lilia M. Fiallo
How many times have you told the child that you love him? Never; ¡I can’t say it to him! I was going to tell him; someday.
Do you still think? This is the moment to open your heart, tell him: “I love you so much”. And phrases like: You are a wonderful being; you are going to be a great person; everything you do has a great meaning for me, for your father and for everyone because every day you do it better; always follow the correct path; here I am when you need me, what’s wrong with you, why are you sad? Trust me, I am your mother; any doubt or question, tell me; do not let someone outside of me even take you by the hand; do not accept that someone caresses you; do not pay attention to anyone on the street; do not receive anything from anyone; do not tell your private life to anyone; do not take anything that is not your; when we go shopping or walking, look at things but leave them in their place; walk with energy; if someone on the street calls you by your name ignore them and always remember that I love you”. As a remedy, by teaspoon, teach little by little the precautions, risk and care that he needs to have outside the home. Talk to him about the importance of love, value and respect, that the divine creation has an order and that it never tries to pass over life.
Oh! Teach him the numbers: one, two, three, four, until you reach ten. The numbers are advancing in order, right? As the climb begins by the stairs to reach the top floor, starting from the first step, then the second follows the third and so on until reaching the top, as well as life with the passage of time, in the most natural way and without the need to resort to strangers for answers that he has stored in his head.
To lesser degree; irrational animals communicate and have their own organization. It is true. A dog was not born old to go back to puppy. It is a puppy, it will grow up and like everything in his time, it will become an adult dog and will have puppies. The ordering in the nature of living beings, by logic, has a sequence for its developments. That humans disfigure creation is another thing.
Where are the dolls, cars and stuffed animal for your children, when you go with them to the restaurant, shopping trip or supermarket? Do you need the child to be quiet and distracted? With stupor I have been able to see, kids that have a cell phone in their little hands.
Technology is wonderful if you take the proper precautions but if we allow ourselves to be driven by so much progress we forget the grave consequences it may have and its reality. The children depend on us and it is our responsibility to correct mishap for example putting a cell phone on their hands at such a young age. The health risks are immense and we know it well. So that a child does not cry and can be quiet in his car, a cell phone is placed in his hands. If cell phones emit high-hazard radiation for adults, how can it not be for babies?
Why, pregnant women should not use or be close to microwave ovens; and should limit the use cell phones, only for important and short calls, according to health professionals? The reason is obvious and well known but also ignored.
Consideration and respect for a child because of his or her age or physical disability is one thing, and another is, consent situations that do not help at all in the proper development of his personality and if they lead to negative episodes that will impact on his life. In the case of Andrew, the tender child, noble, easy to mold, who at three years of age was the victim of a terrible burn with boiling water that compromised part of his head, face and neck. This provoked on his mother a noticeable sense of guilt for ever.
The extreme protection of his mother, the early departure of his father when the boy was nine years old, and the little support of his older brothers, made him a fragile being with a weak future. No one cared weather he continued his studies or not and the only thing he did at his young age, was to help here and there in some trade, when he reached adulthood without any art or profession, he works as a construction assistant while the vice for beer consumes him. Although he is a man who lived in a humble and healthy environment, at the death of his mother, he let himself be carried away by terrible emotional situation that surrounded him, his self-esteem hits bottom and there is no human power to take him out of that state.
Why, for countless decades, have there been and currently are many young people who are not yet fourteen years old and are inmates in reformatories for criminal offenses?
We adults are very guilty, because we ignore many responsibilities towards children; we do not dedicate time, we give them pleasure in everything material and we accept unhealthy situations, perhaps, for no stopping to analyze the possible consequences. We do not need technology or artificial intelligence –AI-, to help build a spiritually and morally better world. The young people need us and I have proved it!.
I confess as a personal satisfaction, that it is a pleasure to talk with children and young people about elementary topics, which fascinates me to share. I am filled with joy when I remember that here has not been a child who has rejected my talk and what is better is that parents approach me to talk to their children, as if they knew me, a situation that has happened to me several times.
An example of this was last Sunday when I was lining up in a restaurant and in front of me was a father of a family with his son of approximately nine year of age. The man turned to look as if wanting to find someone to listen to him since he was at crossroads, not knowing what to say to his child. The line was long so his wife and daughter were looking at the show cases of the next store. He turned to me smiling and in front of the child said: “Imagine that I took my child to see a movie and I did not see the billboard and I was wrong, we stayed until the end and my son came out upset because that was not the movie he wanted to see. At that comment, I thought for a few seconds and quietly said to the two: “well, in life we all made mistakes at some time, and looking at the child, I said: but you know something?, you have not noticed the great treasure you have…, -the boy looked at me expectantly-, you are lucky that you have not even thought about it…, yes, look at your dad, you have the happiness of having your father, the column of steel where you can lean on; how many children do not have a father? My nephew lost his father when he was a child and I do not even know what to tell him…, it was terrible. (There was no point in telling him more”)”.
The great thing was that the boy instantly changed his attitude towards his father and I imagine he had to keep thinking.
Before leaving your children money and material inheritance, give them spiritual wealth, virtues and moral values, which as a legacy, they will preserve forever.
Lilia M. Fiallo was born in Bogotá, Colombia, where, between tasks and free time, she found a place to write about subjects, somehow forgotten by others. With gold letters engraved in her memory, she began her working life, in the heart of the technical part, of the air traffic control of her native country. In the midst of aeronautical phraseology and codes, the world of aviation gave her one of the highest experiences, because of the precision required by this craft, where a single mistake could cost many lives. It is there, where in her concern to communicate her ideas, she begins to write with dedication, themes a little relegated by society, the Church and the State. Discovering a truth that nobody wants to talk about, but much more real and everyday, than it seems. It is thus, as it appears, her first work, “Parir por parir”.
You can find her book at for sale in Amazon.
What’s your ACE Score?
Jul 1, 2018 Education, English, Health, Local
by Tyrone Dixon
Copyright © May 2018 All rights reserved.
A few years back I was at a conference with a colleague and the theme of the weekend was something called “The ACE Study”. The acronym ACE is short for Adverse Childhood Experiences, and the first study was done in the 90s by Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda.
These two gentlemen designed a questionnaire consisting of 10 categories of adverse childhood experiences, which included exposure to physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, mother treated violently in the home, substance abuse, and many other measures of household dysfunction.
Their idea was to create correlation between being exposed to trauma/chronic stress at an early age, and growing to become an adult who has mental instability, is addicted to drugs, has attempted suicide, is an abusive parent, etc.
An example of one of the questions on the ACE study would be, “place a 1 in this box if you lived in a household where domestic violence was present.” In the very first study 75% of the people that completed the questionnaire were white middle to upper class citizens, whose average age was 57.
When the numbers came back from the people who completed the survey, most had higher ACE scores than expected. Felitti and Anda decided to take their study to lower class families to see if the information they were gathering was indeed accurate.
What they discovered was that when they started comparing the scores of people who have no history of ACEs, people with scores of 4 or more ACEs were twice as likely to smoke, seven times more likely to be alcoholics, seven times more likely to engage in sexual activity before the age of 15, twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer, have heart or liver disease. ACEs scores of 6 or more meant that you were 30 times more likely to have attempted suicide more than once.
I like to talk about the ACEs for 2 very specific reasons:
1. I know there are parents who are unaware of what it is and the impact trauma has on their children over long periods of time.
2. I have recorded scores of 7 or higher when I participated in ACE questionnaires, meaning I should fall into one or more of the following categories Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, Suicide attempts, Liver disease, Depression, Mental Disorder.
I am thankful to say that I am not in any of those categories and that is due in part to the fact that I attended the conference a few years ago and became mindful of the fact that there is a very real correlation between how you grew up, and what you experience present day. I invite you to do your independent research on the topic ACEs, it is something we all need to be proactive in dealing with.
Peace and Love,
Tyrone Dixon works as a Certified Professional Coach in the Syracuse Community through his business ArozeThrough Concrete Coaching. He was born and raised on the South and West Sides of Syracuse. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from SUNY Buffalo. It is his pleasure to be a “writing contributor” for CNY Latino, and write about the topic of Emotional Intelligence (EI). He loves the City of Syracuse and believes that exposure to Emotional Intelligence can help change the direction of the individuals living in some of our “high poverty” areas. Can you imagine how much better our city would be if people were taught how to manage their feelings without hurting someone? Or if we could teach people to be proactive in identifying situations they are not comfortable in?.
Perception Born of Language:
Jul 1, 2018 Education, English, Local
Perception Born of Language: How our mother tongue shapes our world view
by Maximilian Eyle
Why do you see the world as you do? Our age, gender, financial status, education level, nationality, and many other factors shape how we view society and our place within it. Some of these factors we have control over, others we do not. But there is part of our identity that shapes everything else. Without it, we would not truly be human. I am speaking about language – the framework through which we understand the world and ourselves. Much like our nationality or gender, we do not get to choose which language we learn first. The consequences of this are powerful, because every language describes the world differently – forcing you to see the world differently.
Let me give you an example that contrasts the perception of English and Spanish speakers. In Spanish, the sentence structure is more likely to use the passive voice when describing an accident. In English, the “actor” is usually included in the description. When shown a video of a man accidentally breaking a vase, the Spanish speaker will likely organize the sentence to say, “the vase broke,” while the English speaker will say, “the man broke the vase.” This simple difference is a result of the syntax of each language, but can have major repercussions on how we perceive events. A study from Stanford University showed that when the active voice was used in court cases, the defendant was more likely to be found guilty than if the passive voice was used. In this context, English speakers are more likely to assign blame than Spanish speakers – even when describing the same event.
The term for how language changes perception is linguistic relativism. One famous example is that of some indigenous tribes in Australia that do not have a word for “right” or “left”. Instead, they use directions like “north” and “south” to describe the positions of things. As a result, they are constantly aware of their orientation – even when inside a building. An article in Slate magazine describes the following experiment:
When asked to lay out a series of cards that included earlier and later events, members of the [indigenous Australian tribe] will arrange the cards from east to west (the direction of the sun) no matter which direction they are facing. English speakers, meanwhile, will lay them out left to right (the way English is written), while Hebrew speakers will lay the cards out right to left (the direction of Hebrew script).
It is difficult if not impossible to say whether these differences are good or bad. However, they establish that our language abilities both expand our understanding of the world as well as limit it to the structure of that language. For me, this awareness underscores the importance of learning a second language so that we might also gain a second perspective.
Maximilian Eyle is a native of Syracuse, NY and a graduate of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He works as a media consultant and writes each month about a variety of issues for Spanish-language papers across New York State. Maximilian has a love of Hispanic culture and learned Spanish while living in Spain where he studied and worked as an English teacher. He can be contacted at maxeyle@gmail.com.
Sweet Corn Bread with Goat Cheese
Jul 1, 2018 Culture, Education, English, Health, Local
COOKING
by Suellen Pineda, RDN, CDN
Torta or pan de elote (Spanish for Cornbread) is a dense and moist type of sweet bread. It doesn’t have the texture of traditional cornbread. Traditionally, pan de elote is sweetened with condensed milk. In this recipe, I substituted condensed milk for low-fat evaporated milk—which by definition, it is not generally recommended—To compensate for the lack of sweetness and thick texture of condensed milk, I added creamy goat cheese and some sugar. Even after adding these two ingredients, I was able to reduce the calorie content by 100 calories per serving (298 calories per serving with condensed milk vs. 187 with evaporated milk) and about 14 tablespoons less sugar. So, although this recipe may not be as sweet as traditional pan de elote, it is definitely an excellent option to cut down on sugar and calories.
Prep: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 35-40 minutes
Yields: 9 servings
Difficulty: easy
Calories per serving: approx. 187
Ingredients
1 15oz can, unsalted sweet corn (Use fresh if available)
1 can low-fat evaporated milk
4 oz. plain goat cheese
3 eggs
4 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
6 Tbsps. whole-wheat flour
4 Tbsp. granulated sugar
2 tsps. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ tsp. salt
Method
• Pre-heat oven to 375F
• Grease a baking dish with butter and sprinkle with flour OR use line it with parchment paper and lightly spray with cooking oil
• In a blender, put all ingredients and blend until fully incorporated
• Pour mixture in prepared baking dish
• Bake for about 35-40 minutes, or when it turns golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.
• Serve warm or chilled.
Enjoy!
Suellen is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist based in the Rochester, NY area. Connect with her at suellenpinedaRDN@gmail.com or follow her on Instagram at @Suellen_Pineda
