C.B. Brooks's Blog, page 3
August 24, 2012
Lance Armstrong Radar Jammers: Competition, Performance Enhancing Drugs
News reports today show that seven time Tour de France bicycle champion Lance Armstrong will drop his continued fight against claims of using banned performance enhancing drugs. He will be stripped of his titles, Olympic medal, and past awards, but still denies the charges.
No matter how you personally feel about his case, Trust Your Radar readers know that people who exhibit an intense competitive streak, a “win at all costs” mentality, are really showing their brain radar is jammed by this potent desire.
We also know that desire leads many to cheat with performance enhancing drugs. Accusations of Armstrong’s use of steroids, Human Growth Hormone (HGH), and red blood cell booster Erythropoeitin (EPO), have long haunted him. These drugs are favorites of past convicted cycling champions.
The competition radar jammer pushes people way up on our Human Hardness Scale and has many negative implications. Performance enhancing drugs are suspected any time extraordinary athletic feats are recorded, rapid body modifications occur, or older athletes make “remarkable comebacks.”
August 21, 2012
New Ezine article – Parents: 5 Things to Tell Kids Going to College
This is a big milestone. Whether your kids are going off to college, or leaving home for a place of their own, it’s big.
Here’s some parental advice you can roll out to the young adults.
Congratulations. You are now unsupervised, full time. Multiple “brain radar jammers” are available vying for your attention: peer pressure, showing off, fooling around, looking cool, alcohol, drugs, fast food, performance enhancing drugs, sexual attraction and pressure, maybe even love.
There are also societal expectations. “This is the best time of your life! Party like a rockstar!”
Whew. It can be overwhelming and chaotic. Everyone’s affected: some seem to weather the storm, some crash and sink, most muddle along to varying degrees. What can we teach our kids to help?
1) How about a simple pearl of wisdom:
“Treat this like a job.”
Simple and clear.
Here’s how it plays out. Get up early Monday through Friday, even if you don’t have any classes scheduled, go to the library or some quiet place and do something every day for each of your subjects even if nothing is due. Go to lunch, show up for your classes, go back to the library or quiet place until late afternoon. Walk places if you can, schedule some exercise if you like. Then you can go back to your dorm, apartment, fraternity or sorority house, have dinner with friends, and hit one of your quiet places again after dinner. If you’re ahead on all your classes, super; now’s a good time to teach yourself to read for pleasure or background information, it’s a great use of your time. Since this is your job, no drinking or drugs during the week. If it’s a special occasion, maybe OK, but stick to your personal dose because you’ll be getting up tomorrow.
Of course you can have fun: save the weekends for parties, dates, sleepovers, dancing, talking all night, sleeping late, playing cards, wasting time on the Internet, video games, TV, spectator sports, political causes, exploring your city, travel, etc.
Here are a few more tips.
2) Generally, don’t make a flaming start in freshman year. It’s tempting to want to establish yourself as a well-known party animal, social celebrity, sex god or goddess, tough guy, big shot, or some other socially hot commodity. Stop, breathe, think, and resist this urge. In a short year or two, you’ll look back on freshman year as ancient primitive history. You don’t want to cringe at what you did, who you dated, what sexually transmitted disease you acquired, the D minus you got in Music Appreciation, or the embarrassing digital pictures and video that will live forever on the Internet. Of course, you can always go to your quiet place on the weekends too.
3) Remember, you do not, repeat not, have to attend every event, keg party, pot roast, social scene, sports game, or accept every invitation. You don’t. You can’t. There is no Perfect Attendance medal for parties. Put yourself in charge of your schedule.
4) Watch out for joining a fraternity or sorority in the first two years. Many people performed well in freshman year and then went off the rails when they got into one of these ingroups with huge opportunities and incentives for bad behavior. Consider delaying this decision.
5) Beware of group studying or the study date. These are oxymorons like jumbo shrimp or military intelligence. Invariably they degenerate into a gabfest or whining session about how, “I’m never going to get this,” or “I’m going to fail,” “Me too,” or “This teacher’s so unfair,” or some other time waster.
If you follow this advice, I guarantee your social life, fun quotient, college experience, or early adult adventure will not suffer. You’ll get the best of it without all the wasted time, unnecessarily slaughtered brain cells, misadventures, hangovers, looming deadlines, awful all-nighters, playing catch-up in courses, and most of the other pitfalls lurking in this tumultuous time of life. I’m not alone on this. In a survey of adults, the number 1 thing they’d change about their lives would be to take school more seriously.
C.B. Brooks, MD is author of Trust Your Radar: Honest Advice for Teens and Young Adults from a Surgeon, Firefighter, Police Officer, Scuba Divemaster, Golfer, and Amateur Comedian.
Avoid Life’s Major Sand Traps. Life Lessons Schools Don’t Teach.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7220040
August 6, 2012
Personality Disorder types are hazardous to your health
As a Trust Your Radar reader, you’ve learned about the evil Personality Disorders in Chapter 35. You’ve learned how to spot them and take evasive action. You’ve also learned that medicine doesn’t have any cures for these folks who wreck other peoples’ lives.
Bad bosses exhibit those toxic traits displayed in the always troublesome Personality Disorders. Now the scientific community has demonstrated that working for “Bad bosses” injures your health. USA Today reporter Sharon Jayson wrote an article covering the findings of the American Psychological Association http://goo.gl/KEMxf
July 23, 2012
July 21, 2012
Aurora Shooting, Brain Radar Jammers
I’ve been away from the internet machine, honing my scuba skills. (Unreliable wi-fi under the ocean.)
Recently surfaced and heard big story: Aurora Colorado shootings. Tragedy in spades.
Brace yourselves – we’re in for weeks of traumatized, tearful, contradictory interviews about ‘God’s will saved me,’ ‘My prayers were answered,’ candlelight vigils, memorial services, group hugs, truly sad tales of young peoples’ life cycles abruptly ended by dumb high speed projectiles.
Multiple brain Radar Jammers will be prominently displayed: real brain disorders (my early guess is onset of schizophrenia for the shooter), seeing intention in random acts, religion, it’s too complicated to understand god’s plan, anger, grief, and others.
There’s a chapter in Trust Your Radar about personal safety and guns. As a cop, I came to see guns as an updated version of archaic “Revolutionary War technology with no do-overs.” Therein lies the real problem that needs our attention. If the delusional shooter had a baseball bat and even his tear gas, this would have been a far less tragic event.
July 8, 2012
Radar Jammer: Anger escalates to Shoe Throwin’ and Gun Pullin’
Great example of two humans climbing up their personal anger scales, past the ‘last chance point’ to anger-down, past the ‘danger level’ and into the zone of shoe throwing and gun pulling!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgRzktG13EI
You don’t even need English sub-titles to see where this is going! Knowledge of the Anger Radar Jammer and our Trust Your Radar anger management strategies would have clearly helped!
July 7, 2012
July 6, 2012
Media Release
NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Contact: CB@TrustYourRadar.com
YOUNG PEOPLE: AVOID LIFE’S MAJOR SAND TRAPS!
A new self-improvement book, Trust Your Radar, shows young adults, teens, and parents how to avoid the major sand traps of life that snag every generation. Sand traps like: bad relationships, bad decision making, financial disasters, substance overuse, accidents, health trouble, even becoming a crime victim.
Author C.B. Brooks, M.D. gives practical, real life advice spiced with engaging, funny, and memorable stories from his careers as a Surgeon, Firefighter, Police Officer, Scuba Divemaster, Golfer, Comedian, and others.
3 helpful concepts for a better life:
Identify your Radar – It’s your brain functioning optimally; not a vague intuition or sixth sense.
Train your Radar – Stock your memory bank with key information on health, weight, tattoos, safety, getting organized, respectful relationships, going to college or work. Cut through noise with clear thinking on evaluating people, investments, credit cards.
Learn the most dangerous toxic personality types and avoid them like the plague.
Meet the Radar Jammers – They have the power to turn down or turn off our brain Radars. Some are well known: alcohol, drugs, peer pressure, infatuation, anger, multitasking. Others are surprising: showing off, fake complexity, pushy religions, the need for speed, competition, and even fast food. Learn specific techniques to deal with them all.
Trust Your Radar is available in paperback and Kindle at Amazon www.amazon.com/author/cbbrooks and ebook at Barnes and Noble and Smashwords www.smashwords.com/books/view/130908.
Press Room with Media Kit and video: www.TrustYourRadar.com/press-room/
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June 28, 2012
Amazon Kindle version coming soon
The official Kindle version of Trust Your Radar is in final processing. Should be available on Amazon in upcoming days.
June 15, 2012
‘Trust Your Radar’ Paperback Now Available
Paperback version of Trust Your Radar by CB Brooks MD has just been released on AMAZON and the Createspace e-store.
