Kickstart Cellphone Smarts!

Three ladies at Applebees sat a few feet from our table. My hubby and I looked over our menu as the three of them chatted in the background. Moments later one of the ladies pulled out her cell phone and started to talk though the other two ladies sat across from her. She completely ignored them. The woman's highly pitched voice quickly raised two or three decibels as her "angry" conversation drowned ability to hear my hubby. Ever experience this?

Do rude cell phone users annoy you daily? Unfortunately that happens more than I like. For instance, last night I went to a presentation by Jean-Claude Brizard, titled "Building a Community of Excellence." Brizard talked of his vision to eliminate dropouts in the Rochester city school system and revitalize education here. Amazingly, a gentleman sitting behind us must have thought himself more important than Dr. Brizard. His cell phone went off during the talk. I watched him put his phone to his ear and wondered if he would talk. Why do many cell phone users seem oblivious to other people right around them?

Might this rudeness connect to lack of focus? self-importance? a deficit in manners? lack of civility? unawareness? Could be one or all depending on the case...

Great news is that peoples' brains can be rebooted to strengthen interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences. These two of the eight multiple intelligences, named and researched by Dr. Howard Gardner of Harvard University, can be seen in distinct regions of the brain through MRI's.

Here's a descriptor of these two intelligences...

Interpersonal [Social] Intelligence - includes the capacity to discern and respond appropriately to the moods, temperaments, motivations, and desires of other people.

Intrapersonal Intelligence - includes accurate self-knowledge, access to one's feelings and the ability to discriminate among them to direct behavior. Weber, E. (2005) MI Strategies in the Classroom and Beyond. Pearson Publishers.

Try rebooting with these strategies...

Teach teens good manners. We learn as we teach and we also retain more by teaching others. What if we taught our teens good phone manners by explaining how it can be done? We'd certainly learn that we needed to be courteous about how loudly we speak and to activate our buzzer in a public building with many people there. Then model it.

Reflect to adjust and change. Ask yourself questions related to your surroundings so that you know how you affect others. By doing so, this will lead you to build within yourself the capacity to show courtesy, kindness, and self control.

Additionally, humorous ads from cell phone companies would help kickstart people's smarts connected to ways they use cell phones in public places.

What positive strategies come to your mind to turn around cell phone abuse?

This blog's a contribution to help introduce Dr. Mike O’Malley's newly published book called Cell Hell - 55 Cell Phone Users You’d Like to Silence.. Brad Shorr's running a contest in which you could win $500.00, if you'd like to enter.