A Whackadoodle Extra: Because sometimes it’s just fun to share.

Including a Whackadoodle heating pad that comes complete with massaging action. Get one now at your local shelter...

The best heating pad ever!

It’s hard to tell from the photo, but Porthos here snuggles right up against my sore hip every night. His purring provides a gentle massage while the heat of his body sooths all the muscles along my hip—the muscles that got jumbled during my hip surgery last year. I can’t recommend this heating pad enough.

(If you want to read more about my lovely stay in the hospital last May, click here.)

Why share this? If you remember, last Sunday, my post mentioned “the principle of liking.”

In it, I posted a video of Professor Robert Cialdini. He’s the Regents' Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and was a visiting professor of marketing, business and psychology at Stanford University.

In the video, he mentioned an experiment wherein groups of individuals were asked to negotiate an agreement online. The first set of groups were told nothing about each other, while the second set of groups where asked to exchange information about themselves before negotiations started. In the first group, negotiations stagnated sixty percent of the time, compared to the second group which stagnated only thirty percent of the time. A pretty amazing statistic when you think about it.

It seems that discovering commonalties among people can make it easier for them to come together in agreements. Seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it? If we like the people we are working with, we are more likely to be open to their ideas.

With that in mind, I offer up the image of me with my little heating pad above, and ask that you do something similar in the comments below.

Tell us a bit about yourself, so that we can get to know one another. Some of you I know well, others of you I only know through your email address.

Getting to know one another is the first step in starting a community of like minds willing to support each other in their combined efforts to grow.

I am also considering hosting a Weekly Whackadoodle Chat for us to get together and talk about our efforts, hold each other to account, and celebrate our victories. I’d love to hear your thoughts about such an endeavor. Most importantly, would you want to take part?

I guess the only thing left to do is leave you with a reason to smile…

The video above was brought to you by “Playing for Change.” Here’s what they say about themselves in their website.

Playing For Change was created to inspire and connect the world through music. The idea for this project came from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people.

Traveling around the world inspired us to unite many of the greatest musicians we met throughout our journey. These musicians come from many different countries and cultures, but through music they speak the same language.

Click here to visit the Playing for Change website

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