Lead-in Phrases to Avoid if You Don't Want Them to Run

Written by Susan Dunn, MA, Coach


These arerepparttar phrases that try men’s souls; and women’s too. They signal something is coming we aren’t going to like. Your heart may pound just reading them. Here we go --

1.We need to have a talk. 2.Can I be totally honest with you? 3.Guess what? 4.Can you come into my office for a moment please and shutrepparttar 129874 door? 5.May I have a word with you please? 6.Introductory one-down epithets such as young lady, young man, honey chile, drama queen, Miss Priss, Mr. Know-it-All, Queen of De-nial, brainy boy, and on torepparttar 129875 harder stuff. 7.I want to make one thing perfectly clear. 8.Okay, you asked for this. 9.You aren’t going to like this but … 10.The name and thenrepparttar 129876 set-up, “Alex, as you know …”

Common sense, emotional intelligence, would dictate that you introduce unpleasantries in another fashion. You don’t have to water it down once you get there, but if you lead with an alarm,repparttar 129877 horses are just going to leaverepparttar 129878 stable.

We all have some misdeed or quality we don’t wantrepparttar 129879 world to know about, and our imperfect lives are full of human error. We assume most surprises will be nasty ones. These phrases signal this may be about to happen, and we “fill inrepparttar 129880 blanks” sometimes with something far worse than you’re about to say.

These phrases “shock”. Why would you use them?

If you have to shock or intimidate someone to make a point, go do some work on your self-esteem.

If you enjoy shocking and intimidating people for sport, I hope your sphere of influence is small and never crosses mine.

If you’re doing this because you don’t understandrepparttar 129881 effect it has, please work on your emotional intelligence skills.

When you raiserepparttar 129882 adrenalin level ofrepparttar 129883 listener before you’ve even begun, they’ll “flood” andrepparttar 129884 chances for constructive discourse are slim. They’ll engage in FLIGHT, leavingrepparttar 129885 room symbolically, if they can’t physically; or they’ll engage in FIGHT, and immediately attack you. We don’t rememberrepparttar 129886 pleasant surprises in our lives, we rememberrepparttar 129887 horrendous ones, and oh, how we remember them. When we hear these set-ups, we immediately move torepparttar 129888 worst thing we’ve been fantasizing. Say, “Guess what?” andrepparttar 129889 other person is thinking, “I’m fired,” or “You’re married,” or “You’ve found out I’m filing for bankruptcy,” or “They announced inrepparttar 129890 news I was caught wearing white after Labor Day.”

LUCKY DAY THINKING

Written by Terry L. Sumerlin


The Del Lago Golf Course, near Lake Conroe, was beautiful. It was a nice fall, south Texas morning. Well, as nice as 95 degrees gets in mid September. I’d already spoken four times in two days, and was to speak two more times before heading home. A round of golf, with good friends, sounded like a great way to relax. The way I play golf, I probably should have chosen to relax over a good book.

We had played several holes and were having a great time, when we came to a 150-yard par three. All three of us hit our tee shots and were getting ready for our second shots. Since we were playing slower thanrepparttar two fellows behind us, we decided to let them play through.

We were watching forrepparttar 129872 ball. Don was standing off torepparttar 129873 left ofrepparttar 129874 green, Robert was standing onrepparttar 129875 green and I was torepparttar 129876 right, sitting inrepparttar 129877 golf cart. We sawrepparttar 129878 fellow hit. But, we never sawrepparttar 129879 ball.

Whack! Suddenly, I heard something that sounded like a hammer hitting a two-by-four. Then I saw Robert grab his head. I was terrified, and fully expected my friend to go down. He never did. As I coveredrepparttar 129880 short distance fromrepparttar 129881 cart to Robert, not knowing in what part ofrepparttar 129882 head he’d been hit,repparttar 129883 unthinkable flashed through my mind.

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