These are
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 shut 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 to 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 then 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, horses are just going to leave stable.
We all have some misdeed or quality we don’t want 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 in 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 understand effect it has, please work on your emotional intelligence skills.
When you raise adrenalin level of listener before you’ve even begun, they’ll “flood” and chances for constructive discourse are slim. They’ll engage in FLIGHT, leaving room symbolically, if they can’t physically; or they’ll engage in FIGHT, and immediately attack you. We don’t remember pleasant surprises in our lives, we remember horrendous ones, and oh, how we remember them. When we hear these set-ups, we immediately move to worst thing we’ve been fantasizing. Say, “Guess what?” and other person is thinking, “I’m fired,” or “You’re married,” or “You’ve found out I’m filing for bankruptcy,” or “They announced in news I was caught wearing white after Labor Day.”
