Top Highlights

• •  Am I acting out my concerns? •  Is my conscience nagging me? •  Am I choosing the certainty of silence over the risk of speaking up?
• feelings don’t come out only in your facial expressions and other nonverbal behaviors; they also escape in the form of biting sarcasm, cutting humor, or surprising non sequiturs. For instance, while seated across from his mother at the dinner table, a 29-year-old chronically unemployed son politely tells her that she has “a hunk of lasagna” on her ...
• Effective problem solvers take the opposite approach. Only after they’ve decided that the conversation should be held do they ask the question, “How can I do this? Better still, how can I do this well?” If we reverse the order, starting with
• •  First, you give tacit approval to the action. If you see an infraction and say nothing, the other person can easily conclude that you’ve given permission. You may feel that you’ve given permission, and then, realizing that you’ve given the action the green light, you find that it’s harder to say something later. •  Second, others may think that ...
• Friedrich Nietzsche once argued that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. This little homily is often quoted. It’s also often wrong. When it comes to emotions, abuse isn’t a blessing, it’s a curse. When people gain success through abuse, they succeed in spite of their method, not because of it.