is COACH YOI-RSELF TO SUCCESS -She stay, at home. Marcia felt diminished by this comment but realized theboundarv had been crossed. Later, she informed her husband the comment he had made at (he hospital. He didnt mean it in a nega^ tive way at all. but just thought it was the easiest response. Marcia him in the future to sav that she was a business consultant and to give out her office number. He was glad (0 do this. Which brings up another point. When you inform people, the whole point is to give them a graceful exit. However, oftentimes we dont let them take it. This defeats (he whole purpose. Let me demonstrate. Take example with Marcia. When Marcias husband replied, Im sorry, I didnt mean it to sound that way, Marcia might have said, Yes, you did! You rat fink #@$%%! Dont laugh—weve all been guilty of this. Let them off the hook. If they dont apologize, it is okay to ask for one. Id like an apology for that. Sometimes an apology isnt enough, and you may to ask them to make amends. I appreciate your apology for spilling red wine on my linen suit, but Id also like you to pay the dry-cleaning bill. Our natural tendency is to skip steps I and 2 and go right to 3 or 4- usually not in a neutral tone of voice, either. The trick to staying neutral is to address things on the spot (Tip 7). The good news is that eventually you wont even need these bound- aries—people wouldnt think of making an unkind remark to you. There is another interesting side effect to enforcing your boundaries. We assume tthat enforcing a boundary will make people dislike us or think we are pushy or aggressive or perhaps demanding. However, it is (he exact oppo- site. When you have strong boundaries in place, people will stop trcat- ing you like a doormat and start respecting you. Youll be the kind of person people naturally respect and treat courteously. When I was a lit- tie girl in the first grade, a big bully of a fifth-grader (and you know how big fifth-graders look when you are in first grade) was always picking on me and threatening me. I told my dad, and he taught me how (o throw a punch. One day on the playground Mark was with a bunch of his friends and started to taunt me. I spun around and punched him right in the nose. To my own shock and amazement, he fell flat on his back and had a bloody nose. His friends stood around him, jaws agapc, as shocked as I was. I was terrified thai they would tear me from limb to limb and decided to get out of Dodge and literally skipped off. The next day at school I was wary, but to my complete amazement, Mark came up (o me
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 17:29:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015