You Said What!

Feelings can come on in a second. But so can a flea! Thoughts and ideas, good or bad, can occur in your mind in a second even when your not thinking about anything in particular. Yet if we don't give those ideas a second thought it could take a lifetime to live the results down.

Maybe it would be a decent idea to run some thoughts through your mind at least once before you run the words over your tongue and past your lips.

How will I greet people today... Will it be with a frown and a disgusted look because it's Monday and I really don't feel like starting the week. Or will I put on the best attitude I can and greet people with a simple hello, how are you...

Does a simple “hi, how are you” invite friendship... Does it make people feel warm... Could it possibly... I really like to think so and usually it does, but there are the occasional people that are just looking for someone to unload their gloom and doom on...

Some people just seem to desire being angry at the entire world! The ones that take a chance encounter and unload their hostility on unsuspecting people who have nothing to do with whatever their being yelled at for. Do they not want new friends... Are they so unhappy with their lives that they need to make the rest of the world unhappy...

Can they not see or understand that they are losing a chance to make a friend? They scowl and yell, they make someone feel bad. Their angry words make them sound like a foolish insane grouch! Do they not realize that is the impression that everyone within earshot will have of them...

It's been said that a good diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to he-- in such a way that you look forward to the trip. There seems to me to be some truth in that. I'll absolutely never make a good diplomat!!! If and when I get really angry I too seem to lose the ability to control my mind and think of each and every word that seems to fly from my lips.

I was a lot worse when I was younger but still there are times... I learned though that when your sounding like a loud obnoxious fool, that is how people will take you and that is how everyone who hears you or hears of you will remember you.

Years ago, there was someone who really P-d me off. It all happened real suddenly and I knew I'd run into them again. It was like the third or fourth time they had expressed their opinion to me about something they had nothing to do with and they really didn't totally understand. Yet they took their anger about something else and aimed it at me... It was a woman who was dating a friend of mine so I couldn't just lay her out on the floor! At that time in my life though a man would have suffered that fate...

So after stewing in my own hostility over it I devised a little experiment. I thought deeply about words. I actually laid out a few choice sentences. I just knew they wouldn't be able to resist the urge to bring the exact same topic up again...

So next time they decided to unload on me, I came back with lines and words that left them standing with their mouths open and in need of a dictionary to figure out exactly what I had said... Never again did this person bring that subject up again.

It's kind of like something else I heard many years ago. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bulls--t. Hurtful, angry words are way to easy and only serve to make people shut you out. But words chosen carefully and tactfully make people think. They sink in deep and are long remembered.

So now when I'm in a situation where confronted by an angry individual I take the extra few seconds to choose my words well and baffle them! Hmm, maybe while on a coffee break or during your lunch, you could think about some of the situations angry customers pose to you. Think then about words that will fit the situations but will leave them scratching their heads with their mouth hanging open.

Disarm their loud vulgar mouths with intelligence and watch their foolish faces as they struggle to understand what just happened to them.

It really is a good feeling that leaves me smile later as I recall it.