What I re-learned in Crucial Conversations class is that you can have “better” conversations with people if you’re able to control your initial emotional reactions and apply some learnable communication skills. I say “re-learned” because I got the same takeaway years ago from reading How to Win Friends and Influence People and Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. And while it’s been my experience that these techniques really do work, I haven’t used them as much I could have because they also seem to take a lot of the zest out of being alive. For example: Several years ago, we had an electrical problem at the house, where we weren’t getting power in any of the front rooms. My wife was home when the electrician came out — I was at work — and he fixed the problem in five minutes. When I got home, she was unhappy… Read more →
September 2008
BYU 59, UCLA 0
OMG the UCLA bandwagon has crashed so hard, they’re still trying to identify the victims. Karl Dorrell must be high-fiving people till his arm hurts. FIGHT ON! Read more →
Another Difference Between Dogs and Cats
Pugs for McCain
Nothing is inevitable here. We’re pugs, and we never give up! We never quit! Pugs never hide from history. Pugs make history! Sarah Palin OMG hottest governor ever. Woof Woof! — Lightning Read more →
Stories
[S]tories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. . . . Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending. — John Hodgman, Sept. 25, 2001 Remember . . . Read more →
You Don’t Say
One of our exercises in Crucial Conversations training was to “think of a person who is really frustrating to work with,” and to describe in writing a recent interaction with that person in terms of what was actually said, and what you were thinking or feeling but didn’t say. My responses included the following: What I Actually Said This project presents some unique challenges. What I Didn’t Say I have a lot of experience managing IT projects, but not in running a day care center or a mental institution, which is what this project requires. What I Actually Said That’s not quite the way I would have phrased it. What I Didn’t Say Everyone else in these meetings seems to feel constrained by a sense of professionalism and decency that you appear not to possess. One of my colleagues at our table of four claimed that based on those responses,… Read more →
A Paradox
When we give up trying to convince, we become more convincing. — Crucial Conversations So — I should give up trying to convince in an effort to become more convincing? Read more →
Will They Pay My Relo?
Iced Tea and Lemonade
Arnold Palmer may have won a lot of golf tournaments, but his greatest accomplishment in my opinion was to say, “Hey, let’s mix some lemonade in with the iced tea.” Nothing better on a hot day! Thanks, Arnie! Read more →
Chick’s vs. Dick’s
Last year, Dick’s Sporting Goods bought Chick’s Sporting Goods. According to the Orange County Register, the four Chick’s locations in Orange County, including the one in Tustin that I shop at, will all be replaced by Dick’s by the second half of 2009. I’m not happy about this. Oh, I know there are people who like Dick’s, and there are people who are 50-50 on the matter and can go either way, but there are also a lot of people like me who really prefer Chick’s. In fact, I’ve been doing Chick’s for so long that I don’t see how I’m ever going to get used to Dick’s. Read more →
Sarah Palin
As Warner Baxter said to Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street: You’re going out there a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star! Finally, a breath of fresh Alaskan air! Not yet another Ivy League lawyer, yet another warmed-over political hack, yet another condescending, posturing, preening, pandering, pontificating blowhard who’s lost sight of the fact that politicians are employees. We hire them, we pay them, we give them trillions of dollars to spend any way they want to . . . if we didn’t hold them to such ridiculously low standards of accountability, it might be easier to remember who works for whom. And hockey moms are hot! Why? Because hockey’s an expensive sport, so hockey dads have to knock down a pretty good income, which in our materialistic society allows them to be more selective in the spouse department. My wife is sort of a hockey mom, in… Read more →
What We Choose
I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be. Because we are all what we choose. — Margaret Cho Read more →