Hi Frank,

I would like to be one of your good friends .

Seriously, it's so fundamentally important
to focus on the constructive people.

Note that I don't even say positive, warm
or nice people. I just say constructive.

There are people who are nice and warm
but yet not constructive. Of course that
one wants to do something about such
people even if they are messy rather than
be helpful to people who are harsh and
arrogant.

I was near loosing a good business
relationship when I got upset a couple
of weeks ago. It doesn't happen
to me often at all. I had to call Joe and
ask him to forgive me. I think he did or
has done. I had good reasons to not be
satisfied perhaps but still not to stop
being constructive like that.

But here is the point with this little
input in your blog reply system:

I would like to give you an idea of what
I believe could be done when people are
not nice to us.

Let us try to understand how we can give
them a chance to get on the path of
peaceful and constructive thinking and
expressing of that thinking, speaking and
acting in general.

Since I have diabetes, I have noticed
that I need to watch my temper extra
carefully. This may sound as a bad or
poor excuse for loosing ones temper
but it isn't in fact. There are side effects
of different diseases that cause people
to not be with it as much as they would
wish to. This doesn't mean that you go
loosing your mind or so, but diabetes can
destruct your nerves physically the
chemical way (nevropathy). This makes
you not have the same ability to cope
with stressful of frustrating situations.
You of course need to re-adjust your
lifestyle and communication skills. But
during that period of adaptation, you
may indeed surprise yourself and others.

Because of that, I believe that there are
in some cases reasons and ways to give
people a second and even in some cases
a third chance to get back to civilisation
and decency.

Here are some examples of
possible replies to people who
don't seem to deserve our
attention anymore.

[Bear in mind that English is only my third language. So correct what you need to correct if you see anything you like in these three examples that I propose.]

Example 1
Hello,

Are you angry at me personally or are
you just angry in general ? Since I
don't remember that we know each
other very much I suggest we try this
again. Could you resend me an email
message that is kinder or at least
more constructive ? Hope you can
agree with me that it's the right thing
to do to give one another a second
chance to improve a relationship.
Don't you agree with me. Hope to be
able to be useful for your business.

Nothing personal,
just some common sense
Your name

Example 2
Hi ….,

I'm sorry to tell you that I have very
little time to read complaints for so
minor errors. We are all human being
having short time to live. So let us
make it a merry journey. Don't you
tend want to take a deep breath
and envisage a landscape of
friendliness between you and me ?
I'm not begging for your friendship
or so.. I just want to give you an
other shot at it so that I don't
disregard from reading your messages.
I do my very best and I know that it's
not always enough and that trying is
most often lying. But see I fight to
give everybody a fair chance and I
expect the same back. Let me know
what your mindset is after I sent
you this message.

With peacefulness in mind
Your name

Example 3

I'm sorry, but do we know each other ?
I know that I can not judge you for
a mistake or a weakness that you may
have committed or fallen into.

Well, I guess that what I'm trying to
make you aware of is that my time
is very limited and that I need to get
serious about selecting who I do
business with.

I go out publicly to a certain extent
but this doesn't mean that I can take
all the anger and frustrations people
want to throw on me or anybody
else that come in their way.

Let me know if you are still
about to send me such messages
as the one I'm just now kindly
taking the time to reply to.
I need to know so that I can
determine if I can be of any
use for your business Online.

With peaceful thoughts in mind ..
Your name

So what do you think Frank ? Is it a good approach or ?
I completely understand your point of view and even
respect it since I know that you care about your customers
( I have very clearly experienced it myself ).¨

I myself have a tendency to be too selective which can
lead to a pathetic kind of elitism which I really don't
recommend myself or any others. One even sometime
need to reassure people that one hasn't got any
patronising intentions and so on ..

Ed Askmo

PS Little anecdote:

A very good friend of mine, Nathalie
used to persist wrongly calling me
Richard or even Arthur since she had
a hard time to get it right with my
French 'Edouard' first name. Now you may
see why I let people call me Ed on the Net.