Interpersonal Effectiveness Quotes

It is a rare person who can cut himself off from mediate and immediate relations with others for long spaces of time without undergoing a deterioration in personality.

I learned that the world of men as it exists today is a bureaucracy. This is an obvious truth, of course, though it is also one the ignorance of which causes great suffering. “But moreover, I discovered, in the only way that a man ever really learns anything important, the real skill that is required to succeed in a bureaucracy. I mean really succeed: do good, make a difference, serve. I discovered the key. This key is not efficiency, or probity, or insight, or wisdom. It is not political cunning, interpersonal skills, raw IQ, loyalty, vision, or any of the qualities that the bureaucratic world calls virtues, and tests for. The key is a certain capacity that underlies all these qualities, rather the way that an ability to breathe and pump blood underlies all thought and action. “The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air. “The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable. “It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.

Fear and anxiety affect decision making in the direction of more caution and risk aversion... Traumatized individuals pay more attention to cues of threat than other experiences, and they interpret ambiguous stimuli and situations as threatening (Eyesenck, 1992), leading to more fear-driven decisions. In people with a dissociative disorder, certain parts are compelled to focus on the perception of danger. Living in trauma-time, these dissociative parts immediately perceive the present as being "just like" the past and "emergency" emotions such as fear, rage, or terror are immediately evoked, which compel impulsive decisions to engage in defensive behaviors (freeze, flight, fight, or collapse). When parts of you are triggered, more rational and grounded parts may be overwhelmed and unable to make effective decisions.

Emotions are the lowest form of consciousness. Emotional actions are the most contracted, narrowing, dangerous form of behavior. The romantic poetry and fiction of the last 200 years has quite blinded us to the fact that emotions are an active and harmful form of stupor. Any peasant can tell you that. Beware of emotions. Any child can tell you that. Watch out for the emotional person. He is a lurching lunatic. Emotions are caused by biochemical secretions in the body to serve during the state of acute emergency. An emotional person is a blind, crazed maniac. Emotions are addictive and narcotic and stupefacient. Do not trust anyone who comes on emotional. What are the emotions? In a book entitled Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality, written when I was a psychologist, I presented classifications of emotions and detailed descriptions of their moderate and extreme manifestations. Emotions are all based on fear. [...] The emotional person cannot think; he cannot perform any effective game action (except in acts of physical aggression and strength). The emotional person is turned off sensually. His body is a churning robot. [...] The only state in which we can learn, harmonize, grow, merge, join, understand is the absence of emotion. This is called bliss or ecstasy, attained through centering the emotions. [...] Conscious love is not an emotion; it is serene merging with yourself, with other people, with other forms of energy. Love cannot exist in an emotional state. [...] The great kick of the mystic experience, the exultant, ecstatic hit, is the sudden relief from emotional pressure. Did you imagine that there could be emotions in heaven? Emotions are closely tied to ego games. Check your emotions at the door to paradise.

When a person is in emotional pain, it’s hard to be rational and to think of a good solution. Nevertheless, many of the coping strategies used by people with overwhelming emotions only serve to make their problems worse.

Cognitive insight (knowing something) is not like emotional insight (feeling something). It has no psychodynamic effects. It does not affect the narcissist's behavior patterns, or his interpersonal interactions - the products of well entrenched and rigid defense mechanisms.

To switch effectively from defense to social engagement strategies, the nervous system must do two things: (1) assess risk, and (2) if the environment looks safe, inhibit the primitive defensive reactions to fight, flight or freeze.

Criticizing yourself all the time or being overly judgmental of a situation is like wearing dark sunglasses indoors.

Moods are by nature compelling, contagious, and profoundly interpersonal, and disorders of mood alter the perceptions and behaviors not only of those who have them but also of those who are related or closely associated. Manic-depressive illness—marked as it is by extraordinary and confusing fluctuations in mood, personality, thinking, and behavior—inevitably has powerful and often painful effects on relationships.

I don’t think I like that boy.” He growled, glaring for effect, just in case I hadn’t figured out his oh-so-subtle interpersonal cues. “He’s a sweet kid,” I insisted, folding the gray blazer over my arm. “He’s a teenage boy,” Cal said, his dark eyes narrowed. “They’re all sexual deviants under the surface. I should know. I was a teenage boy once.” “Thousands of years ago,” I countered. “Times may change, but testosterone does not.

Remember, sometimes pain can’t be avoided, but many times suffering can. Take,

I accepted that I was wired differently than most people, or, more precisely, that my wiring was toward one end of a spectrum of different human configurations. My innate logical skills were significantly greater than my interpersonal skills.

The ramifications of workplace violence can have a lingering effect on the organization for generations.

The ramifications of workplace disruptive behavior can have an extremely serious effect upon an organization.

Those who work in a fun environment have greater productivity, interpersonal effectiveness, and call in sick less often.

However, do not confuse distraction with avoidance. When you avoid a distressing situation, you choose not to deal with it. But when you distract yourself from a distressing situation, you still intend to deal with it in the future, when your emotions have calmed down to a tolerable level. The

To a degree that we seldom realize, we depend upon the participation of others in our lives, and upon our own participation in the lives of others. Our success and effectiveness as persons is based upon this participation, and upon an ability to maintain a controlling competence in communicating with others.

Effective leadership begins with effective communication.

We now know that the placebo effect is real medicine that operates mainly through the activation of brain opioid systems.

... every therapist must develop enough personal maturity, clinical wisdom, and capacity for good judgment to effectively and safely conduct psychotherapy, an imperative that is especially important in the treatment of this population. The emotion dysregulation and insecure and disorganized attachment of complex trauma clients elicit strong emotional reactions from others, even those in their support network, including therapists. Reactions can range from sympathy, sorrow, fear, and guilt to frustration, impatience, anger/rage, hostility, and disgust or contempt.

validation (in the context of interpersonal skills, anyway) is the act of recognizing and affirming the validity or worth of a person’s emotions. Essentially, validation means saying to someone, “I hear you. I get what you’re feeling, and it’s perfectly alright to feel that way.” Effective validation has two components: It identifies a specific emotion It offers justification for feeling that emotion

Unless you’re influenced by my uniqueness, I’m not going to be influenced by your advice. So if you want to be really effective in the habit of interpersonal communication, you cannot do it with technique alone. You have to build the skills of empathic listening on a base of character that inspires openness and trust. And you have to build the Emotional Bank Accounts that create a commerce between hearts.

When it comes to developing character strength, inner security and unique personal and interpersonal talents and skills in a child, no institution can or ever will compare with, or effectively substitute for, the home's potential for positive influence.

The word dialectic (in dialectical behavior therapy) means to balance and compare two things that appear very different or even contradictory. In dialectical behavior therapy, the balance is between change and acceptance (Linehan, 1993a). You need to change the behaviors in your life that are creating more suffering for yourself and others while simultaneously also accepting yourself the way you are. This might sound contradictory, but it’s a key part of this treatment. Dialectical behavior therapy depends on acceptance and change, not acceptance or change.

What’s so interesting here is that through the course of development, these secure children increasingly “internalize” their parents’ emotional availability and responsiveness and come to hold the same constant or dependable loving feeling toward themselves that their parents originally held toward them (certainly, a beautiful developmental process to watch unfold in securely attached children). Said differently, cognitive development increasingly allows securely attached children to internally hold a mental representation of their emotionally responsive parents when the attachment figures are away and they can increasingly soothe themselves as their caregivers have done—facilitating the child’s own capacity for affect regulation and independent functioning. Thus, as these children grow older and mature cognitively and emotionally, they become increasingly able to soothe themselves when distressed, function for increasingly longer periods without emotional refueling, and effectively elicit appropriate help or support when necessary. In this way, object constancy and more independent functioning develops—facilitating their ability to comfort themselves and become the source of their own self-esteem and secure identity as capable, love-worthy persons. Furthermore, they possess the cognitive schemas or internal working models necessary to establish new relationships with others that hold this same affirming affective valence.

While disagreements and interpersonal conflicts are common in even the healthiest of family systems, family scapegoating goes far beyond this, making recovering from its impact and effects difficult. For example, more than half of those who responded to an FSA survey I conducted have been described as “mentally ill”; “emotionally sick,” or “a liar” by a parent or other relative when there was absolutely no truth to this whatsoever. Naturally, being spoken about in this way can be confusing, angering, and even traumatizing to the target of such hostile and defamatory statements.

When the attachment figure is also a threat to the child, two systems with conflicting goals are activated simultaneously or sequentially: the attachment system, whose goal is to seek proximity, and the defense systems, whose goal is to protect. In these contexts, the social engagement system is profoundly compromised and its development interrupted by threatening conditions. This intolerable conflict between the need for attachment and the need for defense with the same caregiver results in the disorganized–disoriented attachment pattern (Main & Solomon, 1986). A contradictory set of behaviors ensues to support the different goals of the animal defense systems and of the attachment system (Lyons-Ruth & Jacobvitz, 1999; Main & Morgan, 1996; Steele, van der Hart, & Nijenhuis, 2001; van der Hart, Nijenhuis, & Steele, 2006). When the attachment system is stimulated by hunger, discomfort, or threat, the child instinctively seeks proximity to attachment figures. But during proximity with a person who is threatening, the defensive subsystems of flight, fight, freeze, or feigned death/shut down behaviors are mobilized. The cry for help is truncated because the person whom the child would turn to is the threat. Children who suffer attachment trauma fall into the dissociative–disorganized category and are generally unable to effectively auto- or interactively regulate, having experienced extremes of low arousal (as in neglect) and high arousal (as in abuse) that tend to endure over time (Schore, 2009b). In the context of chronic danger, patterns of high sympathetic dominance are apt to become established, along with elevated heart rate, higher cortisol levels, and easily activated alarm responses. Children must be hypervigilantly prepared and on guard to avoid danger yet primed to quickly activate a dorsal vagal feigned death state in the face of inescapable threat. In the context of neglect, instead of increased sympathetic nervous system tone, increased dorsal vagal tone, decreased heart rate, and shutdown (Schore, 2001a) may become chronic, reflecting both the lack of stimulation in the environment and the need to be unobtrusive.

Comfort, support, and care are essential in maintaining and improving an individual’s mental efficiency (e.g., Runtz & Schallow, 1997), in part because they have important physiological calming effects (Schore, 1994; 2003b), and favorable effects on the immune system (Uchino, Cacioppi, & Kieclot-Glaser, 1996).

In fact, the same intervention or response may even have the opposite effect on two different clients with contrasting developmental histories and cultural contexts. For example, if a client’s parent was distant or aloof, the therapist’s judicious self-disclosure may be helpful for the client. In contrast, the same type of self-disclosure is likely to be anxiety-arousing for a client who grew up serving as the confidant or emotional caregiver of a depressed parent. Greater sharing with the therapist may help the first client learn that, contrary to her deeply held beliefs, she does matter and can be of interest to other people. In contrast, for the second client, the same type of self-disclosure may inadvertently impose the unwanted needs of others and set this client back in treatment as, in her mind, she experiences herself back in her old caretaking role again—this time with the therapist. This unwanted reenactment occurs because the therapeutic relationship is now paralleling the same problematic relational theme that this client struggled with while growing up.

Insecurity not only paralyzes our relationship with the living God but has a devastating effect on interpersonal relationships. It is the starting point of all social estrangement. It breaks down openness, which is the bridge to the existential world of the other. It undermines real communication and causes a kind of rupture in the evolution of authentic personality.

Although Megan "knew" she was not in danger, her body told her that she was. If sensorimotor habits are firmly entrenched, accurate cognitive interpretations may not exert much influence on changing bodily orgamzation and arousal responses. Instead, the traumatized person may experience the reality of the body rather than that of the mind. To be most effective, the sensorimotor psychotherapist works on both the cognitive and sensorimotor levels. With Megan, a purely cognitive approach might foster some change in her integrative capacity, but the change would be only momentary if the cowering response were reactivated each time she received feedback at work... However, if she is encouraged to remember to "stand tall" in the face of criticism, her body and her thoughts will be congruent with each other and with current reality.

Units with a history and tradition of close-combat, hand-to-hand killing inspire special dread and fear in an enemy by capitalizing upon this natural aversion to the “hate” manifested in this determination to engage in close-range interpersonal aggression. The British Gurkha battalions have been historically effective at this (as can be seen in the Argentinean’s dread of them during the Falklands War), but any unit that puts a measure of faith in the bayonet has grasped a little of the natural dread with which an enemy responds to the possibility of facing an opponent who is determined to come within “skewering range.” What these units (or at least their leaders) must understand is that actual skewering almost never happens; but the powerful human revulsion to the threat of such activity, when a soldier is confronted with superior posturing represented by a willingness or at least a reputation for participation in close-range killing, has a devastating effect upon the enemy’s morale.

William James, the father of research psychology in the United States, said “The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.” Knowing what to overlook is one way that older adults are typically wiser than young adults. With age comes what is known as a positivity effect. We become more interested in positive information, and our brains react less strongly to what negative information we do encounter. We disengage with interpersonal conflict, choosing to let it be, especially when those in our network are involved.

We need a new level, a deeper level of thinking—a paradigm based on the principles that accurately describe the territory of effective human being and interacting—to solve these deep concerns. This new level of thinking is what The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is about. It’s a principle-centered, character-based, “inside-out” approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness. “Inside-out” means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self—with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. It says if you want to have a happy marriage, be the kind of person who generates positive energy and sidesteps negative energy rather than empowering it. If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee. If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy. If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character. The inside-out approach says that private victories

Knowing one’s emotions. Self-awareness—recognizing a feeling as it happens—is the keystone of emotional intelligence. As we will see in Chapter 4, the ability to monitor feelings from moment to moment is crucial to psychological insight and self-understanding. An inability to notice our true feelings leaves us at their mercy. People with greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives, having a surer sense of how they really feel about personal decisions from whom to marry to what job to take. 2. Managing emotions. Handling feelings so they are appropriate is an ability that builds on self-awareness. Chapter 5 will examine the capacity to soothe oneself, to shake off rampant anxiety, gloom, or irritability—and the consequences of failure at this basic emotional skill. People who are poor in this ability are constantly battling feelings of distress, while those who excel in it can bounce back far more quickly from life’s setbacks and upsets. 3. Motivating oneself. As Chapter 6 will show, marshaling emotions in the service of a goal is essential for paying attention, for self-motivation and mastery, and for creativity. Emotional self-control—delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness—underlies accomplishment of every sort. And being able to get into the “flow” state enables outstanding performance of all kinds. People who have this skill tend to be more highly productive and effective in whatever they undertake. 4. Recognizing emotions in others. Empathy, another ability that builds on emotional self-awareness, is the fundamental “people skill.” Chapter 7 will investigate the roots of empathy, the social cost of being emotionally tone-deaf, and the reason empathy kindles altruism. People who are empathic are more attuned to the subtle social signals that indicate what others need or want. This makes them better at callings such as the caring professions, teaching, sales, and management. 5. Handling relationships. The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing emotions in others. Chapter 8 looks at social competence and incompetence, and the specific skills involved. These are the abilities that undergird popularity, leadership, and interpersonal effectiveness. People who excel in these skills do well at anything that relies on interacting smoothly with others; they are social stars.

Yet another long-term effect of chronic interpersonal abuse is either a loss of sense of self or the lack of a sense of self (if one had not developed prior to the abuse). In an effort to survive, the victim takes on the perspective of the abuser, coming even to experience her or his own sense of self through the eyes of the abuser. Thus, the victim’s sense of self comes to be experienced as the abuser's sense of the victim. Obviously, such a “self” is likely to be experienced as deserving of abuse, as that is apparently how the abuser sees the victim. In the absence of the abuser, the victim will no longer know who she or he is, exposing the lack of a real sense of self in the victim.

Research on avoidant attachment (a left-hemisphere-dominant form of relating) suggests that a mother's inner state of relative disengagement is reflected in her infant's biological response of needing to go it alone through increased attempts at self-regulation even at one year of age (Hill-Sonderlund et al., 2008). It is as though there is unspoken communication that life is about independence, encouraging mother and baby to move apart into more separate universes--together. For both parent and child, the long-term effects of such isolation are profound, leading to changes in their epigenetic profiles that support increased inflamation, the headwaters of many chronic illnesses (Fredrickson et al. 2013)

Being heard by your doctor isn’t just an emotional need but a physical one: patients benefit clinically from feeling cared for. The emotional and the physical, science is learning, are more intertwined than we once understood. Many studies have suggested that emotional care—interpersonal warmth—has a measurable effect on patients’ outcomes. For example, the incidence of severe diabetes complications in patients of doctors who rate high on a standard empathy scale is a remarkable 40 percent lower than in patients whose doctors do poorly on the empathy scale, Danielle Ofri, an internist at New York’s Bellevue Hospital, reports in What Doctors Feel. “This is comparable,” she points out, “to the benefits seen with the most intensive medical therapy for diabetes.

The qualities of a successful military strategist will change from person to person, but there are a central few that all of them need. These include, above all else, strategic judgment, but also stamina, interpersonal skills and a feel for people; an ability to energize, inspire and motivate; the ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing; a degree of personal presence and charisma; a sincere love of servicemen and women; an ability to be tough when needed, but also compassionate when that is appropriate; fortitude in the face of adversity and the capacity to stay calm in the midst of chaos; an ability to deal with setbacks, missteps and mistakes; a sense of what leadership style is required to bring out the best in those immediately below, and also for the organization collectively. A great strategic leader also needs to be able to foresee how a conflict will end.

while the behaviour patterns of archaic humans remained fixed for tens of thousands of years, Sapiens could transform their social structures, the nature of their interpersonal relations, their economic activities and a host of other behaviours within a decade or two. Consider a resident o Berlin, born in 1900 and living to the ripe age of one hundred. She spent her childhood in the Hohenzollern Empire of Wilhelm II; her adult years in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Third Reich and Communist East Germany; and she died a citizen of a democratic and reunified Germany. She had managed to be a part of five very different sociopolitical systems, though her DNA remained exactly the same. This was the key to Sapiens' success. In a one-on-one brawl, a Neanderthal would probably have beaten a Sapiens. But in a conflict of hundreds, Neanderthals wouldn't stand a chance. Neanderthals could share information about the whereabouts of lions, but they probably could not tell - and revise - stories about tribal spirits. Without an ability to compose fiction, Neanderthals were unable to cooperate effectively in large numbers, nor could they adapt their social behaviour to rapidly changing challenging. (p. 38)

Meanwhile, in Europe, the Renaissance continued, and I began to see the full scope of the Second Insight. The power of the church to define reality was diminishing, and Europeans were feeling as though they were awakening to look at life anew. Through the courage of countless individuals, all inspired by their intuitive memories, the scientific method was embraced as a democratic process of exploring and coming to understand the world in which humans found themselves. This method—exploring some aspect of the natural world, drawing conclusions, then offering this view to others—was thought of as the consensus-building process through which we would be able, finally, to understand mankind’s real situation on this planet, including our spiritual nature. But those in the church, entrenched in Fear, sought to squelch this new science. As political forces lined up on both sides, a compromise was reached. Science would be free to explore the outer, material world, but must leave spiritual phenomena to the dictates of the still-influential churchmen. The entire inner world of experience—our higher perceptual states of beauty and love, intuitions, coincidences, interpersonal phenomena, even dreams—all were, at first, off limits to the new science. Despite these restrictions, science began to map out and describe the operation of the physical world, providing information rich in ways to increase trade and utilize natural resources. Human economic security increased, and slowly we began to lose our sense of mystery and our heartfelt questions about the purpose of life. We decided it was purposeful enough just to survive and build a better, more secure world for ourselves and our children. Gradually we entered the consensus trance that denied the reality of death and created the illusion that the world was explained and ordinary and devoid of mystery. In spite of our rhetoric, our once-strong intuition of a spiritual source was being pushed farther into the background. In this growing materialism, God could only be viewed as a distant Deist’s God, a God who merely pushed the universe into being and then stood back to let it run in a mechanical sense, like a predictable machine, with every effect having a cause, and unconnected events happening only at random, by chance alone.

We are all hardwired to react instantly to a physical or verbal attack.

In fact, during my research and interviews with McKinsey alumni, the Talk element of the model was consistently ranked the most important of all interpersonal elements. Why is it that the simple act of talking can cause so many problems in team problem solving? Generally, because we don't have specific Rules of Engagement; because we like to speak more often than we listen; and because we get personally attached to our own points of view.

Forgas and his colleagues have demonstrated diverse benefits of a sad mood. It can improve memory performance, reduce errors in judgment, make people slightly better at detecting deception in others, and foster more effective interpersonal strategies, such as increasing the politeness of requests.

Everyone is always doing as well as they can within their personal limitations, their personal history, what they know and don't know and what they're feeling in that moment. If they could make a healthier decision, they would. This includes you.

Anytime you feel yourself starting to become overwhelmed with either information or feelings, you need to be able to stop. It doesn’t matter whether the conversation involves a minor discussion about breakfast or a major debate about selling the house. The mechanism for stopping a conversation that’s becoming overheated is extremely simple. It can be contained in a one-sentence agreement both parties accept. Here it is: Either party can ask to stop a discussion at any time for any reason. What that means is that whenever you ask to stop talking about something, the other person is obligated to stop talking and give a simple “Okay.” No further discussion occurs, not even “I just need to finish my thought” or “Why can’t I just explain . . . ?” When I suggest this idea to argumentative couples, their typical reply is, “Oh, great. My spouse will shut me up all the time. I’ll never be able to talk about anything that matters to me.” In actual practice, though, that rarely happens. Even the most out-of-control couples have demonstrated that when the people involved have in place a solid agreement to stop talking, both people benefit. That’s because when either person can ask to stop talking when he or she feels overwhelmed, and finds that request respected, each person can begin to trust—often for the first time in years—that bringing up a potentially difficult topic will not automatically escalate into all-out verbal warfare.

The case for reforming or, failing that, expelling the worst offenders is bolstered by Will Felps’s research on ‘bad apples’. Felps and his colleagues studied what I call deadbeats (‘withholders of effort’), downers (who ‘express pessimism, anxiety, insecurity, and irritation’, a toxic breed of de-energizer), and assholes (who violate ‘interpersonal norms of respect’). Felps estimates that teams with just one deadbeat, downer, or asshole suffer a performance disadvantage of 30 to 40 percent compared to teams that have no bad apples. These rotten apples are so destructive because ‘bad is stronger than good’. For most people, negative thoughts, feelings, and events produce larger and longer-lasting effects than positive ones.

Hobbes and Spinoza, in contrast, found the grounds of much interpersonal conflict in the emotions, and even diagnosed specific emotions as inherently disruptive to social order, e.g., glory for Hobbes. But by the same token, there are many passions that Hobbes stated “incline us to peace,” and Spinoza allowed that insofar as people agree in affects, they agree in nature. Eighteenth-century philosophers tended to evaluate the social effects of the emotions in terms of whether they were self- or other-directed, with Shaftesbury and Hutcheson arguing against Mandeville that our most natural emotions were other-directed. In his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1759), Edmund Burke distinguished between the passions directed at self-preservation and those belonging to society, but spends the lion's share of his time on the latter. The issue is somewhat more complicated in Hume, but he does seem to take the development of our emotions and their susceptibility to a standard of appropriateness to be indispensable to many of the “artifices” that make social life possible.

Real empowerment comes from having both the principles and the practices understood and applied at all levels of the organization. Practices are the what to do’s, specific applications that fit specific circumstances. Principles are the why to do’s, the elements upon which applications or practices are built. Without understanding the principles of a given task, people become incapacitated when the situation changes and different practices are required to be successful. When training people, we often teach skills and practices, the specific how to of a given task. But when we teach practices without principles, we tend to make people dependent on us or others for further instruction and direction. Principle-centered leaders are men and women of character who work with competence “on farms” with “seed and soil” on the basis of natural principles and build those principles into the center of their lives, into the center of their relationships with others, into the center of their agreements and contracts, into their management processes, and into their mission statements. The challenge is to be a light, not a judge; to be a model, not a critic. Section 1 PERSONAL     and INTERPERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS  

simultaneously we need to get continual feedback about how our clinical evaluation and interventions are going and be open to letting go of considered specifics, of moving back from the peaks of activation and plateaus of probability into the plane of possibility. Such feedback is a key element of effective psychotherapy of all sorts (see

EXPECTANCY THEORY Conceptual model. The hypothesis - also known as expectancy communication or interpersonal expectancy effects - that a person's nonverbal communication unwittingly scripts a recipient's behavior, deportment, or performance in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Practice the golden rule in business: Do unto others the way you would have them do unto you. Fairness will then be in your business. -- Practice the platinum rule in interpersonal relationships. It is "Do unto others, the way they want to be done unto." They will be more apt to stay comfortable when interacting with us when we are able to do things their preferred way.

Unless you have chains around your ankles, I want to see your elbows pumping down the hallway now!’ Isn’t it nicer, however, to be asked to “drop by”?

You’ll then use your responses to the Valued Living Questionnaire in the following exercise, which will help you move toward engaging in what you value.

Of course, not all failures in integration result in dissociation. Integrative failures are on a continuum. Dissociation involves a kind of parallel owning and disowning of experience: While one part of you owns an experience, another part of you does not. Thus, people with dissociative disorders do not feel integrated and instead feel fragmented because they have memories, thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and so forth that they experience as uncharacteristic and foreign, as though these do not belong to themselves. Their personality is not able to “shift gears” smoothly from one response pattern to another; rather, their sense of self and enduring patterns of response change from situation to situation, and they are not very effective at adopting new ways of coping. They

In the past, when an apparently healthy patient appeared emotionally agitated and complained of physical symptoms, doctors tended to believe that the symptoms were psychosomatic, “all in the mind,” and therefore not physical or “real.” This is no longer an accepted view of psychosomatic illness. As soon as we recognize that affects emerge from emotional systems that are fueled by brain chemicals that can also exert an eventual effect on the functioning of the brain and the body, then the division between emotional and physical disorders narrows to the point of extinction.

HABITS” DEFINED For our purposes, we will define a habit as the intersection of knowledge, skill, and desire. Knowledge is the theoretical paradigm, the what to do and the why. Skill is the how to do. And desire is the motivation, the want to do. In order to make something a habit in our lives, we have to have all three. I may be ineffective in my interactions with my work associates, my spouse, or my children because I constantly tell them what I think, but I never really listen to them. Unless I search out correct principles of human interaction, I may not even know I need to listen. Even if I do know that in order to interact effectively with others I really need to listen to them, I may not have the skill. I may not know how to really listen deeply to another human being. But knowing I need to listen and knowing how to listen is not enough. Unless I want to listen, unless I have the desire, it won’t be a habit in my life. Creating a habit requires work in all three dimensions. The being/seeing change is an upward process—being changing seeing, which in turn changes being, and so forth, as we move in an upward spiral of growth. By working on knowledge, skill, and desire, we can break through to new levels of personal and interpersonal effectiveness as we break with old paradigms that may have been

Dr. Marsha Linehan (1993a), who has developed an effective treatment for BPD (dialectical behavior therapy, discussed in chapter 8), has put the nine symptoms of BPD into five easily understandable categories: (1) emotion dysregulation, (2) interpersonal dysregulation, (3) behavioral dysregulation, (4) identity or self dysregulation, and (5) cognitive dysregulation.

frequently use this perception demonstration in working with people and organizations because it yields so many deep insights into both personal and interpersonal effectiveness. It shows, first of all, how powerfully conditioning affects our perceptions, and our paradigms. If ten seconds can have that kind of impact on the way we see things, what about the

The more closely our maps or paradigms are aligned with these principles or natural laws, the more accurate and functional they will be. Correct maps will infinitely impact our personal and interpersonal effectiveness far more than any amount of effort expended on changing our attitudes and behaviors.

This new level of thinking is what The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is about. It’s a principle-centered, character-based, “inside-out” approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness.

Paradoxically, depathologising people’s fundamental inclinations and giving group members permission to be the way they are seemed to constitute the best insurance that their self-esteem and interpersonal effectiveness would improve.

As shown here, the consequences of victims of child psychological/emotional abuse may not be calculable. Until recently, research in this particular area has been relatively sparse. Research done so far suggests that children may have lifelong separation patterns, depression, anxiety, dysfunctional/toxic relationships, low self-esteem, and inability to feel empathy. Development processes can be impaired or even disrupted by a lack of mental and emotional adaptation. When the child reaches puberty, it is often difficult for them to trust them, and they may not be able to experience fulfillment and happiness in their interpersonal relationships, even though they have no idea how the roots of their misfortune, dissatisfaction, and suffering look like an adult could be found in her painful, wounded childhood. Unfortunately, when they become parents, adult survivors can find it difficult to identify and respond sensitively and appropriately to the needs of their own children, thereby continuing the cycle of multi-generation abuse in their family system.

Gordon Allport, a professor of psychology at Harvard, formulated what he called the contact hypothesis in 1954.81 This is the idea that under appropriate conditions, interpersonal contact is one of the most effective ways to reduce prejudice. By spending time with others, we learn to understand and appreciate them, and as a result of this new appreciation and understanding, prejudice should diminish.

Self-Awareness Assessing our feelings, interests, values, and strengths; maintaining self-confidence. Self-Management Regulating emotions to handle stress, control impulses, and persevere in overcoming obstacles Social Awareness Understanding different perspectives and empathizing with others; recognizing and appreciating similarities and differences; using family, school, and community resources effectively Relationship Skills Maintaining healthy relationships based on cooperation; resisting inappropriate social pressure; preventing, managing, and resolving interpersonal conflicts; seeking help when needed Responsible Decision Making Using a variety of considerations, including ethical, academic, and community-related standards to make choices and decisions

The DSM-V offers a comprehensive set of criteria to define narcissism: A. Significant impairments in personality functioning manifest by: 1. Impairments in self functioning (a or b): a. Identity: Excessive reference to others for self-definition and self-esteem regulation; exaggerated self-appraisal may be inflated or deflated, or vacillate between extremes; emotional regulation mirrors fluctuations in self-esteem. b. Self-direction: Goal-setting is based on gaining approval from others; personal standards are unreasonably high in order to see oneself as exceptional, or too low based on a sense of entitlement; often unaware of own motivations. AND 2. Impairments in interpersonal functioning (a or b): a. Empathy: Impaired ability to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others; excessively attuned to reactions of others, but only if perceived as relevant to self; over- or underestimate of own effect on others. b. Intimacy: Relationships largely superficial and exist to serve self-esteem regulation; mutuality constrained by little genuine interest in others experiences and predominance of a need for personal gain. B. Pathological personality traits in the following domain: 1. Antagonism, characterized by: a. Grandiosity: Feelings of entitlement, either overt or covert; self-centeredness; firmly holding to the belief that one is better than others; condescending toward others. b. Attention seeking: Excessive attempts to attract and be the focus of the attention of others; admiration seeking. C. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual’s personality trait expression are relatively stable across time and consistent across situations. D. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual’s personality trait expression are not better understood as normative for the individual’s developmental stage or sociocultural environment. E. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual’s personality trait expression are not solely due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., severe head trauma).7

It’s important to understand your Emotions, An emotion is a strong feeling, a feeling such as joy, sadness, fear, or anger that moves us all the times. The experience create and makes us live not just exist. It transforms our life from a plain tasteless events, facts into a living and breathing experience.Our feelings controls our energy. When we are upset, it’s usually hard to think clearly, behave properly and choose wisely.On the other hand, when you feel joyful, secure, cared for and appreciated your heart rhythms become even and smooth and that is where the power is, that is where the positivity is generated.Emotional control and effective interpersonal relationships have made the difference between success and failure. You have to learn to ride the waves of emotion, instead of letting them knock you over.If we can learn to balance the control of our instincts, reflexes and basic physical functions and also learn how to drive our feelings and emotions as they are our inner guide of likes and dislikes then it’s a win, bcoz that is were our own survival is.

The implementation of a set of interpersonal processes that lead to the coachee experiencing enhanced physical health (physiological), engagement in effective, purposeful actions (behavioural), the possession of sufficient attentional control to process information effectively (cognitive), an ability to encounter a wider range of emotional states with equanimity and poise (affective), and the conscious linking of personal goals and commitments to important beliefs, core values and/or developing interests (meaning)’.

Lessons for Leaders Humor is one of the most effective leadership tools. The ability to use humor skillfully has served American presidents with political views as disparate as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. The absence of humor also undermined the effectiveness of Richard Nixon, who often appeared grim or mean-spirited. The multipurpose nature of humor makes it a sort of leadership Swiss Army knife. Kidding that is truly good-natured—not hurtful—can strengthen interpersonal bonds. A joke can break the monotony of routine work, some of which is inherent in any job. Laughter can create a relaxed atmosphere and stimulate creativity. Humor, even dark humor, can cut through tension, fear, and anxiety.

Many books have been written on the topic of inter-personal communication, but I wanted to call out one simple, practical, easy-to-employ tip that will drastically increase the effectiveness of your communication, and, consequently, your success as an architect. If you‘re in any situation where you‘re talking to more than one person about your guidance, stand up. Whether it‘s a formal design review, or an informal discussion over some diagrams, it doesn‘t matter. Stand up, especially if everyone else is sitting down Standing up automatically communicates authority and self-confidence. You command the room. People will interrupt you less. All that is going to make a big difference to whether or not your recommendations will be adopted.

validation (in the context of interpersonal skills, anyway) is the act of recognizing and affirming the validity or worth of a person’s emotions. Essentially, validation means saying to someone, “I hear you. I get what you’re feeling, and it’s perfectly alright to feel that way.” Effective validation has two components: It identifies a specific emotion It offers justification for feeling that emotion

Seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication.

• I am that I am As Moses asked for his name, God's response to Moses was ‘Ham-Sah’ or ‘I am that I am’ according to the famous lines of the Hebrew Torah. ‘I am that I am’ reaffirms God's eternal existence which is all, where all that is the God of nature. Breathe in whilst meditating whilst saying ‘ham’. With that, you understand your identity and all you are-your perceptions, your thoughts, and your memories. Breathing out and trying to say ‘sa’ to identify with all that you are, with all that's there. Through their senses, feelings and experiences, the lives of those before you. • Aham-Prema The mantra is said to be ‘Aah-ham-pree-mah’. In ‘I am Divine Love’ it translates. Chanting this mantra, you surround yourself with divine love–all that is and can be unconditional love to you. These are the traits; acceptance, innocence, respect, admiration, love, thanks, forgiveness, empathy, feeling, unity. Aham Prema' is a simple mantra which should be repeated 108 times in a chant. This puts together, in harmony, spirit, body and soul. That will allow you to leave behind your history. It will clear your mind and give you focus from distraction. Aham Prema' will give you energy and fresh start. • Ho’oponopono It is an old Hawaiian word, declared ‘ho-oh-pono-pono’. The meaning is: ‘I love you; I'm sorry; excuse me, please; thank you’. People who find themselves overcome with feelings of anger, guilt, which have problems caused by complicated interpersonal relationships who find themselves unable to express their feelings about their loved ones are chosen to do so. People who feel wrong and find it hard to obtain forgiveness for themselves. It opens your heart to say ‘I love you’. Saying ‘I'm sorry’ makes you calm. Saying ‘Please forgive me’ accepts your imperfections and expresses your thanks for saying' thank you.' The chant will cure your karmic effect and give you a chance to start fresh.

Relationships early in life may shape the very neural structures that create representations of experience and allow a coherent view of the world: Interpersonal experiences directly influence how we mentally construct reality. This shaping process occurs throughout life, but is most crucial during the early years of childhood. Patterns of relationships and emotional communication directly affect the development of the brain. Studies in animals, for example, have demonstrated that even short episodes of maternal deprivation have powerful neuroendocrine and epigenetic effects on the ability to cope with future stressful events.

The primary focus is empathy, attachment, attunement, and positive emotions related to interpersonal relationships. The therapist must emphasize face-to-face gaze, eye-to-eye contact, matching facial expression, matching tone of voice, and using reflective responses. Also effective are play and play activities, such as singing, music, enjoyable social activities, playing with a pet, telling stories, special handshakes, playing with stacking blocks, Legos, or manipulatives, games that allow taking turns, playing with a cardboard box maze, playing social games (Red Light, Green Light; Mother,

Interpersonal trust is an important precondition for developing effective networks, and the Values Surveys consistently shows that the people of Protestant countries have higher levels of trust than those of countries shaped by any other religion. This remained true well into the 21st century, even in an era when few people attend church in Protestant Europe. Table 2.1 shows the results from the latest available survey from each of the 108 countries included in the Values Surveys. As it indicates, the people of Protestant Europe are much likelier to express interpersonal trust than the people of any other cultural zone. In the world as a whole, only 28

The being/seeing change is an upward process—being changing seeing, which in turn changes being, and so forth, as we move in an upward spiral of growth. By working on knowledge, skill, and desire, we can break through to new levels of personal and interpersonal effectiveness as we break with old paradigms that may have been a source of pseudo-security for years.

people are not trustworthy, that when stressed he cannot really emotionally stay connected to them, and that he is unworthy of being loved. This way of seeing the world is typical of insecure attachments and these unconscious emotional biases will guide overt behavior, especially under relational stress. What is more, the infant of a misattuned mother will frequently be presented with an aggressive expression on his mother’s face, implying he is a threat, or with an expression of fear-terror, implying that he is the source of alarm. Images of his mother’s aggressive and/or fearful face, and the resultant chaotic alterations in her bodily state, are internalized, meaning they are imprinted in his developing right brain limbic circuits as an implicit memory, below levels of consciousness. Although out of awareness, they can plague him and his relationships for his entire life unless he finds a way to bring them into conscious awareness and work with them. Furthermore, when the caregiver is attuned in her early interactions, her more mature nervous system is regulating the infant’s neurochemistry and homeostasis. This, in turn, has a profound influence on the structural organization of the developing brain. Conversely emotional trauma will negatively impact the parts of the brain which are developing at the time of trauma. For example, if high levels of stress hormones are circulating in a pregnant mother, it up-regulates the fetus’ developing stress response – making the child, and future adult hypersensitive to stress. Relational trauma that occurs around the time of birth has a negative impact on both the developing micro-architecture of the amygdala itself, and the amygdala’s connection to the HPA axis, as well as to other parts of the limbic system. Thus high levels of early unrepaired interpersonal stress have a profoundly harmful effect on the ability to form social bonds, and on temperament. Suffering unrepaired and frequent emotional stress after about ten months interferes with the experience-dependent maturation of the highest level regulatory systems in the right orbifrontal cortex. This opens the door

Critical theories addressing issues of race (critical race theory), gender (feminism), gender identity and sexual expression (queer theory), and disability (critical disability theory) are aimed at identifying interpersonal, social, cultural, and political mechanisms that support inequality, marginalization, or exclusion in order to change them. Critical race theory (CRT) in particular is making its way into social work education (Abrams and Moio 2009; Ortiz and Jani 2010). Ortiz and Jani emphasize that the assumptions behind CRT are that race is a social construction that has profound effects on all aspects of life. Kendi (2019) asserts that the concept of race was developed specifically to justify race-based oppression.

At its most basic, emotional intelligence is the ability to manage the impact of emotions on our relationships with others. It involves recognizing accurately how you and others feel at any particular time and the way emotions are affecting the situation. It involves keeping feelings sufficiently in control so that we can act effectively. And in no small part it involves using good interpersonal skills to create positive relationships with both individuals and groups. Our ability to express the emotions we feel in a constructive way is the cornerstone of staying in control.

The ‘Inside-Out’ approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self—with your paradigms, your character, and your motives.

This movement involves, first of all, that you relinquish all control over your experience. The language used in describing this process is one of surrendering your self to the wisdom of the experiential organism, which, one learns, is often wiser than the conscious self. Thus it involves first of all a trust in your organism. Or to use some interpersonal terms to describe this intrapersonal event, it involves more than being non-directive, or even empathic toward your experience. Basically it means that you become experience-centered. The self, as the thinker about, or tinkerer with experience, must in effect die, or at least drastically diminish in importance for the growth forces of the experiential organism to bear their fruit.

Listening and oral communication Adaptability and creative responses to setbacks and obstacles Personal management, confidence, motivation to work toward goals, a sense of wanting to develop one’s career and take pride in accomplishments Group and interpersonal effectiveness, cooperativeness and teamwork, skills at negotiating disagreements Effectiveness in the organization, wanting to make a contribution, leadership potential10 Of seven desired traits, just one was academic: competence in reading, writing, and math.

It’s almost as if the harder you try to forget something, the harder your brain tries to remember it. This is why forcing yourself to forget about something that happened to you is impossible. It’s also why you can’t simply force yourself to get rid of emotions that you don’t want.

The human brain is a wonderful thought-producing machine. It turns out millions of thoughts every day. Most of the time, this makes our lives much easier. But unfortunately, we can’t fully control what our brain thinks about.

Let’s think more about the goal of building internal drive in our students, which is part of our fourth goal. You may know that there has been a recent backlash against the practice of rewarding children for every good turn, and for the now-pervasive practice of giving every child a participation trophy. Motivation researchers have long found that offering rewards for a job well done (or just a job done at all) often has the ironic effect of decreasing students’ internal motivation to perform that job (Deci, Koestner & Ryan, 2001). This is similar to what happens to professional athletes when they start making money to play, and they find that the passion and drive for the game that they felt in high school and college begin to melt away. When an individual gets rewarded for an action, that individual starts focusing more on the reward than on the natural pleasure that the action may bring them. Remove the reward, and they are actually less likely to perform the action than they would have been if they’d never been rewarded at all. In contrast, research (Ryan & Deci, 2000) has also found that there are three factors that foster sustained internal drive in us humans: competence (“I can do this”); autonomy (“I have control over what happens here”); and relatedness (“I am connected to people around me”). Plan A is not a particularly good recipe for fostering these factors, especially when Plan A comes in the form of sticker charts, points, and other systems of rewards and consequences that attempt to manipulate a student’s behavior through mechanisms of power and control—the opposite of building a sense of autonomy. Plan C doesn’t do a good job of this either, because while reducing expectations has advantages such as helping avoid challenging behavior, it does not leave the student with a sense of accomplishment and thus competence. We think you will come to find that Plan B provides a great recipe to foster internal drive, by helping students learn the skills (competence) to solve problems independently (autonomy) through an empathic interpersonal process (relatedness).

Moving slowly, listening, noticing when my own intentions are trying to take over, and pausing in that moment have so often proved to be the most respectful and effective path of healing.

She taught me the four key skills in DBT. First is mindfulness. It’s the ability to radically accept things as they are and be present in the moment. The second is distress tolerance, which is the ability to tolerate negative emotions instead of trying to escape from them. The third is emotional regulation, which teaches you the ability to manage and change intense and problematic emotions. The fourth is interpersonal effectiveness, which teaches you to communicate with others in a way that is assertive, maintains self-respect, and strengthens relationships.

suppose that all of us who try to help people find ourselves marveling at how mere words, the simplest actions, and the most subtle interpersonal attitudes can have such profound effects on others.

Epigenetic findings extend to psychosocial development. Isabelle Mansuy and colleagues studied the effects of separation from mother and maternal stress during early postnatal life in mice (Franklin, Linder, Russig, Thöny, & Mansuy, 2011). When the offspring were adults, they exhibited social anxiety (impaired signaling of serotonin). These changes persisted across generations.

Empathy has also been identified as an essential component of numerous valued social processes, including positive parent-child relationships (Feshbach, 1987), effective client-therapist interactions (Rogers, 1975), and individuals’ application of moral principles to real-life interpersonal situations (Eisenberg, 2000; Hoffman, 1987; Saarni, 1999).

Women serving as nurses and ambulance drivers in WWI also experienced shell shock, but they were typically not diagnosed or treated for their symptoms. If they were diagnosed, the diagnosis was hysteria, and they were immediately discharged from the war. Officials in France, Belgium, England, and the United States considered women of less value than combat soldiers and so made less effort to treat or retain them. In addition, when doctors thought about war trauma, they didn’t include interpersonal trauma that occurred outside of combat, such as sexual violence and the trauma of witnessing the effects of warfare. Yet women were exposed to just as much violence, if not more, than many men. Nurses had to care for horrific injuries and participate in surgeries, including amputations for men with gangrene. A Canadian military nurse, M. Lucas Rutherford, wrote that among all the conditions, shell shock was the most distressing and difficult to treat because the afflicted soldiers were often unreachable, unable to communicate.28

London Business School Professor Dan Cable sheds light on why. In a recent article in Harvard Business Review, he writes, “Power…can cause leaders to become overly obsessed with outcomes and control,” inadvertently ramping up “people's fear – fear of not hitting targets, fear of losing bonuses, fear of failing – and as a consequence…their drive to experiment and learn is stifled.”22 Being overly certain or just plain arrogant can have similar effects – increasing fear, reducing motivation, and inhibiting interpersonal risk taking.

skill in dealing with emotions (yours and someone else’s) and in communicating effectively on an interpersonal level.

Food restriction does not necessarily lead to self-starvation; in fact, a common effect of sustained weight loss is a tendency to binge whenever food is available (typically with feelings of automaticity and loss of control). Common triggers for binges include tempting food and excessive hunger, but also interpersonal stressors and strong emotions. To compensate for impulsive overeating, some people start to adopt purging behaviors such as vomiting and laxative use. The combination of bingeing and purging may lead to the onset of a self-reinforcing cycle. Especially in the early stages of the cycle, bingeing and purging cause intense guilt, shame and anxiety. Those negative emotions may then trigger more binges or prompt renewed attempts to restrict food, which ultimately end up strengthening the cycle. Bingeing and purging can be rewarding on a number of levels. On the one hand, these symptoms relieve anxiety, boredom, emptiness, and other negative feelings; on the other hands, they prevent stressful interactions with other people (e.g. staying home from school or work to binge), attract attention from family and friends, and may provide a way to communicate one's ill-defined psychological distress in concrete terms. Over time, the behavioral sequence of bingeing and purging becomes more automatic and less emotionally intense, but also harder to interrupt.

Selling and teaching demand that you develop your intrapersonal and interpersonal communication skills. You must be able to communicate with yourself as well as with others in a way that makes them buy your offering or benefit from the knowledge you want to impart.

Some people choose to lead, others to follow. Success is not primarily a matter of circumstances or native talent or even intelligence — it is a choice. Your beliefs, passion, values, enthusiasm, relationships, interpersonal skills and how they are blended, will move you further ahead towards success.

Although routines and standards are clearly related, they are not identical. As Kindleberger (1983) pointed out, standards are public goods; they reflect interpersonally shared knowledge. We might even say that a standard is a certain kind of “public” routine that helps to coordinate private (individual or intraorganizational) routines. But routines are not only about coordination. As we saw, routines embody potentially useful—we might even say productive—knowledge. In the terminology of Ryle (1949), they reflect “knowledge how.” In some cases, such useful knowledge can be knowledge about how to transact, the possession of which thus reduces transaction costs. My internalized knowledge that I always ought to keep to the right (not the left) as another car approaches might be an example, at least if we construe the interaction between oncoming drivers metaphorically as a transaction. But the skillful exercise of a particular technique for suturing an incision would also be a routine, and not one obviously involving the reduction of transaction costs. Useful knowledge applied to problems of transacting is a special case of a more general phenomenon. As Winter (1988) has suggested, one needs to have economic capabilities (an effective repertoire of routines) in order to be able to transact as well as to be able to produce.6 Like standards, routines can be both enabling and constraining. The possession of an effective repertoire of routines would be crucial to the successful production of product A; but possessing that repertoire might also inhibit a transition to the production of product B. Routines are generally as hard to unlearn as to learn, which may give the advantage in situations of radical innovation to those who have never learned the routines in the first place.7 This is no doubt what Schumpeter (1934) had in mind when he wrote that “new combinations are, as a rule, embodied, as it were, in new firms which generally do not arise out of the old ones but start producing beside them;... in general it is not the

Education today is driven by methods effective for producing good little factory workers, but the kind of work people do in today’s workforce is non-routine, interpersonal, and analytical.

For example, if your girlfriend asks you if you think she is fat. She is probably feeling self conscious because of impossible beauty standards imposed on her by the media, so telling a lie to make her feel better is actually the right thing to do.