Nice Engagement Quotes

Listen.” The voice is extremely loud, and I am forced to hold the telephone away from my ear. “I don’t know who you are, or why you have Jack’s phone, but he is my boyfriend, and—” Boyfriend? What is a boyfriend? Perhaps it is something like a beau. “Is he engaged to you, then?” I hope not. “What? No. Of course not.” “Oh, what a relief. He is my true love, and you do not sound very nice.” “What? Listen, you . . .” And then, strangely enough, she calls me a female dog.

Good men and good women have fire in the belly. We are fierce. Don't mess with us if you're looking for someone who will always be 'nice' to you. Nice gets you a C+ in life. We don't always smile, talk in a soft voice, or engage in indiscriminate hugs. In the loving struggle between the sexes we thrust and parry.

Are you sure about that he called off the wedding, Jolene? Sometimes Zeb misspells stuff in e-mails, and it comes across badly.

There are many roles that people play and many images that they project. There is, for example, the "nice" man who is always smiling and agreeable. "Such a nice man," people say. "He never gets angry." The facade always covers its opposite expression. Inside, such a person is full of rage that he dares not acknowledge or show. Some men put up a tough exterior to hide a very sensitive, childlike quality. Even failure can be a role. Many masochistic characters engage in the game of failure to cover an inner feeling of superiority. An outward show of superiority could bring down on them the jealous wrath of the father and the threat of castration. As long as they act like failures they can retain some sexuality, since they are not a threat to her father.

The ring is a copy of my mother’s. I took the stone from her engagement ring and had a jeweler place it in a titanium setting.” “Titanium?” I asked. “Dick knew a guy." “Of course he did.” “You’re a bit rough and tumble with jewelry, and I knew it would have to be able to stand up to…” “Nuclear winter?” His eyebrow lifted. “I never know with you.

I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an "engaged" on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read. One book isn't enough. I have four going at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and "Vanity Fair" and Kipling's "Plain Tales" and - don't laugh - "Little Women." I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on "Little Women." I haven't told anybody though (that would stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month's allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I'll know what she is talking about!

In a werewolf pack, you cannot interfere with the mate choice of a clan fellow. You cannot intentionally harm that werewolf’s chosen mate. You are not, however, required to help that person should he find himself in a life - threatening situation. Somehow, Zeb had managed to stumble into several such situations in the few months since he ’d been engaged to Jolene. He’d had several hunting “accidents” while visiting the McClaine farm, even though he didn’t hunt. The brakes on his car had failed while he was driving home from the farm—twice. Also, a running chainsaw mysteriously fell on him from a hayloft. He would never get that pinkie toe back.

If there’s a place for tolerance in racial healing, perhaps it has to do with tolerating my own feelings of discomfort that arise when a person, of any color, expresses emotion not welcome in the culture of niceness. It also has to do with tolerating my own feelings of shame, humiliation, regret, anger, and fear so I can engage, not run. For me, tolerance is not about others, it’s about accepting my own uncomfortable emotions as I adjust to a changing view of myself as imperfect and vulnerable. As human.

kindness is not “niceness.” Kindness does not avoid conflict; kindness engages conflict, but with a goal of reconciliation.

Every day, people engaged in the clever defiance of their own intuition become, in mid-thought, victims of violence and accidents. So when we wonder why we are victims so often, the answer is clear: It is because we are so good at it. A woman could offer no greater cooperation to her soon-to-be attacker than to spend her time telling herself, “But he seems like such a nice man.” Yet this is exactly what many people do. A woman is waiting for an elevator, and when the doors open she sees a man inside who causes her apprehension. Since she is not usually afraid, it may be the late hour, his size, the way he looks at her, the rate of attacks in the neighborhood, an article she read a year ago—it doesn’t matter why. The point is, she gets a feeling of fear. How does she respond to nature’s strongest survival signal? She suppresses it, telling herself: “I’m not going to live like that, I’m not going to insult this guy by letting the door close in his face.” When the fear doesn’t go away, she tells herself not to be so silly, and she gets into the elevator. Now, which is sillier: waiting a moment for the next elevator, or getting into a soundproofed steel chamber with a stranger she is afraid of? The inner voice is wise, and part of my purpose in writing this book is to give people permission to listen to it.

Engaging Empathy Protocol. That was very nice of you to say. You are wonderful. Disengaging Empathy Protocol. Idiot.

When the older folks I interviewed described the reasons that they dated, got engaged to, and then married their eventual spouses, they'd say things like "He seemed like a pretty good guy," "She was a nice girl;" "He had a good job," and "She had access to doughnuts and I like doughnuts.

When a stranger on the street makes a sexual comment, he is making a private assessment of me public. And though I’ve never been seriously worried that I would be attacked, it does make me feel unguarded, unprotected. Regardless of his motive, the stranger on the street makes an assumption based on my physique: He presumes I might be receptive to his unpoetic, unsolicited comments. (Would he allow a friend to say “Nice tits” to his mother? His sister? His daughter?) And although I should know better, I, too, equate my body with my soul and the result, at least sometimes, is a deep shame of both. Rape is a thousand times worse: The ultimate theft of self-control, it often leads to a breakdown in the victim’s sense of self-worth. Girls who are molested, for instance, often go on to engage in risky behavior—having intercourse at an early age, not using contraception, smoking, drinking, and doing drugs. This behavior, it seems to me, is at least in part because their self-perception as autonomous, worthy human beings in control of their environment has been taken from them.

People are cast in the underclass because they are seen as totally useless; as a nuisance pure and simple, something the rest of us could do nicely without. In a society of consumers - a world that evaluates anyone and anything by their commodity value - they are people with no market value; they are the uncommoditised men and women, and their failure to obtain the status of proper commodity coincides with (indeed, stems from) their failure to engage in a fully fledged consumer activity. They are failed consumers, walking symbols of the disasters awaiting fallen consumers, and of the ultimate destiny of anyone failing to acquit herself or himself in the consumer’s duties. All in all, they are the ‘end is nigh’ or the ‘memento mori’ sandwich men walking the streets to alert or frighten the bona fide consumers.

I'm thinking that it will be autumn soon," she said, lifting her gaze to his. "Autumn is my absolute favorite season. Spring is overrated. It's soggy and the trees are still bare from winter. Winter drags on and on, and summer is nice, but it's all the same. Autumn is different. I mean, is there any perfume in the world that can compare with the smell of burning leaves?" she asked with an engaging smile. Matt thought she smelled a hell of a lot better than burning leaves, but he let her continue. "Autumn —is thexincgitsinagre changing. It's like dusk." "Dusk?" "Dusk is my favorite time of day, for the same reason. When I was young, I used to walk down our driveway at dusk in the summer and stand at the fence, watching all the cars going by with their headlights on. Everyone had a place to go, something to do. The night was just beginning ..." She trailed off in embarrassment. "That must sound incredibly silly." "It sounds incredibly lonely.

Playing nice" comes naturally when our neuroception detects safety and promotes physiological states that support social behavior. However, pro-social behavior will not occur when our neuroception misreads the environmental cues and triggers physiological states that support defensive strategies. After all, "playing nice" is not appropriate or adaptive behavior in dangerous or life-threatening situations. In these situations, humans - like other mammals - react with more primitive neurobiological defense systems. To create relationships, humans must subdue these defensive reactions to engage, attach, and form lasting social bonds. Humans have adaptive neurobehavioral systems for both pro-social and defensive behaviors.

We didn’t have cell phones, and we didn’t have nice clothes, but Mamaw made sure that I had one of those graphing calculators. This taught me an important lesson about Mamaw’s values, and it forced me to engage with school in a way I never had before.

She beeped rudely at him. "I have noted in your file that you are refusing medical assistance against my advice. If you die during the night, your surviving family will not be able to bring a lawsuit against me." He laughed wildly. "You're my surviving family." "Oh. Well. Engaging Empathy Protocol. That was very nice of you to say. You are wonderful. Disengaging Empathy Protocol. Idiot. I am going to sleep now. Do not bother me unless you are on fire. Even then, I will do little to help you." She plugged herself in next to Rambo and was silent.

STEVE CARELL IS NICE BUT IT IS SCARY It has been said many times, but it is true: Steve Carell is a very nice guy. His niceness manifests itself mostly in the fact that he never complains. You could screw up a handful of takes outside in 104-degree smog-choked Panorama City heat, and Steve Carell’s final words before collapsing of heat stroke would be a friendly and hopeful “Hey, you think you have that shot yet?” I’ve always found Steve gentlemanly and private, like a Jane Austen character. The one notable thing about Steve’s niceness is that he is also very smart, and that kind of niceness has always made me nervous. When smart people are nice, it’s always terrifying, because I know they’re taking in everything and thinking all kinds of smart and potentially judgmental things. Steve could never be as funny as he is, or as darkly observational an actor, without having an extremely acute sense of human flaws. As a result, I’m always trying to impress him, in the hope that he’ll go home and tell his wife, Nancy, “Mindy was so funny and cool on set today. She just gets it.” Getting Steve to talk shit was one of the most difficult seven-year challenges, but I was determined to do it. A circle of actors could be in a fun, excoriating conversation about, say, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and you’d shoot Steve an encouraging look that said, “Hey, come over here; we’ve made a space for you! We’re trashing Dominique Strauss-Kahn to build cast rapport!” and the best he might offer is “Wow. If all they say about him is true, that is nuts,” and then politely excuse himself to go to his trailer. That’s it. That’s all you’d get. Can you believe that? He just would not engage. That is some willpower there. I, on the other hand, hear someone briefly mentioning Rainn, and I’ll immediately launch into “Oh my god, Rainn’s so horrible.” But Carell is just one of those infuriating, classy Jane Austen guys. Later I would privately theorize that he never involved himself in gossip because—and I am 99 percent sure of this—he is secretly Perez Hilton.

I am prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have all the surprise of candour.

A dangerous woman delves deeply into the truth of who she is, grounds herself daily in the healing and empowering love of God, and radically engages with the needs of the world.

Defaulting to whatever engagement feels most comfortable is not guided by critical thinking and is not anti-racist.

I did not expect to survive that long. Yet two years had gone by and I was not that much worse. In fact, things were going rather well for me and I had gotten engaged to a very nice girl, Jane Wilde. But in order to get married, I needed a job, and in order to get a job, I needed a Ph.D.

...Her boyfriend gives her a Mercedes, [her friends] say, 'Oh, that's nice.' But her boyfriend gives her a diamond, they say, 'Oh, he's serious.' It's not just the gift of love-it's the gift of commitment. She's not jumping up and down because she got a diamond ring but because she got a guy! There are those who say you don't need diamonds. I say they're right. Just like you don't need sex.

I touched Loki's chest, running my fingers over the bumps of his scar. I didn't know why exactly, but I felt compelled to, as if the scar connected us somehow. "You just couldn't wait to get me naked, could you, Princess?" Loki asked tiredly. I started to pull my hand back, but he put his own hand over it, keeping it in pace. "No,I-I was checking for wounds," I stumbled. I wouldn't meet his gaze. "I'm sure." He moved his thumb, almost caressing my hand, until it hit my ring. "What's that?" He tried to sit up to see it, so I lifted my hand, showing him the emerald-encrusted oval on my finger. "Is that a wedding ring?" "No, engagement." I lowered my hand, resting it on the bed next to him. "I'm not married yet." "I'm not too late, then." He smiled and settled back in the bed. "Too late for what?" I asked. "To stop you, of course." Still smiling, he closed his eyes. "Is that why you're here?" I asked, failing to point out how near we were to my nuptials. "I told you why I'm here," Loki said. "What happened to you, Loki?" I asked, my voice growing thick when I thought about what he had to have gone through to get all those marks and bruises. "Are you crying?" Loki asked and opened his eyes. "No, I'm not crying." I wasn't, but my eyes were moist. "Don't cry." He tried to sit up, but he winced when he lifted his head, so I put my hand gently on his chest to keep him down. "You need to rest," I said. "I will be fine." He put his hand over mine again, and I let him. "Eventually." "Can you tell me what happened?" I asked. "Why do you need amnesty?" "Remember when we were in the garden?" Loki asked. Of course I remembered. Loki had snuck in over the wall and asked me to run away with him. I had declined, but he'd stolen a kiss before he left, a rather nice kiss. My cheeks reddened slightly at the memory, and that make Loki smile wider. "I see you do." He grinned. "What does that have to do with anything?" I asked. "That doesn't," Loki said, referring to the kiss. "I meant when I told you that the King hates me. He really does, Wendy." His eyes went dark for a minute. "The Vittra King did this to you?" I asked, and my stomach tightened. "You mean Oren? My father?" "Don't worry about it now," he said, trying to calm the anger burning in my eyes. "I'll be fine." "Why?" I asked. "Why does the King hate you? Why did he do this to you?" "Wendy, please." He closed his eyes. "I'm exhausted. I barely made it here. Can we have this conversation when I'm feeling a bit better? Say, in a month or two?" "Loki," I said with a sigh, but he had a point. "Rest. But we will talk tomorrow. All right?" "As you wish, Princess," he conceded, and he was already drifting back to sleep again. I sat beside him for a few minutes longer, my hand still on his chest so I could feel his heartbeat pounding underneath. When I was certain he was asleep, I slid my hand out from under his, and I stood up.

There are those who treat every human interaction as a military engagement that could escalate into a potential battle leading to a nice, satisfying conflict that’s part of a war. There is a name for such people. They’re called assholes.

4. Confusion in the Market Place Indeed it was, for as they approached, Milo could see crowds of people pushing and shouting their way among the stalls, buying and selling, trading and bargaining. Huge wooden-wheeled carts streamed into the market square from the orchards, and long caravans bound for the four corners of the kingdom made ready to leave. Sacks and boxes were piled high waiting to be delivered to the ships that sailed the Sea of Knowledge, and off to one side a group of minstrels sang songs to the delight of those either too young or too old to engage in trade. But above all the noise and tumult of the crowd could be heard the merchants’ voices loudly advertising their products. “Get your fresh-picked ifs, ands, and buts.” “Hey-yaa, hey-yaa, hey-yaa, nice ripe wheres and whens.” “Juicy, tempting words for sale.

I have promised to dine at White's, but it is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to say that I am ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have all the surprise of candour.

Donna to the policewoman: Don't you touch this car! The Doctor watching: She's not changed. Wilfred: Oh. There he is. Shawn Temple. They're engaged. Getting married in the Spring. The Doctor: Another wedding. Wilfred: Yeah. The Doctor: Hold on, she's not going to be called Noble-Temple. It sounds like a tourist spot. Wilfred: No it's Temple-Noble. The Doctor: Right. Is she happy? Is he nice? Wilfred: Yeah, he's sweet enough. He's a bit of a dreamer. Mind you he's on minimum wage. She's earning tuppence so all they can afford is a tiny little flat. And then sometimes I see this look on her face. Like she's so sad. And she can't remember why. The Doctor: She's got him. Wilfred: She's making do. The Doctor: Aren't we all. Wilfred: How 'bout you? Who've you got now? The Doctor: No one. Travelling alone. I thought it would be better. But I did some things, it went wrong. I need— {he starts to cry} Wilfred: Oh my word. I— The Doctor: Mm. Merry Christmas. Wilfred: Yeah. And you. The Doctor: Look at us. Wilfred: Don't you see? You need her, Doctor. I mean, look, wouldn't she make you laugh again? Good ol' Donna. -Doctor Who

Sure it would be nice for society at large to put the proper value on what we do, but notoriety isn’t necessary for greatness or fulfillment.

Just be Nice. Nice—this little word has a big meaning. Use it generously. Being nice helps people feel emotionally safe, allowing for more authentic, trusting, and happy interactions.

Rosa reports the engagement of her niece in 1912 to a nice young man without a name. It may therefore be that the last descendants of the Luxemburg family are living somewhere in England.

In the novel Fight Club, the character Jack’s apartment is blown up. All of his possessions—“every stick of furniture,” which he pathetically loved—were lost. Later it turns out that Jack blew it up himself. He had multiple personalities, and “Tyler Durden” orchestrated the explosion to shock Jack from the sad stupor he was afraid to do anything about. The result was a journey into an entirely different and rather dark part of his life. In Greek mythology, characters often experience katabasis—or “a going down.” They’re forced to retreat, they experience a depression, or in some cases literally descend into the underworld. When they emerge, it’s with heightened knowledge and understanding. Today, we’d call that hell—and on occasion we all spend some time there. We surround ourselves with bullshit. With distractions. With lies about what makes us happy and what’s important. We become people we shouldn’t become and engage in destructive, awful behaviors. This unhealthy and ego-derived state hardens and becomes almost permanent. Until katabasis forces us to face it. Duris dura franguntur. Hard things are broken by hard things. The bigger the ego the harder the fall. It would be nice if it didn’t have to be that way. If we could nicely be nudged to correct our ways, if a quiet admonishment was what it took to shoo away illusions, if we could manage to circumvent ego on our own. But it is just not so. The Reverend William A. Sutton observed some 120 years ago that “we cannot be humble except by enduring humiliations.” How much better it would be to spare ourselves these experiences, but sometimes it’s the only way the blind can be made to see.

Bep’s engaged! The news isn’t much of a surprise, though none of us are particularly pleased. Bertus may be a nice, steady, athletic young man, but Bep doesn’t love him, and to me that’s enough reason to advise her against marrying him.

You may not know the word, but you definitely know the girl. She’s the girl who has guys wrapped around her finger, whose outfit is always perfectly conceived, and who magically accomplishes whatever she wants, whether it’s getting an amazing job at twenty-two or engaged at twenty-five, and she does it effortlessly. She may seem unapproachable, but those who are lucky enough to know her are likely to claim that she’s “really great if you’re friends with her, but she can be a huge bitch.

As a matter of fact, Janice wrote Preacher a letter in red ink on lace-trimmed paper in which she told him he was vile beyond all human beings and words, that she considered their engagement broken, that he could have back the stuffed squirrel he’d given her. Preacher, saying he wanted to act nice, stopped her the next time she passed our house, and said, well, hell, she could keep that old squirrel if she wanted to. Afterwards, he couldn’t understand why Janice ran away bawling the way she did.

And in the complicated, relished, introspective web of young lovers, or more exactly, young petters, they progress along the oldest channel in the world and the most deceptive, for they are certain it is unique to them. Even as they are calling themselves engaged, they are losing the details of their subtle involved pledging of a troth. They are moved and warmed by intimacies between them, by long husky conversations in the parlor, in inexpensive restaurants, by the murmurs, the holding of hands in the dark velvet caverns of movie houses. They forget most of the things that have advanced them into love, feel now only the effect of them. And of course their conversation alters, new themes are bruited. Shy sensitive girls may end up as poetesses or they may turn bitter and drink alone in bars, but nice shy sensitive Jewish girls usually marry and have children, gain two pounds a year, and worry more about refurbishing hats and trying a new casserole than about the meaning of life. After their engagement, Natalie talks over their prospects.

It doesn't happen to me anymore, because a fresh generation of Africans and Asians has arisen to take over the business, but in my early years in Washington, D.C., I would often find myself in the back of a big beat-up old cab driven by an African-American veteran. I became used to the formalities of the mise-en-scène: on some hot and drowsy Dixie-like afternoon I would flag down a flaking Chevy. Behind the wheel, leaning wa-aay back and relaxed, often with a cigar stub in the corner of his mouth (and, I am not making this up, but sometimes also with a genuine porkpie hat on the back of his head) would be a grizzled man with the waist of his pants somewhere up around his armpits. I would state my desired destination. In accordance with ancient cabdriver custom, he would say nothing inresponse but simply engage the stickshift on his steering wheel and begin to cruise in a leisurely fashion. There would be a pause. Then: 'You from England?' I would always try to say something along the lines of 'Well, I'm in no position to deny it.' This occasionally got me a grin; in any case, I always knew what was coming next. 'I was there once.' 'Were you in the service?' 'I sure was.' 'Did you get to Normandy?' 'Yes, sir.' But it wasn't Normandy or combat about which they wanted to reminisce. (With real combat veterans, by the way, it almost never is.) It was England itself. 'Man did it know how to rain… and the warm beer. Nice people, though. Real nice.' I would never forget to say, as I got out and deliberately didn't overtip (that seeming a cheap thing to do), how much this effort on their part was remembered and appreciated.

Ove wasn’t one to engage in small talk. He had come to realize that, these days at least, this was a serious character flaw. Now one had to be able to blabber on about anything with any old sod who happened to stray within an arm’s length of you purely because it was 'nice.

People are suppose to return response cards, but many of them haven't. These are people I naturally assumed would be thrilled and would reply immediately. Now I have to call them and ask them about it, and I have to be nice and not say what I would like to say. "Hello? I'm sorry to bother you, but is it too much fucking trouble to send that little card back? I put a stamp on it. But maybe you need me to come over to your house and carry you to the mailbox." In light of these developments, there ought to be a way to uninvite people who are disturbing me.

Blind compassion is rooted in the belief that we are all doing the best that we can. When we are driven by blind compassion, we cut everyone far too much slack, making excuses for others’ behavior and making nice in situations that require a forceful “no,” an unmistakable voicing of displeasure, or a firm setting and maintaining of boundaries. These things can, and often should, be done out of love, but blind compassion keeps love too meek, sentenced to wearing a kind face. This is not the kindness of the Dalai Lama, which is rooted in courage, but rather a kindness rooted in fear, and not just the fear of confrontation, but also the fear of not coming across as a good or spiritual person. When we are engaged in blind compassion we rarely show any anger, for we not only believe that compassion has to be gentle, we are also frightened of upsetting anyone, especially to the point of their confronting us.

When people are skilled at adopting free traits, it can be hard to believe that they’re acting out of character. Professor Little’s students are usually incredulous when he claims to be an introvert. But Little is far from unique; many people, especially those in leadership roles, engage in a certain level of pretend-extroversion. Consider, for example, my friend Alex, the socially adept head of a financial services company, who agreed to give a candid interview on the condition of sealed-in-blood anonymity. Alex told me that pretend-extroversion was something he taught himself in the seventh grade, when he decided that other kids were taking advantage of him. “I was the nicest person you’d ever want to know,” Alex recalls, “but the world wasn’t that way. The problem was that if you were just a nice person, you’d get crushed. I refused to live a life where people could do that stuff to me. I was like, OK, what’s the policy prescription here?...

Unfortunately, racism is not typically viewed as a deeply complex issue that mainstream culture does not prepare white people to engage critically with and thus requires ongoing study and engagement by white people to gain some measure of expertise. When it comes to racism, white people tend to hold up all opinions as equally valid.

And it did certainly appear that the prophets had put the people (engaged in the old game of Cheat the Prophet) in a quite unprecedented difficulty. It seemed really hard to do anything without fulfilling some of their prophecies. But there was, nevertheless, in the eyes of labourers in the streets, of peasants in the fields, of sailors and children, and especially women, a strange look that kept the wise men in a perfect fever of doubt. They could not fathom the motionless mirth in their eyes. They still had something up their sleeve; they were still playing the game of Cheat the Prophet. Then the wise men grew like wild things, and swayed hither and thither, crying, "What can it be? What can it be? What will London be like a century hence? Is there anything we have not thought of? Houses upside down--more hygienic, perhaps? Men walking on hands--make feet flexible, don't you know? Moon ... motor-cars ... no heads...." And so they swayed and wondered until they died and were buried nicely.

If you want something done, ask nicely. If a subordinate forgets to perform a task, don’t take it personally; just remind them nicely. In any organization, everyone has a “to-do” list. While juggling these tasks, some things will inevitably fall through the cracks. When that happens, don’t assume that the subordinate is lazy or stupid. Simply re-engage them on the task and, if necessary, emphasize why it’s a priority.

She pulled the shawl closer as a tall, lithe figure cut across the parking lot and joined her at the passenger door. “You’re already famous,” Colby Lane told her, his dark eyes twinkling in his lean, scarred face. “You’ll see yourself on the evening news, if you live long enough to watch it.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Tate’s on his way right now.” “Unlock this thing and get me out of here!” she squeaked. He chuckled. “Coward.” He unlocked the door and let her climb in. By the time he got behind the wheel and took off, Tate was striding across the parking lot with blood in his eye. Cecily blew him a kiss as Colby gunned the engine down the busy street. “You’re living dangerously tonight,” Colby told her. “He knows where you live,” he added. “He should. He paid for the apartment,” she added in a sharp, hurt tone. She wrapped her arms closer around her. “I don’t want to go home, Colby. Can I stay with you tonight?” She knew, as few other people did, that Colby Lane was still passionately in love with his ex-wife, Maureen. He had nothing to do with other women even two years after his divorce was final. He drank to excess from time to time, but he wasn’t dangerous. Cecily trusted no one more. He’d been a good friend to her, as well as to Tate, over the years. “He won’t like it,” he said. She let out a long breath. “What does it matter now?” she asked wearily. “I’ve burned my bridges.” “I don’t know why that socialite Audrey had to tell you,” he muttered irritably. “It was none of her business.” “Maybe she wants a big diamond engagement ring, and Tate can’t afford it because he’s keeping me,” she said bitterly. He glanced at her rigid profile. “He won’t marry her.” She made a sound deep in her throat. “Why not? She’s got everything…money, power, position and beauty-and a degree from Vassar.” “In psychology,” Colby mused. “She’s been going around with Tate for several months.” “He goes around with a lot of women. He won’t marry any of them.” “Well, he certainly won’t marry me,” she assured him. “I’m white.” “More of a nice, soft tan,” he told her. “You can marry me. I’ll take care of you.” She made a face at him. “You’d call me Maureen in your sleep and I’d lay your head open with the lamp. It would never work.

People who create successful strategic relationships demonstrate 10 essential character traits:    1. Authentic. They are genuine, honest, and transparent. They are cognizant of (and willing to admit to) their strengths and weaknesses.    2. Trustworthy. They build relationships on mutual trust. They have a good reputation based on real results. They have integrity: their word is their bond. People must know, like, and trust you before sharing their valuable social capital.    3. Respectful. They are appreciative of the time and efforts of others. They treat subordinates with the same level of respect as they do supervisors.    4. Caring. They like to help others succeed. They’re a source of mutual support and encouragement. They pay attention to the feelings of others and have good hearts.    5. Listening. They ask good questions, and they are eager to learn about others—what’s important to them, what they’re working on, what they’re looking for, and what they need—so they can be of help.    6. Engaged. They are active participants in life. They are interesting and passionate about what they do. They are solution minded, and they have great “gut” instincts.    7. Patient. They recognize that relationships need to be cultivated over time. They invest time in maintaining their relationships with others.    8. Intelligent. They are intelligent in the help they offer. They pass along opportunities at every chance possible, and they make thoughtful, useful introductions. They’re not ego driven. They don’t criticize others or burn bridges in relationships.    9. Sociable. They are nice, likeable, and helpful. They enjoy being with people, and they are happy to connect with others from all walks of life, social strata, political persuasions, religions, and diverse backgrounds. They are sources of positive energy.   10. Connected. They are part of their own network of excellent strategic relationships.

thousand flowers bloom. Sometimes it’s nice to be in the hands of a control freak. • • • Jobs’s intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions. If something engaged him—the user interface for the original Macintosh, the design of the iPod and iPhone, getting music companies into the iTunes Store—he was relentless. But if he did not want to deal with something—a legal annoyance, a business issue,

The sad irony is that the moment we believe we “get it” is not the moment our journey to racial enlightenment comes to an end. “Getting it” should immediately engender humility in recognition of how much we don’t—and likely never will—completely know. Deepening our understanding, building our skills, and demonstrating anti-racist practice are ongoing. Awareness should add new dimensions to the continuing journey: humility and accountability. Awareness that does not lead to sustained engagement is not meaningful.

The key is: acknowledge that the person is driving you crazy. You can’t suppress that. But with observation, the pain will begin to wither. And the less you engage with the person, the less overall effect that person will have on you. Even if that person is close to you (and they often are. That’s why they get to push all of those buttons), find out ways to not engage. Say hello in the hallway, smile nicely, but no engagement. Put a quota on yourself how much you can complain or feel anxious about that person in a day.

Almost nothing can be gained from pinball. The only payoff is a numerical substitution for pride. The loses, however, are considerable. You could probably erect bronze statues of every American president (assuming you are willing to include Richard Nixon) with the coins you will lose, while your lost time is irreplaceable. When you are standing before the machine engaged in your solitary act of consumption, another guy is plowing through Proust, while still another guy is doing some heavy petting with his girlfriend while watching "True Grit" at the local drive-in. They're the ones who may wind up becoming groundbreaking novelists or happily married men. No, pinball leads nowhere. The only result is a glowing replay light. Replay, replay, replay — it makes you think the whole aim of the game is to achieve a form of eternity. We know very little of eternity, although we can infer its existence. The goal of pinball is self-transformation, not self-expression. It involves not the expansion of the ego but its diminution. Not analysis but all-embracing acceptance. If it's self-expression, ego expansion or analysis you're after, the tilt light will exact its unsparing revenge. Have a nice game!

discontented. And I did think at one time that perhaps Bob was thinking of Betty Rylands, you know Mrs. Rylands’ girl at the Laurels, such nice people, and they used to play tennis together and people remarked how much they were about, but now he never seems to pay any attention to her, it’s all his hockey friends, and I said one Saturday, ‘Wouldn’t you like to ask Betty over to tea?’ and he said, ‘Well, you can if you like,’ and she came looking ever so sweet, and, would you believe it, Bob went out and didn’t come in at all until suppertime. Well, you can’t expect any girl to put up with that, and now she’s practically engaged to that young Anderson boy who’s in the wireless business.

She was overwhelmed, she would do anything. I could have it any way I wanted it, and she tried to pull me to her, but no, let's wait a while. I tell you I want to talk to you, I tell you money is no object, here's three more, that makes eight dollars, but it doesn't matter. You just keep that eight bucks and buy yourself something nice. And then I snapped my fingers like a man remembering something, something important, an engagement. 'Say!' I said. 'That reminds me. What time is it?' Her chin was at my neck, stroking it. 'Don't you worry about the time, honey. You can stay all night.' A man of importance, ah yes, now I remembered, my publisher, he was getting in tonight by plane. Out at Burbank, away out in Burbank. Have to grab a cab and taxi out there, have to hurry. Goodbye, goodbye, you keep that eight bucks, you buy yourself something nice, goodbye, goodbye, running down the stairs, running away, the welcome fog in the doorway below, you keep that eight bucks, oh sweet fog I see you and I'm coming, you clean air, you wonderful world, I'm coming to you, goodbye, yelling up the stairs, I'll see you again, you keep that eight dollars and buy yourself something nice. Eight dollars pouring out of my eyes. Oh Jesus kill me dead and ship my body home, kill me dead and make me die like a pagan fool with no priest to absolve me, no extreme unction, eight dollars, eight dollars ..

One time, on a pleasure cruise, he saw a young couple, fiancés, sitting and looking at the water--the boy had his right arm around the girl's shoulder and held her right wrist tight and she had put her left hand on his right hand, and they sat like that, pressed close together. The little poet looked at them, it's so lovely to see a nice young couple like that. That these children are excited because they want more, that they are only getting each other worked up for what they can't do and don't dare to do, that they never know where to stop--no one ever notices that or thinks about that. It was very lovely, and maybe the truth was that they had just recently gotten engaged and were still satisfied with being madly in love with each other.

I believe all churches and ministries can grow if only they master a discipleship process that is simple, biblical, and transferable. I know of churches that are missing many seemingly important things such as nice buildings, good music equipment, support staff, big givers, and dynamic preachers. Yet they are still growing because they are making disciples. Churches can be blessed with all those seemingly important things and become completely consumed with activities that have nothing to do with making disciples. Our goal is to make our small groups and everything else we do support our discipleship process. Unfortunately, crowded church calendars often compete with discipleship. No activity is neutral. We recognize that everything we do and say will either underline or undermine our discipleship process. STRATEGY

When I was young most of them were quite nice - that is to say, they shared their mother's opinions, not only about topics, but what is more remarkable, about individuals, even young men; they said, "Yes, Mamma," and "No, Mamma" at the appropriate moments; they loved their father because it was their duty so to do, and their mother because she preserved them from the slightest hint of wrongdoing. When they became engaged to be married they fell in love with decorous moderation; being married, they recognized it as a duty to love their husbands but gave other women to understand that it was a duty they performed with great difficulty. They behaved nicely to their parents-in-law, while making it clear that any less dutiful person would not have done so; they did not speak spitefully about other women but pursed their lips in such a way as to let it be seen what they might have said but for their angelic charitableness.

But Violet Antrim, who had also been staying with the Peacocks, had arrived home full of importance. She walked in on Stephen one afternoon to announce her engagement to young Alec Peacock. She was so much engaged and so haughty about it that Stephen, whose nerves were already on edge, was very soon literally itching to slap her. Violet was now able to look down on Stephen from the height of her newly gained knowledge of men—knowing Alec she felt that she knew the whole species. 'It's a terrible pity you dress as you do, my dear,' she remarked, with the manner of sixty, 'a young girl's so much more attractive when she's soft—don't you think you could soften your clothes just a little? I mean you do want to get married, don't you! No woman's complete until she is married. After all, no woman can really stand alone, she always needs a man to protect her.' Stephen said: 'I'm all right—getting on nicely, thank you!' 'Oh, no, but you can't be!' Violet insisted. 'I was talking to Alec and Roger about you, and Roger was saying it's an awful mistake for women to get false ideas into their heads. He thinks you've got rather a bee in your bonnet; he told Alec that you'd be quite a womanly woman if you'd only stop trying to ape what you're not.

He kissed her again, pulling her up against him and running his hands up and down her back. As he deepened the kiss, he became aware of clapping, cheers and catcalls. No doubt Chase had gone into the restaurant and rounded up the whole Fool’s Gold crowd to come watch the show. Zane figured they might as well get their money’s worth. He pulled back slightly and took her hand in his as he lowered himself to one knee. He took off his hat and said, “Phoebe, will you marry me?” Her eyes widened, then filled with tears. “Yes, I will.” Contentment filled him, blending with the love already in his heart. He pulled the small box from his jacket pocket. While Maya had been busy running to the meeting, Zane had spent some time on Rodeo Drive. The Tiffany’s store had a nice collection of engagement rings. He’d chosen a perfect round diamond set on a platinum band that looked like braided rope. He slipped the ring on her finger, and she gasped. “It’s so beautiful.” “I’m glad you like it. Now keep it away from the raccoons.” “I’ll never take it off. Ever.” She stared at him. “I really love you, Zane.” He didn’t doubt her for a second and knew that he never would. He and Phoebe would be together for the rest of their lives. It was going to be a hell of a ride, and he couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

You’re mad.” “No, I’m just plagued with a grandmother who thinks that forcing me and my siblings into marriage will settle her mind about our futures-an idea that I mean to show her is absurd.” “By pretending to be engaged to a perfect stranger?” He shrugged. “I came here looking for a whore to do the job. But they’re expensive, and why should I settle for a whore when you’ll do nicely?” His gaze traveled down her body with thorough insolence. “You’re exactly the sort my grandmother would find unacceptable as a wife for me: an American of low birth, with an impudent manner and a reckless tongue. And you’re just pretty enough to convince her that I might actually contemplate marriage to you.” Shock held her motionless. She didn’t know which was worse-his nonchalant attitude toward hiring a whore to fool his poor grandmother, or the insults he’d lobbed at her with insufferable arrogance. “Now that you’ve offended me in every possible way, do you think I’d agree to this insanity?” Amusement flickered in his black eyes. “Given that your other choice is to take your chances with the gentlemen in the hall…yes, I do. Of course, if you want to watch your cousin hang-“ He headed for the door. “Stop!” He paused with his hand on the handle, one eyebrow arched in question. The curst man had her trapped, and he knew it.

What an extraordinary creature," Win heard Dr. Harrow murmur nearby. She followed his gaze to the lady of the house, Mrs. Annabelle Hunt, who was greeting guests. Although Win had never met Mrs. Hunt, she recognized her from descriptions she had heard. Mrs. Hunt was said to be one of the greatest beauties of England, with her beautifully turned figure and heavily lashed blue eyes, and hair that gleamed with rich shades of honey and gold. But it was her luminous, lively expressiveness that made her truly engaging. "That's her husband, standing next to her," Poppy murmured. "He's intimidating, but very nice." "I beg to differ," Leo said. "You don't think he's intimidating?" Win asked. "I don't think he's nice. Whenever I happen to be in the same room as his wife, he looks at me as if he'd like to dismember me." "Well," Poppy said prosaically, "one can't fault his judgment." She leaned toward Win and said, "Mr. Hunt is besotted with his wife. Their marriage is a love match, you see." "How unfashionable," Dr. Harrow commented with a grin. "He even dances with her," Beatrix told Win, "which husbands and wives are never supposed to do. But considering Mr. Hunt's fortune, people find reasons to excuse him for such behavior." "See how small her waist is," Poppy murmured to Win. "And that's after three children- two of them very large boys.

You Play the Game How You Act How You Think How You Brand & Market Yourself How You Sound How You Look How You Respond   1.   2.   3.   4.   5.   6.   7.   8.   9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. Category Total Category Total Category Total Category Total Category Total Category Total Category Total Overall Total INTERPRETATION OF YOUR SCORES Overall Score of 159–196 or A Category Score of 22–28 You go, girl! Your score indicates you must already have the corner office or are well on your way to getting it. To stay on track, focus on those questions where you rated yourself “1” or “2.” Also, remember to pay it forward by mentoring other women. Overall Score of 110–158 or A Category Score of 14–21 Fine-tuning is the name of your game! Although you often engage in behaviors worthy of a winning woman, there are times when you don’t get your due because you get caught up in nice girl syndrome. First read the chapters that correspond with your lowest category scores, then go back and read the rest as a refresher course. Overall Score of 49–109 or A Category Score of 7–13 Danger! You are falling into the trap of acting like the nice little girl you were taught to be in childhood. You frequently wonder why you’re not achieving the success you’ve worked so hard for. This book was written for you, so take out your pen and start making notations for what you commit to doing differently.

Making the most of an experience: Living fully is extolled everywhere in popular culture. I have only to turn on the television at random to be assailed with the following messages: “It’s the best a man can get.” “It’s like having an angel by your side.” “Every move is smooth, every word is cool. I never want to lose that feeling.” “You look, they smile. You win, they go home.” What is being sold here? A fantasy of total sensory pleasure, social status, sexual attraction, and the self-image of a winner. As it happens, all these phrases come from the same commercial for razor blades, but living life fully is part of almost any ad campaign. What is left out, however, is the reality of what it actually means to fully experience something. Instead of looking for sensory overload that lasts forever, you’ll find that the experiences need to be engaged at the level of meaning and emotion. Meaning is essential. If this moment truly matters to you, you will experience it fully. Emotion brings in the dimension of bonding or tuning in: An experience that touches your heart makes the meaning that much more personal. Pure physical sensation, social status, sexual attraction, and feeling like a winner are generally superficial, which is why people hunger for them repeatedly. If you spend time with athletes who have won hundreds of games or with sexually active singles who have slept with hundreds of partners, you’ll find out two things very quickly: (1) Numbers don’t count very much. The athlete usually doesn’t feel like a winner deep down; the sexual conqueror doesn’t usually feel deeply attractive or worthy. (2) Each experience brings diminishing returns; the thrill of winning or going to bed becomes less and less exciting and lasts a shorter time. To experience this moment, or any moment, fully means to engage fully. Meeting a stranger can be totally fleeting and meaningless, for example, unless you enter the individual’s world by finding out at least one thing that is meaningful to his or her life and exchange at least one genuine feeling. Tuning in to others is a circular flow: You send yourself out toward people; you receive them as they respond to you. Notice how often you don’t do that. You stand back and insulate yourself, sending out only the most superficial signals and receive little or nothing back. The same circle must be present even when someone else isn’t involved. Consider the way three people might observe the same sunset. The first person is obsessing over a business deal and doesn’t even see the sunset, even though his eyes are registering the photons that fall on their retinas. The second person thinks, “Nice sunset. We haven’t had one in a while.” The third person is an artist who immediately begins a sketch of the scene. The differences among the three are that the first person sent nothing out and received nothing back; the second allowed his awareness to receive the sunset but had no awareness to give back to it—his response was rote; the third person was the only one to complete the circle: He took in the sunset and turned it into a creative response that sent his awareness back out into the world with something to give. If you want to fully experience life, you must close the circle.

But when you actually break down the amount of time, energy, skill, planning, and maintenance that go into care tasks, they no longer seem simple. For example, the care task of feeding yourself involves more than just putting food into your mouth. You must also make time to figure out the nutritional needs and preferences of everyone you’re feeding, plan and execute a shopping trip, decide how you’re going to prepare that food and set aside the time to do so, and ensure that mealtimes come at correct intervals. You need energy and skill to plan, execute, and follow through on these steps every day, multiple times a day, and to deal with any barriers related to your relationship with food and weight, or a lack of appetite due to medical or emotional factors. You must have the emotional energy to deal with the feeling of being overwhelmed when you don’t know what to cook and the anxiety it can produce to create a kitchen mess. You may also need the skills to multitask while working, dealing with physical pain, or watching over children. Now let’s look at cleaning: an ongoing task made up of hundreds of small skills that must be practiced every day at the right time and manner in order to “keep going on the business of life.” First, you must have the executive functioning to deal with sequentially ordering and prioritizing tasks.1 You must learn which cleaning must be done daily and which can be done on an interval. You must remember those intervals. You must be familiar with cleaning products and remember to purchase them. You must have the physical energy and time to complete these tasks and the mental health to engage in a low-dopamine errand for an extended period of time. You must have the emotional energy and ability to process any sensory discomfort that comes with dealing with any dirty or soiled materials. “Just clean as you go” sounds nice and efficient, but most people don’t appreciate the hundreds of skills it takes to operate that way and the thousands of barriers that can interfere with execution.

Simon laughs when I audibly exhale. “Relieved she’s not here yet?” I roll my suitcase into one of the barren bedrooms and then plunk down on the rock-hard, hideous orange sofa in the lounge. Simon takes a swivel chair from my room and slides it in front of me, where he then plants himself. “Why are you so worried?” I cross my arms and look around the concrete room. “I’m not worried at all. She’s probably very nice. I’m sure we’ll become soul mates, and she’ll braid my hair, and we’ll have pillow fights while scantily clad and fall into a deep lesbian love affair.” I squint my eyes at a cobweb and assume there are spider eggs preparing to hatch and invade the room. “Allison?” Simon waits until I look at him. “You can’t do that. You can’t become a lesbian.” “Why not?” “Because then everyone will say that your adoptive gay father magically made you gay, and it’ll be a big thing, and we’ll have to hear about nature versus nurture, and it’ll be soooooo boring.” “You have a point.” I wait for spider eggs to fall from the sky. “Then I’ll go with assuming she’s just a really sweet, normal person with whom I do not want to engage in sexual relations.” “Better,” he concedes. “I’m sure she’ll be nice. This kind of strong liberal arts college attracts quality students. There’re good people here.” He’s trying to reassure me, but it’s not working. “Totally,” I say. My fingers run across the nubby burned-orange fabric covering the couch, which is clearly composed of rock slabs. “Simon?” “Yes, Allison?” I sigh and take a few breaths while I play with the hideous couch threads. “She probably has horns.” He shrugged. “I think that’s unlikely.” Simon pauses. “Although . . .” “Although what?” I ask with horror. There’s a long silence that makes me nervous. Finally, he says very slowly, “She might have one horn.” I jerk my head and stare at him. Simon claps his hands together and tries to coax a smile out of me. “Like a unicorn! Ohmigod! Your roommate might be a unicorn!” “Or a rhinoceros,” I point out. “A beastly, murderous rhino.” “There is that,” he concedes. I sigh. “In good news, if I ever need a back scratcher, I have this entire couch.” I slump back against the rough fabric and hold out my hands before he can protest. “I know. I’m a beacon of positivity.” “That’s not news to me.

The perfect girl what can I say; to be so close yet, feel miles away. I want to run to her, but have to walk out the door going the other way. The only words spoken to her are- ‘Have a nice day.’ I think about her and the summer, and what it could have been with her. It reminds me of- sixteen, you are on my mind all the time. I think about you. It is like a vision of the stars shining, ribbon wearing, bracelet making, and holding hands forever. All the sunflowers in the hayfields and kissing in the rain, no more brick walls, no more falling teardrops of pain, and no more jigsaw puzzle pieces would remain. True love should not be such a game; does she feel the same. She is everything that I cannot have, and everything I lack. What if every day could be like this- Diamond rings, football games, and movies on the weekends? It is easy to see she belongs to me; she is everything that reminds me of ‘sixteen’ everything that is in my dreams. Everything she does is amazing, but then again, I am just speculating, and fantasizing about Nevaeh Natalie, who just turned the age of sixteen! Nevaeh- I recall my first boy kiss was not at all, what I thought it was going to be like. I was wearing a light pink dress, and flip-flops that were also pink with white daisy flowers printed on them. I loosened my ponytail and flipped out my hair until my hair dropped down my back, and around my shoulders. That gets A guy going every time, so I have read online. He was wearing ripped-up jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt. He said that- ‘My eyes sparkled in blue amazement, which was breathtaking, that he never saw before.’ Tell me another line… I was thinking, while Phil Collins ‘Take Me Home’ was playing in the background. I smiled at him, he began to slowly lean into me, until our lips locked. So, enjoy, he kissed me, and my heart was all aflutter. When it happened, I felt like I was floating, and my stomach had butterflies. My eyes fastened shut with no intentions of me doing so during the whole thing. When my eyes unfastened my feelings of touch engaged, and I realized that his hands are on my hips. His hands slowly moved up my waist, and my body. I was trembling from the exhilaration. Plus, one thing led to another. It was sort of my first time, kissing and playing with him you know a boy, oh yet not really, I had gotten to do some things with Chiaz before like, in class as he sat next to me. I would rub my hand on it under the desks- yeah, he liked that, and he would be. Oh, how could I forget this… there was this one time in the front seat of his Ford pickup truck, we snuck off… and this was my first true time gulping down on him, for a lack of a better term. As I had my head in his lap and was about to move up for him to go in me down there, I was about to get on top and let him in me. When we both heard her this odd, yet remarkably loud scream of bloody murder! Ava was saying- ‘You too were going to fuck! What the fuck is going on here? Anyways, Ava spotted us before he got to ‘Take me!

Always,’ said Evie and Max together. Points for harmony. In truth, in the six years she’d known him, Max had barely mentioned his mother other than to say she’d never been the maternal type and that she set exceptionally high standards for everything; be it a manicure or the behaviour of her husbands or her sons. ‘No engagement ring?’ queried Caroline with the lift of an elegant eyebrow. ‘Ah, no,’ said Evie. ‘Not yet. There was so much choice I, ah...couldn’t decide.’ ‘Indeed,’ said Caroline, before turning to Max. ‘I can, of course, make an appointment for you with my jeweller this afternoon. I’m sure he’ll have something more than suitable. That way Evie will have a ring on her finger when she attends the cocktail party I’m hosting for the pair of you tonight.’ ‘You didn’t have to fuss,’ said Max as he set their overnight cases just inside the door beside a wide staircase. ‘Introducing my soon-to-be daughter-in-law to family and friends is not fuss,’ said Max’s mother reprovingly. ‘It’s expected, and so is a ring. Your brother’s here, by the way.’ ‘You summoned him home as well?’ ‘He came of his own accord,’ she said dryly. ‘No one makes your brother do anything.’ ‘He’s my role model,’ whispered Max as they followed the doyenne of the house down the hall. ‘I need a cocktail dress,’ Evie whispered back. ‘Get it when I go ring hunting. What kind of stone do you want?’ ‘Diamond.’ ‘Colour?’ ‘White.’ ‘An excellent choice,’ said Caroline from up ahead and Max grinned ruefully. ‘Ears like a bat,’ he said in his normal deep baritone. ‘Whisper like a foghorn,’ his mother cut back, and surprised Evie by following up with a deliciously warm chuckle. The house was a beauty. Twenty-foot ceilings and a modern renovation that complemented the building’s Victorian bones. The wood glowed with beeswax shine and the air carried the scent of old-English roses. ‘Did you do the renovation?’ asked Evie and her dutiful fiancé nodded. ‘My first project after graduating.’ ‘Nice work,’ she said as Caroline ushered them into a large sitting room that fed seamlessly through to a wide, paved garden patio.

Remember and Share - For some businesses, forming habits is a critical component to success, but not every business requires habitual user engagement. - When successful, forming strong user habits can have several business benefits including: higher customer lifetime value, greater pricing flexibility, supercharged growth, and a sharper competitive edge. - Habits can not form outside the “Habit Zone,” where the behavior occurs with enough frequency and perceived utility. - Habit-forming products often start as nice-to-haves (vitamins) but once the habit is formed, they become must-haves (painkillers). - Habit-forming products alleviate users’ pain by relieving a pronounced itch. - Designing habit-forming products is a form of manipulation. Product builders would benefit from a bit of introspection before attempting to hook users to make sure they are building healthy habits, not unhealthy addictions (more to come on this topic in chapter eight).

Oh, that’s terrible, that’s not nice.” We immediately stopped what we were doing in the kitchen and hurried through to the lounge, not quite believing that our son was actually sounding as though he felt sorry for someone. On the screen, there was a badly injured woman in a mangled car. We eavesdropped as Dale went on, “Oh, dear, Henry, that’s a shame.” Jamie and I looked at each other in amazement—at long last our son was showing empathy—but with impeccable timing came Dale’s punchline: “It’s all broke, Henry. Poor car.” We resigned ourselves to a slightly longer wait for empathy. Despite our continued efforts to engage with Dale

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Negotiating Needs From a Group Many of us live much of our lives engaged, in various ways, with all sorts of groups: families, work groups, organizations, churches and social settings. We need to develop skills for negotiating our needs in relation to such groups. Because we were never taught how to powerfully and non-violently assert and negotiate our needs in a group, many of us either become resentful, suppressed sheep, or raging bulls running roughshod over others. We either “bowl over” or “roll over” in relation to others. We “bowl over” others out of the fear that we will not otherwise get what we want. Or we “roll over” out of hopelessness, feeling that we will never be able to get what we need. It can be scary to ask for attention from a group because so often the group members are afraid to express their true feelings about your request. And most of us understand that when true negative feelings are withheld there will be some sort of consequence. In a group the consequence is frequently shunning. (In every case of school shootings of which I am aware, the perpetrator was being shunned by most of the other students.) Here are some tips to help you negotiate in groups: 1. Practice presenting your requests for attention from a group confidently, so others can sense you will not be crushed if there is an objection. 2. If you are scared when you are asking the group for something, be sure to say so. If you do not, it may be perceived as aggressive, because unexpressed fear often gets perceived as aggression. 3. Be sure to give others time and space to check within themselves how they really feel about your request. 4. Be ready to empathize with whatever the objection is. Don’t get hung up on the content of their response. Instead, hear the feelings and needs behind the content. For example: You: “I would like to share a story. Is that okay with everyone?” Group Member: “No.” You: “Is that because you would like reassurance that it would take less than five minutes?” Group Member: “No, it is because we have not made the decision yet about when our next meeting will be.” You: “Thanks for telling me. I would be happy to wait until after that decision is made. Would that work for everyone?” 5. As in the example, after empathizing with the group member’s response be prepared to check back within yourself to see if you have shifted. Have you changed your mind about what you requested? If not, either stay with the dialogue, or allow a solution to emerge that meets both your needs and the group’s needs. Notice that in the example, the solution suggested is synergistic and would meet both your need to tell the story and the group member’s need for the meeting time decision to be made. 6. Be careful not to give in or give up after empathizing with the other’s objection. If you do give “in” or “up” on what you want, you will resent the group for seeming to oppress you, and you will likely withdraw your participation. Or you will start gossiping about those that objected to your request and begin to build a splinter faction group that will weaken and sometimes even destroy the group. It is often the “nice” people who are so scared of conflict that do the gossiping that tears the group apart.

Jewel Hyun, a Korean American woman, became engaged in global ministry later in life. She enjoyed meeting with me as she prepared for ministry trips, during which she would speak in other countries at conferences. On one occasion she was preparing for a trip to East Africa, where she would be speaking to women who had suffered displacement as refugees as the result of an ethnic genocide. She was concerned about how she could "connect" with these women who lived in such a different world. If you just met jewel, who looks very distinguished, you would never know that her childhood years included fleeing from North Korea and living with her family as refugees. I knew her story, so I responded, "Tell them your own story." "Why would they want to hear my story?" she replied. "Because when these women look at you, they will think to themselves, `This is a nice lady with beautiful clothes and manicured fingernails. She's nice, but she has no idea of the life we've lived.' When you tell them your story, you will be a living representative of hope for them." Jewel told me later that her story connected her deeply to the women, as they realized that she too had shared in the fellowship of suffering.

your best interests and the company’s best interests in mind.” Grant adds: “The hardest thing that I struggle to explain to people is that being a giver is not the same as being nice.” When I thought back to some of the most compelling people I’ve interviewed in business, Grant’s words rang true. Intel’s Andy Grove immediately came to mind. Ask Grove a dumb question, I once learned, and he’ll tell you it’s not the right question. He’s the one who largely built Intel’s culture of what the company calls “constructive confrontation,” in which you challenge ideas, but not the people who expound them. It’s not personal. He just wants his point to be understood. The result is that you do your homework. You come prepared. The distinction that needs to be made is this: Jerks, narcissists, and takers engage in behaviors to satisfy their own ego, not to benefit the group. Disagreeable givers aren’t getting off on being tough; they’re doing it to further a purpose. So here’s what we know works. Photograph by Peter Yang Smile at the customer. Take the initiative. Tweak a few rules. Steal cookies for your colleagues. Don’t puncture the impression that you know what you’re doing. Let the other person fill the silence. Get comfortable with discomfort. Don’t privilege your own feelings. Ask who you’re really protecting. Be tough and humane. Challenge ideas, not the people who hold them. Don’t be a slave to type. And above all, don’t affix nasty, scatological labels to people. It’s a jerk move. Jerry Useem has covered business

I don’t know what instructions Nimiar gave her seamstress in private. I had expected a modest trunk of nice fabric, enough for a gown or two in the current fashions. What returned, though, just over a week later, was a hired wagon bearing enough stuff to outfit the entire village, plus three determined young journey-seamstresses who came highly recommended and who were ready to make their fortunes. “Good,” Nee said, when we had finished interviewing them. She walked about inspecting the fabulous silks, velvets, linens, and a glorious array of embroidery twists, nodding happily. “Just what I wanted. Melise is a treasure.” “Isn’t this too much?” I asked, astounded. She grinned. “Not when you count up what you’ll need to make the right impression. Remember, you are acquiring overnight what ought to have been put together over years. Morning gowns, afternoon gowns, riding tunics and trousers, party dresses, and perhaps one ball gown, though that kind of thing you can order when we get to town, for those take an unconscionable amount of time to make if you don’t have a team doing it.” “A team? Doing nothing but sewing? What a horrible life!” I exclaimed. “Those who choose it would say the same about yours, I think,” Nee said with a chuckle. “Meaning your life as a revolutionary. There are many, not just women, though it’s mostly females, who like very much to sit in a warm house and sew and gossip all day. In the good houses the sewers have music, or have books read to them, and the products are the better for their minds being engaged in something interesting. This is their art, just as surely as yon scribe regards her map and her fellows regard their books.” She pointed toward the library. “And how those at Court view the way they conduct their public lives.” “So much to learn,” I said with a groan. “How will I manage?” She just laughed; and the next day a new arrival brought my most formidable interview yet: with my new maid.

Too bad I didn't have on my engagement ring; maybe I could get him to peck at the lock mechanism and open it. Yeah, right, and while I'm hallucinating, maybe get him to bring me a nice cold Pepsi.

It was another watershed event for a woman who had for so long believed herself worthless, with little to offer the world other than her sense of style. Her life in the royal family had been directly responsible for creating this confusion. As her friend James Gilbey says: “When she went to Pakistan last year she was amazed that five million people turned out just to see her. Diana has this extraordinary battle going on in her mind. ‘How can all these people want to see me?’ and then I get home in the evening and lead this mouse-like existence. Nobody says: ‘Well done.’ She has this incredible dichotomy in her mind. She has this adulation out there and this extraordinary vacant life at home. There is nobody and nothing there in the sense that nobody is saying nice things to her--apart of course from the children. She feels she is in an alien world.” Little things mean so much to Diana. She doesn’t seek praise but on public engagements if people thank her for helping, it turns a routine duty into a very special moment. Years ago she never believed the plaudits she received, now she is much more comfortable accepting a kind word and a friendly gesture. If she makes a difference, it makes her day. She has discussed with church leaders, including the Archbishop or Canterbury and several leading bishops, the blossoming of this deep seated need within herself to help those who are sick and dying. “Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can,” she says. Visits to specialist hospitals like Stoke Mandeville or Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children are not a chore but deeply satisfying. As America’s First Lady, Barbara Bush, discovered when she joined the Princess on a visit to an AIDS ward of the Middlesex Hospital in July 1991 there is nothing maudlin about Diana’s attitude towards the sick. When a bed-bound patient burst into tears as the Princess was chatting to him, Diana spontaneously put her arms around him and gave him an enormous hug. It was a touching moment which affected the First Lady and others who were present. While she has since spoken of the need to give AIDS sufferers a cuddle, for Diana this moment was a personal achievement. As she held him to her, she was giving in to her own self rather than conforming to her role as a princess.

I've got this problem, you see, and I thought that maybe you'd know what I should do about it." "Go on." "He's —" Amy was blushing now, head bent as she rolled and unrolled the hem of her apron between thumb and forefinger — "he's terribly handsome, you know." "You in love with him?" Leave it to Mira not to waste words.  "I . . . I think I might be." "Bleedin' hell Amy, you do have a problem." "I know.  And the thing is, he's engaged to someone else.  A colonial girl, down in Boston."  She looked up at Mira, her eyes desperate.  "I shouldn't be feeling this way, Mira.  He's not mine to dream over, he's not mine to think about, he's not mine, period — and yet I can't stop dreaming about him, I can't stop thinking about him, and just being in the same room with him is torment because I find myself wanting to do all these lustful, wicked things with him.  I'm wanton, Mira, the fruit of sin, and already I'm going the same route as —" "Oh, not this again, I won't hear it." "Mira, you know as well as I do that the circumstances of my birth are no secret!  This — this wantonness is just what Sylvanus always predicted for me, and it's all because I've got the blood of a —" Mira put up a hand.  "You say he's handsome?" "Yes." "Kind?" "Oh, yes — he defended me against my sisters, refused to let me slave over him, complimented me on my cooking, managed to trap Ophelia and Mildred into doing some work, and set an example at table last night over how he thinks I ought to be treated." "Well, hallelujah." "What?" "And you wonder why the hell ye're havin' lustful thoughts about him?!  Bleedin' hell, Amy, if I was in yer shoes, had a family like yours, and a man treated me like that, I'd be all over him like cream on milk." "Mira!" "Well, I would.  And ye know something?  I think that if he wants to treat ye nice, you damn well oughtta let him do it.  Ain't no one else in that house who does, and maybe the rest of 'em will learn by his example.  Hell, he might be a damned Brit, but if he can do that much for ye, then he's got my eternal gratitude.

I ran into a friend of Lisa’s today,” he told her, enjoying the way Lisa’s eyes got big and she started trying to communicate with him by way of frantic facial expressions behind her mother-in-law’s back. “Emma Shaw.” “Emma Shaw…Oh! The one who does the landscaping, right?” Lisa nodded. “She’s such a nice girl, but I haven’t seen her in ages. Not since I ran into you two at the mall and overheard you talking about her engagement. How are she and her fiancé doing?” Lisa opened her mouth, but closed it again when Sean folded his arms and looked at her, waiting to see how—or even if—she was going to get out of the conversation without lying outright to Aunt Mary. “I…think they’re having some problems,” she finally said. Nice hedge, but an understatement. “Oh, that’s too bad. What’s her fiancé’s name? I meant to ask that day, but you started talking about some shoe sale and I forgot.” It was a few seconds before Lisa sighed in defeat. “Sean.” “Isn’t that funny,” Mary said, smiling at him before turning back to her daughter-in-law. “What’s his last name? Maybe I know his family.” That was a pretty safe bet.

      •   Allow your readers to post their comments and photos on your Timeline. This will encourage engagement, and it’s always nice to find a reader’s unexpected note or compliment on your Fan Page.

Now that you understand the key players in ecosystems, here are the key principles of building an ecosystem. They are similar to the principles of creating a community discussed in chapter 8, “The Art of Evangelizing.” CREATE SOMETHING WORTHY OF AN ECOSYSTEM. Once again, the key to evangelism, sales, presentations, and now ecosystems is a great product. In fact, if you create a great product, you may not be able to stop an ecosystem from forming. By contrast, it’s hard to build an ecosystem around crap. DESIGNATE A CHAMPION. Many employees would like to help build an ecosystem, but who wakes up every day with this task at the top of her list of priorities? Another way to look at this is, “Who’s going to get fired if an ecosystem doesn’t happen?” Ecosystems need a champion—an identifiable hero—within the company to carry the flag for the community. DON’T COMPETE WITH THE ECOSYSTEM. If you want people or organizations to take part in your ecosystem, then you shouldn’t compete with them. For example, if you want people to create apps for your product, then don’t sell (or give away) apps that do the same thing. It was hard to convince companies to create a Macintosh word processor when Apple was giving away MacWrite. CREATE AN OPEN SYSTEM. An “open system” means that there are minimal requirements to participating and minimal controls on what you can do. A “closed system” means that you control who participates and what they can do. Either can work, but I recommend an open system because it appeals to my trusting, anarchic personality. This means that members of your ecosystem will be able to write apps, access data, and interact with your product. I’m using software terminology here, but the point is to enable people to customize and tweak your product. PUBLISH INFORMATION. The natural complement of an open system is publishing books and articles about the product. This spreads information to people on the periphery of a product. Publishing also communicates to the world that your startup is open and willing to help external parties. FOSTER DISCOURSE. The definition of “discourse” is “verbal exchange.” The key word is “exchange.” Any company that wants an ecosystem should foster the exchange of ideas and opinions. This means your website should provide a forum where people can engage with other members as well as your employees. This doesn’t mean that you let the ecosystem run your company, but you should hear what members have to say. WELCOME CRITICISM. Most organizations feel warm and fuzzy toward their ecosystem as long as the ecosystem says nice things, buys their products, and never complains. The minute that the ecosystem says anything negative, however, many organizations freak out and get defensive. This is dumb. A healthy ecosystem is a long-term relationship, so an organization shouldn’t file for divorce at the first sign of discord. Indeed, the more an organization welcomes—or even celebrates—criticism, the stronger its bonds to its ecosystem become. CREATE A NONMONETARY REWARD SYSTEM. You already know how I feel about paying people off to help you, but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reward people in other ways. Things as simple as public recognition, badges, points, and credits have more impact than a few bucks. Many people don’t participate in an ecosystem for the money, so don’t insult them by rewarding them with it.

The hypocrisy on the left has no limits, and the Mueller Report might be the best example of this. Victor Davis Hanson, who wrote The Case for Trump, summed up nicely the double standard Mueller applied to Democrats in a piece he wrote for National Review: “The problem with the Mueller investigation, and with former intelligence officials such as Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and McCabe, is pious hypocrisy. Those who have lectured America on Trump’s unproven crimes have written books and appeared on TV to publicize their own superior virtue. Yet they themselves have engaged in all sorts of unethical and illegal behavior.” And when their lies are exposed, they just cook up new ones. When it’s not collusion, it’s obstruction. Then, when it’s not that, it’s something else. It’s a constant cover-up, and it always leads to nothing.

You will?’ the prospective bridegroom asked with a blend of indignation and something which sounded almost like excitement. ‘I mean that we can pretend to be engaged and then put an end to it a few weeks later,’ she clarified. ‘Nobody would believe that I could break off an engagement with somebody as nice as Mr. Bingley, but they will not be surprised to hear that I do not want to marry you.

Love is war, ladies and gents. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you need your fairy godfather Dick to swoop in and scream at your dumb, stubborn ass to NOT invade that nice little ladylike pink country because it will end in disaster. When really what you want him to do is the opposite. Because fairy godfathers know what’s best for you, even if you don’t.

By the time that Donald J. Trump was elected to the Presidency, the elections which chose the President had transformed from referendums about who would best administer the international slave trade into contests about who’d get the chance to reduce illiterate Muslims into pulpy masses of intestines. The people who’d voted for Trump went nuts because they’d won and had no idea what to do with their impossible victory. The country’s political liberals went nuts because Trump put them in the position of facing an undeniable and yet unpalatable truth. This was the truth that the political liberals could not deny and could not face: beyond making English Comp courses at community colleges very annoying, forty years of rhetorical progress had achieved little, and it turned out that feeling good about gay marriage did not alleviate the taint of being warmongers whose taxes had killed more Muslims than the Black Death. You can’t make evil disappear by being a reasonably nice person who mouths platitudes at dinner parties. Social media confessions do not alleviate suffering. You can’t talk the world into being a decent place while sacrificing nothing. The socialists didn’t go nuts. They were the people who’d thought about the complex problems facing the nation and decided that an honest solution to these problems could be achieved with applied Leftism. But don’t get your hopes up. Despite being correct in their thinking, the socialists were the most annoying people in America. When they spoke, it was like bamboo slivers shoved under a fingernail. I don’t know why. It was the single biggest American tragedy of the last one hundred years. Here was the difference between the priestly castes, many of whom had opinions on deadline for money, and everyone else: sane people shut the fuck up, nodded their heads, and did what they needed to survive in a toxic political landscape. In an era when public discourse was the bought-and-paid property of roughly twenty companies, and the airing of an opinion could subject a person to unfathomable amounts of abuse and recrimination, the only reasonable option was to be quiet. So when you next fawn over someone’s brave public thoughts, repeat the following: The contours of discourse are so horrendous that one thing has become certain. Any individual offering up a public opinion necessarily must be either hopelessly stupid or insane. I am engaging with a product of madness and idiocy.

I know that this would be a fantasy for many women—to find yourself in a big bed in a fancy hotel room with both a handsome man and a beautiful girl available for your enjoyment. But from a matter of sheer logistics, I quickly discovered that three people engaging in sexual exploits at the same time can be both a problematic and arduous situation. One never quite knows where to put one’s attention, you see. There are so many limbs to organize! There can be a great deal of: Oh, pardon me, I didn’t see you there. And just when you’re getting settled into something nice, somebody new shows up to interrupt you. One also never quite knows when it is over. Just when you think you’re done with your pleasure, you find that somebody out there isn’t yet done with theirs, and back you go, into the fray.

He was a nice man,” I said lamely. “Good for him. Give him a trophy for it, but don’t marry a man just because he’s nice. And try not to make a habit of getting engaged in the first place, Vivvie. It can lead to marriage if you’re not careful.

Give him a trophy for it, but don’t marry a man just because he’s nice. And try not to make a habit of getting engaged in the first place, Vivvie. It can lead to marriage if you’re not careful.

Husserl had picked up this idea from his old teacher Franz Brentano, in Vienna days. In a fleeting paragraph of his book Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano proposed that we approach the mind in terms of its ‘intentions’ — a misleading word, which sounds like it means deliberate purposes. Instead it meant a general reaching or stretching, from the Latin root in-tend, meaning to stretch towards or into something. For Brentano, this reaching towards objects is what our minds do all the time. Our thoughts are invariably of or about something, he wrote: in love, something is loved, in hatred, something is hated, in judgement, something is affirmed or denied. Even when I imagine an object that isn’t there, my mental structure is still one of ‘about-ness’ or ‘of-ness’. If I dream that a white rabbit runs past me checking its pocket watch, I am dreaming of my fantastical dream-rabbit. If I gaze up at the ceiling trying to make sense of the structure of consciousness, I am thinking about the structure of consciousness. Except in deepest sleep, my mind is always engaged in this aboutness: it has ‘intentionality’. Having taken the germ of this from Brentano, Husserl made it central to his whole philosophy. Just try it: if you attempt to sit for two minutes and think about nothing, you will probably get an inkling of why intentionality is so fundamental to human existence. The mind races around like a foraging squirrel in a park, grabbing in turn at a flashing phone screen, a distant mark on the wall, a clink of cups, a cloud that resembles a whale, a memory of something a friend said yesterday, a twinge in a knee, a pressing deadline, a vague expectation of nice weather later, a tick of the clock. Some Eastern meditation techniques aim to still this scurrying creature, but the extreme difficulty of this shows how unnatural it is to be mentally inert. Left to itself, the mind reaches out in all directions as long as it is awake — and even carries on doing it in the dreaming phase of its sleep. Understood in this way, the mind hardly is anything at all: it is its aboutness. This makes the human mind (and possibly some animal minds) different from any other naturally occurring entity. Nothing else can be as thoroughly about or of things as the mind is: even a book only reveals what it’s ‘about’ to someone who picks it up and peruses it, and is otherwise merely a storage device. But a mind that is experiencing nothing, imagining nothing, or speculating about nothing can hardly be said to be a mind at all.

I noticed Jim and Kalveer standing among some trees approximately 50 metres away, their cameras pointing towards us. My heart was pounding. I went down on one knee. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Danielle asked. I smiled and started to recite a carefully prepared speech telling her what she meant to me and concluding with the words: ‘You’re the one I want to live with forever. Danielle, will you marry me?’ At that moment, I took the engagement ring out of my pocket and presented it to her. She looked at it, promptly burst into tears and fell into my arms. A few seconds passed. I held her tightly. A few more seconds passed. I was starting to feel just slightly concerned. Danielle is a strong-minded person, not afraid to say what she thinks. As these torturous seconds passed, I considered it was not entirely impossible that she could turn to me and say, ‘Sorry, bud, that was a nice presentation but this is not going to happen. Would you mind if we go back to Bangalore?’ I was getting anxious. ‘Listen, are you going to give me an answer?’ She finally looked up at me and said: ‘Yes.’ We

sounded like another language entirely. I felt relieved, momentarily, to be a relatively worldly Lubavitcher, even if I didn’t entirely fit in with the Crown Heights crowd. — Much to my disappointment, Miri was rarely to be seen. Most days she left the apartment around ten in a giddy rush and returned in the early evening with armloads of shopping bags, only to leave again for dinner with her friends. But one morning, when Leah was otherwise engaged, I was finally recruited for shomeres service. We were going to Ratfolvi’s, in Flatbush, to pick up the sheitel that Miri would be required to wear as a married woman. Pulling up to a residential building, we let ourselves into Mrs. Ratfolvi’s wig shop/apartment and sat down in the reception area, where four or five women were chatting away on a damask sofa and chairs. While we waited our turn, I examined the rows of wigs on display: there were various shades of brunette, blonde, and ginger; short, teased bouffants and glamorous, shoulder-length falls; wigs encased in rollers and wigs that were fully styled, needing nothing more than a final shpritz of hair spray. They were set upon Styrofoam heads complete with turned-up noses, high cheekbones, and luscious lips that looked like they could come alive at any moment. I longed to get my hands on a brush and a pair of scissors so that I could create my own visions of tonsorial loveliness. I did this from time to time to my dolls, to my mother’s great irritation, and here was a whole wall of victims. When Miri’s name was called, she plunked herself into the salon chair and pulled the silk scarf off her ponytail. I stood as close as I could without getting in the way. From conversations that I’d overheard between my mother and her sisters, I knew that Mrs. Ratfolvi was considered “the best,” and I was eager to watch her at work. The “rat” in her name had led me to expect someone old and unattractive, but she was actually a nicely put-together middle-aged woman. The receptionist brought over a plastic case about the size of a chubby toddler. In one expert motion, Mrs. Ratfolvi clicked it open, withdrew the fully styled wig on its Styrofoam head

the bartender was a lovely german woman, newly engaged, happy, but still left with a scent of something unknown. "this is my first time in the city," i said, after ordering a double shot of Jameson. "oh really? what do you think?" "i am in love. simply. the air here has purpose. it's quite nice." she smiled, slightly, uncovering the thing unknown, "yes, well, you know what they say. you always want what you don't have.

A Sign of Respect. As our world grows more casual, we observe a tendency for everyone to use first names rather than surnames. “It is a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Young,” has a completely different connotation than “Nice to meet you, Susan.

Google Proves Nice Counts. On a quest to discover what it takes to build the "perfect team," Google launched the Project Aristotle initiative to find the answers. Over a period of several years, they surveyed hundreds of teams, conducted interviews, analyzed studies, and observed how team members interacted with one another. Google’s findings revealed that "psychological safety" is the key ingredient for creating a high-functioning team. It nurtures a healthy environment that encourages freedom of expression, engaging communication, empathy for one another, caring, support, respect and, drum roll please . . . BEING NICE!

While you will certainly attract more bees with honey, there are times when being nice can backfire. Take it from a naturally kind person, being a “bitch” has its time and place. There will be times when you must engage with mean, rude, and inconsiderate people.

Being Nice Has Its Limitations. While you will certainly attract more bees with honey, there are times when being nice can backfire. Take it from a naturally kind person, being a “bitch” has its time and place. There will be times when you must engage with mean, rude, and inconsiderate people.

17 Ways to Just Be Nice “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” ―Aesop 1. Be sincere. 2. Be altruistic. 3. Practice patience. 4. Inquire and engage. 5. Keep your promises. 6. Offer help to others. 7. Acknowledge others. 8. Control your behavior. 9. Be situationally aware. 10. Be polite and courteous. 11. Use considerate manners. 12. Greet people with a smile. 13. Practice random acts of kindness. 14. Show respect for yourself and others. 15. Be complimentary and look for positives. 16. Walk in another’s shoes to understand their needs. 17. Share of yourself without expecting anything in return.

The first hint that something was going on, was learning that Mother wanted to eat in the private dining room that evening. The second was when she bullied me into wearing one of my new gowns, one she consented to my requisition despite it being premade and off the shelf, because, as she said, it suited me so very well. Still, I didn’t step wise to the plan until after we had been served appetizers and wine in the private dining room. There was a knock on the door. One of the serving maids answered. And Erin walked in. My mother was a dead woman. I plastered a smile on my face. “Erin! Come in!” A dead woman. A dead, dead, dead, dead woman. I was going to kill her. Slowly. A lot. Erin grinned, and I had to admit that my heart did skip a beat. “Dunleavy, you look lovely!” “Thank you, Erin. I’m so glad you could come.” My mother was taller than I, but I could reach her throat. That was all I really needed. “Holder Mallorough, I’m so glad you could join us this evening!” I looked at my mother. Who refused to look at me. “Oh, no. I was only keeping Lee company while she waited. I have an engagement with the Yings, and I’m going to be late.” I gaped at her, the significance of her words hitting me hard. Then I shut my mouth. Because I had to be wrong. She wouldn’t dare. She rose from the table and crossed the room to stand by Erin. “I must say you are looking particularly handsome tonight, Erin.” “Thank you, ma’am.” “It is so nice to see young people who know how to dress.” Then she looked at me. “Have a good evening.” She did dare. She was going to leave. She’d set this dinner up, without telling me, and now she was deserting me. I couldn’t believe it. Erin opened the door for her. She stepped out. I sat in my chair and wallowed in the moment of feeling stunned... Damn that woman. And all right, so I couldn’t actually strangle her. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough. But we had to have a talk. A long screaming serious one. No more soft shoes.

Ade, I like you. I mean, I really enjoy your company,” he said. “I don’t understand why we can’t spend some time together with our clothes on.” “Holden. Sweetie. Stop it, okay?” “Stop what?” “Stop trying to turn me into your girlfriend. You’re a nice guy. You’ve got a cute butt, and you’re fun in the sack. Doesn’t mean we’re engaged.” Holden rocked back on his heels, feeling himself frown. “Ade. For this to work for me, it needs to be more than that.” “But it isn’t,” she said, taking his hand. “It’s okay that it isn’t. You’re the XO here, and I’m a short-timer. Another run, maybe two, and I’m gone.

It’s important to clarify that forced teaming, too many details, charm, niceness, typecasting and loan sharking are all in daily use by people who have no sinister intent. You might have already recognized several of these strategies as those commonly used by men who want little more than an opportunity to engage a woman in conversation.

Oh. Liam." Madison cut her off, smirking when Liam walked out of the restroom behind her, still adjusting his tie. "Nice to see you again." Totally nonplussed, Liam smiled. "Madison." "Men's room closed?" "Not at all." He put an arm around Daisy's shoulder and pressed a kiss to her cheek. "Just needed a little alone time with may fiancée." Madison's smile faded. "You're still engaged?" "Yes, we are." He held up Daisy's hand to show off the diamond ring he'd bought her to replace the Sharks ring he'd given her at the bus stop. "When you meet the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with, you don't let her go." Daisy slipped an arm through Liam's. "How's Orson?" "Orson?" Madison frowned as if she had no idea who Daisy was talking about. "Oh. He's gone. Maybe New York?" "I'm sorry to hear that." "I was sorry to hear that Organicare was going under." Madison's smirk returned. "I was wondering if you were interested in coming back to work for me. I need a senior software engineer and---" "Organicare isn't going under," Daisy said. "We've given the company a total overhaul and we've just secured our Series B funding. I've had interest from other investors and I'm here to meet some of them right now. So, if you'll excuse me..." "She's the CEO," Liam said, beaming. "She saved the company and now she's running the whole show." "Congratulations." Madison's voice was flat as she checked her watch. "You're right about the time. I've got a meeting in five minutes. I'd better go." "You didn't have to do that," Daisy said to Liam. "It was a little bit petty." "You enjoyed every second of it." Her lips tipped in a smile. "Okay. I did. She was like every mean girl in high school who mocked me, and now the tables have turned and not only am I running a company, I got the coolest guy in school.

Though a clergyman, he never thought of reading prayers during their whole stay at Nice. He appeared in all respects like an ordinary man of the world, mixing, like myself, in all companies, and joining, as readily as others, in the prevalent Sunday parties. Indeed, when I engaged him as a companion in my tour, I knew not that he had any deeper principles.