Figure Out People From Their Words

AFTER a visit from a friend, my mother would review the conversation in her mind, the pauses, inflections and choice of words, then announce the real news the caller mentioned:

“Henry wants to sell his house.’’ “Frank is going to marry janie.’’ “Young Mrs. Cole think she’s pregnant but isn’t sure.’’

Mother was no mind reader, she was pregticing a teahnique we now call “content analysis.’’ It’s a kind of systematic search for the smallverbal clues that, when put together, reveal a larger meaning: attitudes, intentions, behavior patterns, underlying strategy. As Ben jonson wrote more than 300 years ago, “Language springs out of the inmost parts of us. No glass renders a man’s likeness so true as his speech.”

How to take change part 2

 How to take change

Praise gives him feeling of euphoria, which is false, because it does not last and it does not come from self approval. Criticism depresses him more than it should, because it confirms his own secretly shaky opinion of himself. Snubs hurt him, and the merest suspicion of unpopularity in any quarter rouses him to bitterness.

 A serenity  of spirit can’t be achieve until we become the masters of our own actions and attitudes. To let another determine whether we shall be rude or gracious, elated or depressed, is to relinquish control over our own personalities, which all we possess. The only true possession is self possession.

How to take change part 1

How to take change

I walked with my friend, a Quaker, to the newsstand the other night, and he bought a paper, thanking the newsie politely. The newsie didn’t even acknowledge it.

A sullen fellow, isn’t he? I commented.

Oh, he’s that way every night, shrugged my friend.

Then why do you continue to be so polite to my him?’ I asked. Why not? inquired my friend. Why should I let him decide how I’m going to act?.

As I thought about this incident later, it occurred to me that the important word was act. My friends acts toward people; most of us react toward them.