Keeping Your Cool in a Sticky Situation

My reservoir gets filled with a wonderful dinner with a dear friend or two, in a quaint restaurant, with great conversation. I bet I spend more money doing that than I spend on clothes or vacations. Going to the gym with my best buddies also fills up my reservoir. There's something amazing about doing something that's good for me and motivating someone I care about to do something good for them, too. And don't even get me started on how fabulous the conversations are between our sets of exercises.

The bottom line is that you have to make sure your needs are met, and sometimes the best way to make that happen is to meet them yourself. If your happiness is tied to having someone send you flowers, then send yourself some flowers! Learn How to Defuse People

Everyone occasionally gets trapped in a bad mood, and bad moods can lead to bad actions. Defusing people is all about giving them a dose of something that could alter their mood or thinking. In business, the best and easiest way to defuse a complaining, irate customer is not to make excuses or to place blame for the circumstances that made the customer upset. Angry customers rarely care about the reasons. The best thing to do is to let them vent and then say, "I'm so sorry you were inconvenienced. What wonderful thing could I do to make you happy?"