A friend and I were talking about manners the other day and she told me about a Farsi saying in her culture. “Who taught you to be polite?” The answer is: “Those who were impolite to me.”  I wonder what life would be like if every time someone irritated, hurt, slighted, or offended me I learned a lesson for myself about manners.

BE -learning

During this election year I am sure we are going to hear a lot about character. What is it? If we have character in one area yet not in another, is that character? I been reading about a thing I like to call balanced character. That is a character that is not unbalanced in a way that creates weakness.

If I have say strict discipline that is usually seen as a good character trait. However if I take this too far I can become inflexible and rigid and that can be a bad character trait. So I want to balance being disciplined with being flexible.

I want to balance being proactive and getting things done, with being caring and involved. True character comes with a balance of character traits, not just isolated ones. If we take a look at some of our character traits, we may find some imbalance and hypocrisy choosing to add some balance to them can be a good thing.

Anyone heard of tough love before?

Blessings,

BE (Being in Excellence)

If you have not checked out the post on The worst Self Defense Advice on the Net, this is the e-mail that really sparked me to action to create this blog. I received this bad advice about 20 times. I learned to just hit ‘Reply All’ and let people know real self defense tips.

Recently I have been sent a flux of bad e-mails. You know the type. Ones you can’t read because of html codes or ones that you have to open ten e-mail attachments to find the FWD. Each one of them says to forward to everyone on your list. Yet, some of the information in them is bogus! I know that you do not want to be one to pass along,bad e-mails or bogus information so I have today some e-mail etiquette tips.

1) If it is information that looks suspicious, check it out on Snopes.com. Here I have confirmed that, ‘In God we Trust,’ has not been removed from our money only moved to the edge of the coin, that ‘Starbucks’ is not unwilling to send coffee to our troops in Iraq, and that serial killers do not use tape recordings of crying babies to get you to open your doors. “When in doubt, check it out!”

2) If it is worth forwarding, it is worth telling others why your sending it. If it’s not worth your time to explain why you are sending it, it is not worth other’s time to read it.

3) If you have gotten it before and sent it, don’t send it again. Death is natural, let it die.

4) If you have to open several e-mails, send it directly from the last one you opened not the one sent to you so the next person doesn’t have to open all of them plus your’s.

5) Clean up any html code, or don’t send it. It is offensive to read messy forwards.

6) Be mindful, just because you have time to read stupid things with cute bunnies and chickees still floating around since Easter, doesn’t mean everyone else wants to.

7) Remember: All capital letters in e-mail, posts, bulletin boards etc. is considered yelling and rude by many people.

Set a purpose for your e-mail before you send it. Just because it is easy and funny, is not a purpose.

9) Sometimes it is appropriate to use an opener like, ‘hi,’ ‘Dear____’ sometimes it is not needed, don’t get stuck in an unconscious pattern of writing, just for speed.

10) With today’s spam filters, don’t assume people have gotten or read your mail. If it is important, follow it up with a call.

I am sure all of you have some tips too so add them below!

BE (Being in Excellence)