I have a few blogs that I write on that rarely pertain to this business blog. One of them has to do with my push towards becoming a millionaire, which I wrote about once here also.

What I'm referencing now goes back to a recent post there that I wrote on learning how to sell, something I'm very bad at. For this post, though, I want to talk more specifically about something I mentioned in that post, that being this concept of dealing with"feelings".

When we think about the personal interactions most of us have each day, every single one of them involves some kind of feeling. Even if that feeling is of nonchalance, it's still some type of feeling, something personal to each of us that we have to deal with, and means something entirely different to the other person we're interacting with.

I tend to believe that if most of us put our feelings of how we wish encounters to go onto others we meet up with, that we'd treat them nicer and kinder and be more considerate because it's how we wish to be treated. I run into people who say they want brutal honesty at all times, yet when you give it to them they really don't want that, don't like it, and will argue with you about it. And, after we've been burned once by something like that, we tend to not believe the next person who comes along saying the same thing.

It works that way in business also. Many of us try to go about our daily business being as dispassionate as possible, because we don't want to intrude on the thoughts of others, and we don't want them intruding upon us. That's why we find it hard when we have to deal with someone else's feelings when it comes down to the time of possibly having to discipline someone, or point out fault in the work they've done, or even offer condolences when something bad has happened. Often, it's more about how we ourselves feel rather than how someone else might be feeling, which is hard to figure out because, obviously, we don't all react in the same way to the same types of stimulus.

Still, I believe it must always be at least a passing thought in our minds as we go about our business. Simple things like "thank you" and "your welcome" really do go a long way, and last week, as an experiment, I started making sure I look into the eyes of the people at checkout counters when they give me back my money, and smile at the same time. When you get that smile back, you feel like a new and improved person.

And they feel validated.