Have you ever been in a situation that was really uncomfortable and you couldn’t escape? It happened to me many years ago when I was invited to dinner at a good friend’s house. My husband and I hadn’t seen our friend for several years as we were in Asia and he was in the USA. But when he was transferred to Asia, we jumped at the opportunity to visit.
We met our friend in the bar of the hotel and had a few drinks before walking over to his house nearby. As soon as we arrived at the front door his wife answers the door and begins yelling at him for being late. “Oh boy,” I thought to myself, “this is going to be an interesting night.”
Our friend continued to apologize to his wife and my husband looked at me and said, “Can’t you do something? You know, that NLP stuff?” I frantically looked around the house to find something to use as leverage. And there it was! Photograph after photograph after photograph hung on that featured the wife participating in her favorite sport. “Kim*” I interrupted, “Do you canoe?” as I pointed to the photographs. “Paddling, it’s called paddling,” she replied. For the next 2 hours, I heard every story of Kim’s paddling adventures in Hawaii. My husband winked and me, smiled and continued to talk to the husband.
The wine poured, the food was great and then my friend had a slip of the tongue. He said something about the food being slightly cold. That was it, Kim started yelling at him again for being late. My husband kicked me under the table and whispered, “Do it again!”
Again, I changed the conversation back to something that was really interesting to Kim – HER!
If you find yourself in a situation like this where someone else has a negative attitude, try to change the subject to something they are passionate about. Don’t choose something that they are just slightly interested in. You’re looking for something that will get them totally immersed into a topic they love. Everything changes at this point. The person will start imagining the event or activity, the neural connections will create transmitters that will start filling their bodies with happiness, pleasure and euphoria. There will be an instant change in attitude and state. It works every time!
*names have been changed to protect the identity of the bad attitude
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