Try these expert tips to build yourself up instead of bringing yourself down (31 Photos)
Norine Dworkin-McDaniel on Jan 23, 2013 at 4:11PM
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How often has this happened: You text a friend and she doesn’t respond. Your boss was brusque, or maybe you get a cool reception from a playground Mom. Your first thought is: “Uh-oh, what’d I do wrong?” Probably nothing. Though we tend to assume that others’ behavior is a direct response to some inadvertent thing we’ve done (or not done), it’s actually rarely about us. “We’re good at creating these fictions in our minds, but they’re often based on emotions, not facts,” explains Didi Zahariades, a personal coach in Portland, Oregon. “When someone’s really confident, she can run into a crabby person and just say, ‘Wow, they’re having a bad day,’” says Zahariades. “And then she goes on with her own day.”
