How To Humiliate Yourself And Ruin Your Reputation In Under 5 Minutes (Without Getting Drunk!)

There’s a little device that has the potential to get you fired, make your spouse leave you, and humiliate yourself in front of your friends and family.nnAnd chances are you used it already today – and will use it again.nnKnow what it is?nnIt’s EMAIL.nnAnd using email is exactly the same as GETTING DRUNK.nHere’s how:nnWhen you have a face-to-face conversation with someone, you watch your mouth. You make sure to not be rude, to take the other person’s feelings into account, and watch your own reputation.nnI mean, some things you just can’t say to someone’s face. Like if you think he’s an idiot. Or if she’s out of line and should be quiet and listen to you. Or maybe has an asshole friend or spouse you want to trash-talk.nnNow what happens if you get drunk? Chances are, some of these very opinions start to come out. When you’re drunk, you get this feeling like, “Hey, it’s finally okay to express my real feelings. What’s the worst that could happen? It’s about time I did this! It feels so great.”nnYeah. Until a few hours later when you sober up and have to face that person again.nn…So maybe you don’t get drunk and mouth off to people. That’s good.nnBut I’m sure you use email. And that’s just as bad. Why? Because when you communicate through a computer, you’re not standing face-to-face with someone. There’s no body language, no eye contact…it almost feels like it’s not even real.nnSo your emotions become uninhibited. Just like being drunk.nnI remember one time a reader of my free newsletter emailed me to “critique” my marketing tactics and decided to “give me a lesson” (surprise surprise, he was an M.D.). I was about to fire back a terse, excellently-crafted reply showing exactly why he was wrong.nnAnd then something happened.nnMy computer froze up briefly and the message was not sent.nThat gave me enough to time to realize that there was ABSOLUTELY NO POINT to replying other than to satisfy my own ego.nnSo the email never got sent out.nnThe commonality here is letting you emotions take control and deciding what to do based on what feels good short-term. You get an email and reading it gives you a rush of emotion – good OR bad – and you act on it immediately. Sending a reply feels GOOD.nn…If this sounds familiar – this is exactly what you SHOULDN’T be doing.nnInstead, if an email makes you feel ANY kind of emotion whatsoever…sit back and think for 5 minutes before sending a reply.nnAnd I say “5 minutes” for a very good reason. It has nothing to do with what you should think about, or some strategy to craft the perfect reply.nnNo. You wait 5 minutes to let your emotions settle. THEN you decide IF you want to reply, and how.nnThere is no way around this rule. Wait 5 minutes.nnThat way you know you’re sober.