Press people to list the destructive comments they have made in the last 24 hours and they will quite often come up blank. We make destructive comments without thinking—and therefore without noticing or remembering. But the objects of our scorn remember. Press them and they will accurately replay every biting comment we’ve made at their expense. That’s a statistical fact. The feedback I’ve collected says that “avoids destructive comments” is one of the two items with the lowest correlation between how we see ourselves and how others see us. In other words, we don’t think we make destructive
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