Negative Message Head-Space

Empathy is the ability to be aware of, understanding of, and sensitive to another's thoughts or feelings. Empathy involves turning the objective into the subjective: I feel your pain, or at least understand and accept it, or I adopt your perspective instead of my own.

When applied to negative messages, empathy is true, real, You Attitude: we can often figure out the right words to say or write if we truly remember what it's like to experience the pain of receiving bad news.

So:

1) Before writing anything, brainstorm a list of all the bad news people have given you. Remember being rejected by colleges and lovers. Remember not being picked for basketball. Remember being told your parent or grandparent was terminally ill. Remember the pain of disappointment, the frustration of being misunderstood...close your eyes and feel it, baby!

  2) Aside from feeling bad, how did you react (physically and/or verbally) to some of the messages. What did you say, do, or really want to do? (you may not want to write this part down as it may constitute incriminating testimony)

  3) In any of the situations, what did the messenger do to make the bad news more tolerable?

  4) What did you wish they had done? What should they have done?

  5) Now think of bad news you've given to others. What do you now wish you'd done to make the news more tolerable?

  6) The main thing to do before writing a negative message is to put yourself in the receiver's shoes, regardless of your anger, hatred or apathy. Time spent getting yourself in the right head-space may save you many hours of further hassle down the road.