Your colleague is always criticising you or making negative comments.  A friend cuts you at a party.  Your partner makes you feel inadequate with a throw-away remark.   Here’s how to keep your cool:

• Remain calmly assertive.  Say, ‘May we discuss this in private?’
• Dig deeper: Ask what exactly was that about?
• Explain that you feel upset, but don’t do any accusing.
• Avoid blowing up.  Do deep breathing or count to ten.
• Consider the possibility that the person was just trying to be clever, not realizing that he or she was being hurtful.
• Best of all – make a joke of it and laugh it off.

laterlife interest

The above article is part of the features section of laterlife.com called laterlife interest. laterlife interest contains a variety of articles of interest for visitors to laterlife.com written by a number of experienced and new journalists.

It includes both one off articles and also associated regular columns of a more specialist nature such as Healthwise, Talkback, Gardener's Diary, and a beauty section called Looking good in later life.

There's also 'It could be you' by Maggi Stamp laterlife's counsellor on human relationships. 

Also don't forget to take a look at our regular IT question and answer section called YoucandoIT by IT trainer and author Jackie Sherman.

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