CHAPTER 2
How to Avoid Losing Face
THERE’S AN OLD SAYING I remember hearing when I was growing up: Spilled water is hard to regain. When it comes to losing face, that phrase really has a lot of meaning.
Think about it—you accidentally knock a glass of water off the dining table and it spills all over the floor—if you wanted to get all that water back into the glass, how would you do it? More important, even if you managed to get all the spilled water on the ground back into the glass, at that point would you still want to drink it? Yuck. Me neither.
That “yuck” factor is the same when we’re talking about face. If you do or say something that causes someone else to lose face or to feel humiliated or diminished, it’s hard to completely reverse ...
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