Ah... So That's How You Communicate

Today, I attended a seminar designed to teach me "How to Communicate Effectively"
Bah! Shut the fuck up, seminar.

I hate the whole "self help" atmosphere of these seminars.
I should probably mention I hate all the bull shittery of the self help genre in general.
The whole "realize the you that you've always had the potential to be" crap kind of makes me ill.
I shouldn't hate the whole self help thing as much as I do, since I've never read a self help book.
But, the whole premise behind self help seems disingenuous to me.

People rarely change.
The details change. But, in my experience, at their core people stay the same.
If they do change, it's not because some stupid book told them how.
Sorry if I just dashed your dream of reading a self help book to make all your problems go away, make yourself rich, popular and loved.

People change when they make up their minds to change and then actually stick with it. They ram it down their own fucking throats until it becomes the natural response.

In spite of the whole self help atmosphere, I'm usually able to pull at least one thing away from these seminars to take back to work.
(The Women's Conference = Quit Taking It Personally aka Q-Tip which helped my relationship with the Hammer who is often unintentionally offensive.
How to Get Organized = The beginning of my love affair with Outlook's To do list)
This time?
Nothing.

Here are some "tips" for communication, in case you are a total fucking moron:
1. Don't be offensive... people don't listen when you make them angry
2. Good communicators listen (and according to one of the exercises they forced us to do in class, notice minute changes in one another's wardrobe)
3. Everybody's different. Deal with it. Quit expecting them to hear everything the way you do.

I guess that's all. I tried for about 5 minutes to come up with a number 4, but I couldn't come up with anything else they tried to teach us today (that's useful).