No One Can Intimidate You Without Your Consent

Last night I went to a talk by Richard Stengel, editor of TIME Magazine. The talk was pretty interesting and in a lot of ways I just really identified with him as a person. I could see, for example, that he is interested in character and human qualities, and how that has helped him with his work as a journalist, from gaining people's trust to being able to uncover and deliver the elements of their character that are of interest to others (Nelson Mandela in both those cases). He says the kind of things I say e.g. that when people praise others they reveal a lot about how they see themselves. I guess I felt inspired & encouraged by him in a more direct way than I do by other successful journalists whose talks I attend because I could see these qualities that we shared.

So when I bought his book at the end of the talk and went to get it signed, I obviously had a nice moment with him with a brief but very real connection where I said something smart and witty and he laughed, right?

Wrong. I totally choked, said something very stupid, and was generally a dithering idiot.

They say that no one can intimidate you without your consent. I think that's very true. I also think that the times we do consent tend to make amusing anecdotes.