Best sentence I read yesterday

This was a popular link on del.icio.us (In case you are not hooked up to it yet)yesterday, titled Five Tips to Increase Your Likeability:

People that always have to be correct are insecure.

Out of the 5 points, I think I am faring pretty well on Positive Attitude, Provide Value, and Eliminate Judgements, sub par on Control Insecurities, and really bad at Conviction.

I would have taken these tips more seriously before, say six months or a year ago. Now I'd come up with a list tips that will increase your respectability rather than likeability. It's far more harder to make other people to respect you than like you. Here goes my short list(I don't pretend I do well on these points at all, from that sense it's better called a wish list):

Five Tips to Increase Your Respectability:

1. Respect other people's preferences, in turn they will respect yours.

2. Be generous. You don't have to get even on every particular thing, and things will even out in the long term. If you can't be generous, at least be fair.

3. Don't be jealous, never. Most of the time it's not a zero-sum game, so wish other people the best, sincerely. And in case it is a zero-sum game, see #2.

4. Keep your promise or don't promise in the first place.

5. Listen first, then talk. Understand first, then seek to be understood.