I'm the one who broke the salt shaker and didn't quite get all the pieces picked up.

He's the one who stepped on the piece i missed and gashed his foot. 

And yet there wasn't a hint of recrimination as he treated his injury or mention that he wasn't going to be able to jump rope today because his foot is still healing.

Not the slightest hint.

That is what grace sounds like. And character. I am grateful to be living with both. 

A young lady was struggling to fit her bag into the overhead bin. The flight attendant commented,

"Ma'am, if you can't get your bag in the bin, we'll have to check it."

The passenger knew that. She was doing everything she could to stow her bag. The flight attendant may have been right, but her pronouncement wasn't useful.

What a difference between that flight attendant and those who use their experience to help solve the problem. What a difference between, "Ma'am, if you can't get your bag in the bin, we'll have to check it," and

• Let me see if can help you find a spot for that. If we can't, we'll check it for you.

They watch the whole boarding process and know where possible openings might be. Their experience has taught them tricks of the trade that passengers might not know about how to get things to fit. I always appreciate it when a flight attendant gets on my team and helps before pronouncing consequences.

Think about this before you play cop. If someone is struggling to accomplish something, it's not the time to tell them what will happen if they fail. It's time to help them succeed. 

The young lady was able to successfully stow her bag. I was glad she didn't give up too soon.

Compassion is the ability to feel someone else's pain as if it were your own. When you feel compassion, you care deeply.

Codependency is compassion with mistaken ownership. A compassionate person can still function while someone they care about is hurting. A codependent can't. A codependent takes care of others to their own detriment.

To this point, a wise friend shared a reminder from her hubby.

• Care, but don't carry.

I recorded a humerous song about being a Codependent Fool who cares AND carries.

If the shoe fits, change it! It looks like great fun in the picture, but when it's compulsive, it's destructive. 

Are you familiar with muscle-checking? It works much like a lie-detector test, which detects whether a statement triggers a stress response. While not always accurate, the common experience is that a lie creates measurable stress, while telling the truth, even an unpleasant truth, creates a calmer parasympathetic response. 

Muscle-checking has been around a long time. My chiropractor reminded me of how it works and demonstrated its power by asking me to tell an obvious lie. I announced, "My name is Fred," held out my arm and he pressed down. I wasn't able to resist his pressure.Then he invited me to tell my real name. I did, held out my arm and he pressed down. I was clearly stronger.

So if you're wondering why I focus on authenticity under the banner of Speaking Strong, that's why. Authenticity is more powerful than any kind of manipulation or persuasion tactic. PowerPhrases tell the deepest truth we know, which is the ground where we are strongest. Of course there can be a learning curve. When I gave up fudging to cover my behind, I didn't have the skills yet to express myself authentically. Plus I will wait for a deeper truth to surface when I'm in reaction to an experience and not yet ready to respond. Truthing was, and is, a process.

My guiding principle in life is to be free. Authenticity is the freedom to be myself. And nothing empowers like the truth. Why go cheap when I can say what I mean and mean what I say without being mean when I say it? Knowing that helps me decide when to speak and what to say. I am much freer than when I started this journey, and becoming even more free with every step.

What's your guiding principle? How free are you to honor it in your communication?

It was one of the biggest events in his life, and she was one of his dearest friends. That's why he was disappointed to learn that she wouldn't be attending, and even more disappointed that the reason she gave seemed pretty lame.

The next day, his disappointment was gone. He had found himself reflecting on how generous she had been over the years and how much he appreciated her past support. 

"She gets a pass," he told me, and he meant it. "She's a bit like a cat. You appreciate her in her own nature."

As for me, well, I was deeply touched by his genuine appreciation for her despite her having let him down. I find myself basking in awe of his gracious heart. What a gift.

Last week my eye doctor told me I had dry eyes. Suddenly things clicked in. I was reminded of how drying the weather has been. If my eyes are dry, my whole system is. And I was reminded of how dryness affects my productivity, mood, vitality, optimism and overall well-being.

I knew what to do about it. I just needed to be reminded. My world improved in the 36 hours it took for my methods to kick in.

My friend Sherry told me about a quote she liked about how we need less teaching and more reminding. I find that perspective helpful. I don't give advice much to my friends, but I do remind them of things they know, but may have forgotten. And they do the same for me. It seems more respectful of each other.

Covey is credited with the quote "to understand all is to forgive all." So are scores of other people. Whoever said it, it's wisdom. I'd take it another step and say that to understand all reveals hidden beauty. 

And that's what we strive to uncover in my intergenerational presentation.

I can list facts and figures about the generations, but the best understanding comes from conversation. That's why I spend more time guiding groups to create questions to ask each other. Of course, some of the questions need editing... like "why are you so cheap?"

Once we have our questions, we talk to each other about our worldviews, the influences in our lives that help to shape who we are, and what we would like other generations to know about us.

Last week, my intergenerational communication presentation at American Association of University Women concluded with some very touching ways members of different generations admired each other. The question I had posed was, 

• In what ways would you like to be more like the members of the younger/older generation?

The responses might not have been as precise or universal as survey results aggregated into a listing of facts and figures might be. But they were far more moving. 

I don't know what I was saying when my host snapped this picture, but it looks like I was enjoying saying it. 

My friend thought it was a brilliant display of leadership. I thought it was manipulation. My friend thought it was a remarkable show of trust. I thought it was a disappointing violation of trust.

Here's what happend. A pastor spoke about a charity he was supporting, and when everyone was expecting to get hit up for contributions, he handed out envelopes with cash instead. Between $20 and $150 in each. And he challenged the parishioners to use the cash to make more money for the cause.

He was using the persuasion principle of reciprocity. It's a well-known principle of persuasion. When people receive something, they want to give back.

But if you give something wth an expectation of getting, it's not really a gift. I believe in the principle of reciprocity, but not as a direct transaction. When someone freely gives to me, I feel a desire to give back. But when someone gives to me with an expectation, I feel worked. 

Now, if there is plenty of room to decline, it's another story. But when the gift is unsolicited and the agreement is assumed, I don't care how worthwhile the charity is. It's manipulation. Giving to get always is. 

It wasn't just what he did and it wasn't just what he said. It was how he did it and what he didn't say. Would he have preferred to have gone to bed instead of change my flat? Of course. But he said nothing at all to indicate that he felt imposed on. No queries about how my driving might have contributed to bursting the tire. I appreciate what he did, and I appreciate what he didn't do.

I've been on the other side of this. A few months back he had made an error in judgment. I was surprised by his decision, but as I explained to my mentor,

• He didn't need to hear that. 

He already knew it was a mistake. He didn't need to hear it from me. My mentor reflected on how refreshing he found it as a man to hear a woman say that. I don't always manage to restrain myself, but in this case my heart got the best of me which was as it should have been. 

Sometimes we cultivate relationship by what we don't say. I feel more bonded to him than ever today. I admire what he did. And what he didn't do. There's only one thing to say, and I said it. Thank you. 

Angela has a different version of Word from mine. It was frustrating to me that when she returned documents, some of the formatting was altered. 

But today we started creating some forms that we will publish in Word so the users can adapt it. Guess what! Suddenly our incompatability became a gift. I realized that Angela could help me create forms that rendered well in different editions of Word. 

This isn't the first time I dicovered differences can mean something "in complement" rather than in conflict.