Your Wise Brain   Try a Softer Tone  The accumulating weight of
the tone you use has a big effect on you and others.  How do you
talk to people? The Practice: Try a softer tone.  When our kids
were little, I'd come home from work wanting some peace after
the daily roller-coaster and often walk into a living room full
of stuff - toy trucks, tennis shoes, bags of chips, etc.
Irritated, the first words out of my mouth to my wife would be:
"How come there's all this mess?" Understandably, after a day
chasing children plus juggling her own work, Jan would feel
unfairly criticized and sputter back at me. Then there'd be a
quarrel or a chilly silence. Not good.  And it all began with
the tone I used. Linguists like Deborah Tannen have pointed out
that most communications have three elements, which I'll
illustrate with the example above:    • Explicit content - What
led to these objects being on the floor?   • Emotional subtext -
Irritation, blame; startling, the first thing I said; no
establishing first of a positiv