I am not driven by fear, and for stuff that matters to me, I am never driven by negative feelings. Like, you will not inspire me to do anything except shut down and dislike you if you try to give me guilt.
Guilt, passive aggression — to tell the truth, maybe I’m a sociopath, but that’s just dropped bits for me — totally dropped bits. I have no place in my life for that. Maybe that makes me crazy, or maybe it makes me a jerk, but as soon as somebody tries to do something passive aggressive with me — we’re done; it’s the bozo bit for me.
The thing is, what you can say is sure, you can tell me constructive things. You could tell me extremely specific, painful things about me that are honest, but to just go intimate that I have missed an expectation you had and therefore I should feel bad about it — well you had better have a practical component for how I can fix that or you’d better apologize.
” —Merlin Mann (Back to Work, Ep. 4, “Failing with Style”)