"Always be nice twice" This has been my motto for about 20 or 30 years now and helped me enormously (I think this is from an Irving book). The idea behind is

"Always be nice twice" This has been my motto for about 20 or 30 years now and helped me enormously (I think this is from an Irving book). The idea behind is that you should give yourself and the other party a chance after a failed first impression. People have bad days, a tough meeting before, personal problems, ... I met a few wonderful people and one very close friend after a horrible initial meeting. If I just told myself that they are assholes and I am an angel we would have missed a lot. I rather thought "they may be great and I may not have been great". One word of caution: some people will take this for weakness.