I remember presenting to a large group from Hewlett Packard’s storage division and comparing something to a hard drive crash and saying I was sure it was something they were all familiar with. The groans and boos of that remark remain fresh to this day. But I laughed with them and shook my head in regret. Fortunately they soon forgave me. They knew my intent was not malicious and somehow my bumbling made me even more human and I think the rest of the presentation was even better received because of it.

I guess the lessons I see here are that we tend to attract or grow what we give energy to. I don’t mean this in any sort of “Secret” way but I do think this is an axiom of attention. And if a fear gets aroused and we feed it… well, Freud stayed pretty busy dealing with the returns of the repressed, in the form of Freudian slips and worse.

I am curious though to hear if our readers have had similar slippages and what was the aftermath.