A quick communication hack: change your 'but' to 'and' to be heard more often by the other person.
Here's the transcript for those who prefer to read:
So a very quick communication hack, which is to explore switching your 'buts' out of sentences and putting 'and' in instead. So this week I needed to say no to a second date, and I left a message which went 'I really appreciated your sparkiness and how quickly you responded to messages, but I don't feel like there's really any future.'
And as soon as I heard the 'but' come out of my mouth, my finger hovered over the re-record button. Because in my experience, if I say 'but' in that context, the person hears what comes after the 'but', the 'bad' stuff and the stuff that came before it is forgotten.
And I want the person to have the best chance of hearing both of the things that I have said.
So putting an 'and' in might look something like 'I really appreciated the report that you produced and all of the detail that you put into it. and there are a few things I'd love to pick up on with you. Is there a time that we can do that?'
For me, it shifts the energy. So I hope you'll enjoy having a play with that.