So you think you got your message across, huh?

 

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion it has taken place." 

                                         - George Bernard Shaw

Oh sure we've all been there.  Spent what felt like hours telling someone our feelings with painful details, going to great lengths - that extra mile - so to speak, to make sure they understand where we are coming from in this very personal story. We leave the conversation feeling good and confident that this person truly understands our plight. We feel heard.

It is little wonder why then we find ourselves gobsmacked when we hear their off the charts wrong interpretation of that sharing. Somehow they have taken that preverbal left instead of the right we spent hours communicating to them and we are on different pages if not planets!  Yep, I feel pretty certain we’ve all been there.  But how? What happened? Why the great divide?

I think George Bernard Shaw in his quote above got it right. The illusion of communication taking place is due to many factors but one easy fix is to ask if the person you are talking to has heard what we are trying to say. We are so busy talking that we forget to ask for clarity. Yup ask. Ask them if they will repeat to you what it is that they are hearing. It is in the asking what someone has actually heard that we can hear how and what we have very effectively miscommunicated. It is called mirroring and it is such an effective tool for a person to understand how another person needs to be spoken to in order to hear what they are saying, needing and wanting. These things are much more subtle than the words we have for them.

This is also why that old childhood game of Telephone, where you whisper a message into the ear of the person to the right of you and they to the person to the right of them and so on and so on until the message gets back to the author of the message and it is hilariously different. This game is actually terrific foreshadowing of our adult communication problems. So much more goes into messaging than our words alone. And yet we continue to talk and talk and talk.

Next time you are pouring out your heart or even giving directions, try mirroring. See what you can learn about how you communicate. Is it an illusion or is what you wish to be heard being heard?

A funny thing happened when I was Communicating….

Communication is a funny thing.  Ever since we arrived here on earth we have been Doing it. One could even argue successfully. Not me. I would argue we did it better before we “learned how”. 

In the beginning, we didn’t need words. Our needs were made known clearly with a simple whimper or screeching cry.  As we became older we were given words to help us communicate our needs. Shortly after that, we learned society’s approval or rejection of our needs and so we began complicating what we truly wanted to accompany the much sought after approval.  This approval desire can become the life long struggle to true communication but that is another blog!  That is just the beginning of the humor. It gets truly complicated.   So where do we start?

We are all communicating, all day, every day, in myriad ways.  EVERYTHING is about communication. The billboard and the pop up ad, the

So why is it we rarely give thought to exactly what we are communicating …much less how we are communicating it? Oh sure, we try to choose our words carefully, we rehearse in our head just what we are going to say over and over and over, we even write it down to make sure it is “right” but are we truly aware of the feelings our word choices have to the one experiencing them?  Have we given any thought to the volume we speak them in or to our true intention behind what we are saying? Have we given credence to the place or time we choose to say them?  Or are we verbally vomiting out our ‘feelings’ to another with no regard to theres? 

So much communication that no one seems to be able to truly connect and resonate with another in person. 

Lets meet 'Out Beyond'

Out Beyond

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

 I will meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.

-       Rumi

Hi, and welcome to Patty o Talk!  In this space I will meet with you Out Beyond “wrongdoing and rightdoing” as Rumi, the great Persian poet and Sufi master writes in his poem above.

Here, I’ll explore the art of connection, uncover ways to express ourselves clearly without the drama of crushing others and do my best to unravel societal beliefs so we can understand better the grace of allowing. 

It is in this allowing that I have found the courage to express openly, in this scary uncomfortable forum, my life’s experiences, both successes and failures as well as my study and work in effective communication.  There will be those who disagree with me, for you I hope you allow what I postulate to be ‘wrong for you’ and for those that my thoughts resonate with, that it is ‘right for you’. For when we frame our reactions to new ideas or others opinions in this way, we are resisting judgement and that is a wonderful step towards truly effective communication.