Get Along With The World: Improve Communication

How fast and how well you can improve your life depends on your communication. In this audio, you will become less hesitant with your words. You will learn how to initiate contact with others and understand the importance of high-quality conversations.

Transcript

Nobody can read your mind.

Nobody knows what you want and need unless you tell them.

Nobody can see,

Hear,

Or understand you without you communicating.

Communication is the foundation for anyone to truly connect with you.

Almost all meaningful moments in life are created and shared with other human beings whom you are connected with.

And for deeper connections to happen,

You need other people to see and hear you.

You need to show yourself.

So today,

We will talk about communication.

Our goal is to inspire you to become more confident with your words and also other forms of expression.

You will learn how to initiate contact with others,

And you will understand the importance of high quality connections.

Lisa Kleypas said,

I've never regretted the things I said nearly as much as the words I left unspoken.

Let's see how you can avoid leaving words unspoken.

Good communication starts with good self-communication.

But what does that even mean?

Good self-communication means you have the ability to make thoughts become so clear in your head that you're comfortable verbally expressing them.

But how do you do that?

The biggest factor in finding clarity is creating space.

Absorbing this insane amount of social media,

News,

Commercials,

Films,

And TV shows makes it hard for us to find space and create clarity.

So make space,

Stare at a wall for a few minutes with your mouth open,

And let clarity trickle in.

Another great tool to gain clarity is to improve how you observe.

There are a million details to discover in anything,

And being interested beyond the superficial will allow you to gain clarity.

This is especially true when observing people.

There are a lot of things going on with a person at any given time,

And you taking a moment to truly observe their behavior will give you a lot more clarity about their current state of mind.

This clarity about other people will allow you to increase the quality of your communication.

Next,

Let's look at the benefits of developing the courage to express your thoughts,

Needs,

And your wants.

For some of us,

It is extremely difficult to say,

I want to spend Friday evening with you.

Can you please make time?

So what is the best action to take in order to improve your courage?

The answer is accepting the worst outcome.

In order to accept the worst outcome,

Ask yourself,

Will I still be alive after saying this?

Will my family and friends still love me?

Will I still have a roof over my head?

This seems totally silly,

I know,

But it will immediately take away unnecessary worries and fears.

Now,

In our example of asking someone to spend an evening with you,

What is the worst thing that could happen?

The person could say,

Screw you,

I don't want to spend time with you,

Idiot.

If that's the answer to your invitation,

Two things would have happened.

A,

You still have as much as you had before,

A free Friday,

And B,

You found out you might want a different friend.

Both are valuable.

I understand there is a risk of pain involved,

Pain of rejection,

And that is real pain,

But potential pain is not something that should make you avoid communicating.

Taking the risk is worth it.

So now that we talked about clarity and confidence,

Let us talk about why good communication is so important for your development and your ability to be happy in the 21st century.

For that,

You need to understand the decline in your ability to communicate.

The biggest reason for your decline is technological advancement and social media.

You might be fooled into believing that social media makes you a better communicator.

It doesn't.

One reason for that is that the quality of your conversation is limited.

By default,

You put a lot more effort into your communication when standing in front of another person.

When you're reading and writing things,

You don't care so much about the how.

You care about what you need to communicate.

This might be an efficient way and saves time,

But it lessens the human experience and connection immensely.

Furthermore,

Communicating on devices doesn't allow you to see and feel other people's reactions to your words.

Why is Twitter full of haters?

Because they don't sit in a room together.

If you can see the effect of your words,

You will try and increase the quality of your communication automatically.

Even when you have a phone call,

You can still not really see and feel the person that you are talking to.

Communicating online often makes you feel more isolated.

It often also makes you more hesitant to real in-person communication.

And thus,

Since this century,

You have to work twice as hard to be a great communicator.

So why exactly will improving your communication skills make you happier?

At the beginning,

I mentioned that people cannot read your mind.

Now,

You might think this is obvious,

But let me explain further.

Other people have a different set of values than you do.

They have a completely different way of living.

This means that people react differently than you to anything being said in a conversation.

And being aware of this makes you have fewer expectations as to how people react,

Which allows you to have more harmonious conversations.

So now that you understand that other people are different from you,

You can see how important it is that you communicate.

If you do not tell others your thoughts,

Your emotions,

Your values,

Your ethics,

What you want and need,

Then others cannot understand who you are.

Without high-quality communication,

Others will act and react only according to their own values and not take you into account.

This is why your life will become a lot less stressful with improved communication.

The last point I want to make about why good communication is so important is that if you communicate in a high-quality way,

People feel appreciated.

When you tell the waiter exactly how you want your steak cooked,

He will feel appreciated.

He will appreciate the quality communication because his job just became easier.

When you're telling your partner exactly why you feel a certain way in detail,

Then he or she will feel appreciated because you're taking your time and putting effort into high-quality communication.

Furthermore,

If you initiate clear communication around what you need and what you want,

Then people will feel more relaxed around you because they know now how to fulfill your needs.

They will open up to you because now they feel connected to you.

People love responding because it is way easier than initiating a conversation.

Have you ever been at a dinner party where no one initiates a high-quality conversation?

Have you ever felt the pain in these rooms?

The pain comes from a lack of initiating high-quality communication.

If you are able to make people talk and listen,

Then you have a skill that will open a lot of doors to beautiful moments of happiness in your life.

Now let's get to the practical part of today.

First of all,

I would like to invite you to write down three different things that people close to you don't know about you.

Could be small or big.

Maybe you don't like cats or you don't like the taste of lemons or you're uncomfortable in the darkness or sitting in a loud restaurant irritates you.

Whatever they are,

Write down three things people close to you don't know about you.

Pause the course now and come back to it when you're finished.

Now I would like you to ask yourself if and how it would serve you to communicate your three points.

Would communicating this information make your human connections better or worse?

Write down any thoughts that come to mind and again,

Pause the course here to do this second part.

During the next few days,

I would like to invite you to communicate something new once a day.

And I would like to invite you to communicate either a want or a need of yours.

It can be big or small.

It can be hard to talk about or easy to talk about.

But tell someone in your life once a day something that you want or need from them and make sure you deliver it in a high quality way.