Today I want to talk about a topic that i've been interested in for a long time and have spent a lot of time reading and learning about these last years: communication.
To me communication is probably the most important and at the same time difficult quality to master. It's about finding the right words to express yourself, whilst being in check with your non-verbal expressions to empower and confirm your words to others. Only by thinking about the way we communicate, we can reduce the levels of incomprehension and consequently all the frustration and confusion because of it.
Yesterday I had a discussion with my girlfriend about something we talked about a week ago. I don't know what it was about exactly, but it was about something pretty banal.Let say she mentioned she liked cats much more than she did dogs. So yesterday that topic came up again and I jokingly said something about her not liking dogs. She got pretty upset and told me that I transformed her words and that she never said she like cats much more than dogs, she just liked them a bit more.
Of course this example is a bit ridiculous, but it does point out the point I want to make: in communication every actor has his own truth. My girlfriend thought she had said "i like cats more than dogs" and I thought she said "I like cats much more than dogs". The situation was in the past, so who was right here? It's only a word difference, but of course that word does result in me interpreting that sentence in a different way. This mistake in communication happens A LOT and is inevitable.
And that's where I personally try to search for the power of communication. For me communication is not a means to convey the truth to someone else. To me communication isn't about convincing someone of my viewpoints. To me communication is about finding a centre between both truths. We both look at something in a different way, so how can we manage to understand each other without necessarily having to "win the argument"? Those are the questions I like to ask myself whilst talking to people I don't fully understand or I disagree with. I try to put my own truth aside and try to meet people at the centre of our viewpoints. That's when people, in my opinion, can start an open and constructive dialogue. That's how I think a lot of needless arguments can be avoided.
So words are important in communication, no doubt about it. However some say verbal communication accounts for only 30% of how we get perceived by others. The other 70% comes from non-verbal communcation: our posture, our facial expressions, our scent, the way we talk (loud, quiet, slow, fast...). This is an interesting statistic to think about. We can choose our words very carefully and try to reduce the chance of miscommunication that way, but if we aren't in check with our non-verbal ways of communicating, that won't get optimal results. If we want to open a constructive, positive dialogue with someone, we'll need to not only say so, but act accordingly aswell. Smile, straight posture, talk at the same tonality etc. This is a part of communication often overlooked.
By trying to understand and actively training the ways of communication, we might open ourselves up to better, more honest and open relationships. That's what I ultimately want to achieve. It's gonna require a lot of time and effort, but I think it's more than worth it.
Thanks for reading :)
