Could you ask yourself, why did you feel so bad when Mr smith was talking about his next door neighbor. Mr Smith was talking about his neighbor not your neighbor remember!
I’m sure that plenty of memories, experiences and bad feelings rushed to your brain comparing and reminding you how bad your neighbor was.
Imagine that you are scared of flying and somebody speaks about flying with you. Would you be able to understand, continue, or have a good conversation about it? You are right! Of-course you can’t!
Living in the past hinders your ability to listen, empathize, speak and it will show in your body (non-verbal) communication. On the other hand, not living in the past makes you more receptive, more vigilant and non-judgmental.
It is somebody else’s story not yours. You aren’t itching to reply, you aren’t setting on fire remembering your bad experiences and you aren’t constructing a reply. You are peaceful inside, you look at the speaker body to understand his/ her message, and you encourage the speaker to continue and to reach to his deepest thoughts and feelings.
This peace and tranquility shows on your body and your tone of voice. You are seen more caring and more understanding by the speaker.
You impressed the speaker by your attitude and compassion, he/ she is ready to listen to you when speak.
Let us quickly speak about the foundation of communication: (Listening, empathizing, speaking and non-verbal communication).
Listening:
Listening is above all when it comes to communication. Listening is when you feel comfortable in body and soul accepting thoughts, experiences and new information that contradicts your beliefs. Listening is when your body interacts with the speaker effortlessly. Listening is when the speaker is willing to exchange his deep feelings and thoughts. Listening is when you don’t interrupt the speaker and when you ask questions appropriately. Listening is when you are seeing the speaker body movement, muscle twitching, sweats, flushing and eye movements. Listening is the key to people heart. It is the key for establishing good relationships and rapport. It is the key for understanding yourself and others. Listen to understand not to reply, please.
Listening to non-verbal:
How do I listen to people body? 55% of communication are in body movement.
1) Body Posture:
Closed body posture:
(crossed arms, shoulder down, and crossed legs) might mean that not yet ready to accept other perspective, defensiveness, not ready to exchange deep feelings and thoughts.
Make sure that the environment is good before analyzing postures. For instance, people who are feeling cold close their body for warmth.
On the other hand open body posture: means the opposite.
It is important to listen to your body. Your body listen to your posture. Help with this exercise please. Look down, drop your shoulder and think about something that you have to do. It is weird that you feel bad.
Please look up, open your shoulder and say I want to do the same thing that you said that you had to do earlier. Weird isn’t it? Your body and your emotions responded differently. Doing the three things are very powerful; but doing one of them produces good results. Listen to yourself saying have to do something and feel your body response. Listen to yourself saying I want to do something and feel your body response.
2) Eye movement:
Eye movement can tell you so much about people feelings and commitment.
Eye movements can show you and tell you if people are constructing dialogues, images or if they are remembering. This is significant to understand others. People who are constructing thoughts and images… look at the future and they are doing so without looking in the past.
For example, if somebody says that I’ll be more efficient while looking to his/her left. Means she/he is looking in the past to see how he/she could be more efficient. On the other hand, if this person was looking in the future (right) means he/she is willing to change what hasn’t been working and is willing to adopt new things.
3) Skin color.
When you talk to people see how they skin react. People skin change color when they are happy and when they are feeling what is being told to them. Skin color could mean you are influencing the person and they are willing to take whatever you are going to tell them. Or could mean the opposite. It could show that the other person is frustrated, embarrassed, fearful… and those modes would stop people receiving your messages. Skin color change in the receptive estate is usually associated with a big deep breath. When you see those together you are in control and you can sell your products, ideas…etc.
Empathizing:
“Seek first to understand” involves a very deep shift in paradigm. We typically seek first to be understood. We do not listen with the intent to understand; we listen with the intent to reply.
When you empathize you seek to understand the speaker’s own feelings and thoughts. You might have had the same experience, but you are different. You might have had thought to quit education, but your son’s/ daughter’s reasons are different.
When empathize you give the speaker a breathing a space to talk about his/her feelings. Moreover, you understand the context.
If your son/ daughter say I had it with the school. You could reply in this way. What you are saying son/ daughter that you are frustrated at school? Is that right? ….. Pause. Tell me son, I’m all yours.
You are asking him/her to speak about his/her feelings and you are asking him to focus in the context. You are sending a brilliant message for him/ her to speak up. You are also saying I’m not judgmental and I know that your experience is unique. You aren’t cornering him or her to defend their bad feelings by asking why.
It is the time to listen to body, words and tone of voice. It is your opportunity to have soul-soul communication.
When you observe changes to skin color, breathing and posture change, it is your time to sell your ideas and share your experience. This is a win-win communication.
If you started sharing your experience early, you would lose the opportunity to listen to the most important things in the conversation.
It is good to say that I understand how you feel and you had such experience before. The question is when? It is all about timing!
If you started early your son/ daughter would tell him/herself “here we started”. He/ she thinks that I’m an old clip in her/ his mind. I’m so different parent, I’m not you. I’m talking about my unique experience!
Help me to communicate this and please don’t impose your previous experience on me. Please don’t tell me how you had dealt with your experience before completely listen to my experience. It is my problem that I’m trying to solve not your old stupid experience.
fghith 