Red Wednesday's Wisdom - One Word

Because our day to day communication can get so cluttered up by all the words that are spoken and heard, we can often miss the original intent of what was meant to be spoken, heard, or understood. The people I work with routinely hear me asking them to put their thoughts or feelings into one word phrases. In fact, I purposefully used one word themes for most of my postings in the first 8 months so it would reflect the simplicity of this kind of communication.

 And because I practice what I teach, I also know how challenging it can be to declutter your communication by using one word phrases, but this is the key to lessening the amount of words that you think you need to say in conveying a message. It is a great example of how you can stretch yourself and get out of your comfort zone. As you make a conscientious decision to practice communicating with one word, you will begin to see this is a process that is causing you to slow down your thinking. Slowing down is the first guideline for healing any kind of clutter in your life. This intentional slowing down of your thinking will result in you being able to think with more clarity so that you can then communicate more clearly with yourself, others, and even God.

Your communication will also become less cluttered as you intentionally:

• Establish eye to eye contact.
• Practice putting your thoughts and feelings into one word, and then elaborate.
• Replace "you" messages with "I" messages.
• Become more aware of your tone in a message. The clutter of a message is often not in its content but in how we deliver it.
• Use reflective listening for validation not argumentation.
• Become more aware of the non verbal communication with yourself and others.

In my class situations, I am always modeling and reinforcing these points so that we can begin to improve our communication, so let's take the points a little bit further:

1. We sit in a circle to reinforce the eye to eye contact. When you are talking with someone be sure to establish face to face communication. This one piece of nonverbal communication says I am focused on you and I value what you have to say. This is particularly important in helping children to focus on what they are being told to encourage good listening.

2. I will constantly challenge you to express your thoughts or feelings with one word responses and then elaborate on what that one word means for you. You will be amazed at how your communication improves!

3. I will remind you to say “I” messages rather than "you" messages so we can avoid feelings of defensiveness that are the result of pointing the finger.

• Say the following sentence with the focus being on "you" rather than“I” and see if you can hear or feel the blame game:
“You make me angry when I am ready to leave on time but have to wait on you and then I am late.”

The minute we start out with emphasizing you we are setting ourselves up for a battle of defensiveness. And please remember this: Your feelings are yours and they are secondary to what you think, therefore, someone else can not make you feel a certain way. There is a difference in being responsible for my own emotions and communicating the “I” message in regards to them, verses blaming another for the emotions I feel.

4. I will encourage you to examine the different verbal tones that we hear in our communication so we can discern how our tone can create harmony or discord.

In the following two sentences, see if you can hear how the change in your tone can convey a different message even though the words remain the same and have the appropriate “I” message.

• Say the following sentence with what sounds like a tone of acceptance to you:
“I feel angry when I want to leave on time and need to wait, and then I am late.”

• Now say this same sentence with what sounds like a tone of anger to you:
“I feel angry when I want to leave on time and need to wait, and then I am late.”

Which sentence tone was most receptive to being received by you? So often we get into conflict with one another because of the tone in our voice. The words in our message are often appropriate, but it’s our tone that can totally destroy the message of what we wanted to convey.

5. I will use reflective listening when communicating with you and ask you to do the same with me.

Reflective listening is mirroring back what I thought I heard you say. It gives clarification and indicates that we are truly listening to one another. It also validates whether or not we understand the intent of what is being communicated. I can not tell you how many times I have said, “So, I heard you say………,” and I repeat back their exact words, and I get the response back, “I didn’t say that!” Even though I was simply repeating what was said, it shows how unaware we can sometimes be of what we are saying. Sometimes this happens because the meaning of what we wanted to convey does not come through the words we choose to speak. That creates clutter!

6. We can get mixed messages with what we hear and with what we see. Let go of assuming that you know what someone's nonverbal communication means. Instead, state what you are observing and ask the person what your observation means for them

This week I encourage you to take these communication tools with you and begin using them in your home and work place. See if you find your communication becoming less cluttered, especially when it comes to fewer disagreements, arguments, and misunderstandings.