Communication When You're Down Under!

If you saw me today, holed up in my room and wanting to talk to no one, you’d never know that I’m actually someone who is entranced with communication. I’m also feeling guilty about not having blogged for a couple of weeks, and I especially wanted to post a Valentine’s blog, but ended up feeling so not-well that it was beyond me. I won’t put you through a belated Valentine’s blog – as in, yesterday I loved you, but today it’s another story. In staying authentic to myself at this moment in time and space, I’ll post about communicating when you’re less than your chipper self. Maybe it’ll help to make you just a little more understanding of why sometimes others may be communicating the way they are.

Since I’m in the throes, I can spell it all out. My discomfort is short-circuiting my communications, so that when I speak, I’m brief and not always sweet, reducing my utterances to their barest elements, and caught up with saying whatever I have to say and not inclined to listen. I warn my communicative partners that I’m not feeling well and that I’m cranky. If they’re adept listeners, they’ll understand that that means there’ll be a difference in our communications. My brain’s foggy, so I’m searching for names and dates and words. I even notice that I’m holding my breath, so that instead of sending ovygen into my body and mind, I’m strangling myself, adding fuel to fire. As I’m typing, I’m busily correcting way too many misspellings along the way. I can muster the energy to sound slightly affable when someone calls on the phone, but when we hang up, I get to work criticizing and judging and then, realizing the downhill roll of this not-feeling-well snowball, catch myself. Knowing better, I accept and at the same time realize the absurdity of my negativity, then effortfully muster some sunny thoughts to lighten the dark clouds. I’d like to take the time to watch some humorous movies, as Norman Cousins did, afterwards showing the world that we can heal ourselves with how we think. I know our self-talk holds power. And that means that just as I’m talking less to you, my less than happy self-talk has taken over instead, and I had best cap that quickly!

The day’s young. If I’m going to feel better I need to steer my thoughts for smoother sailing. I’m noticing that when I take a deep breath, it helps me feel more open, patient and not as uncomfortable, and hopeful that I’ll feel more like being a part rather than disinterested in what’s going on around me. Actually, I’m needing to check up on my son and see how he’s doing. When he awoke this morning he was irritable -- complaining of the work at school, complaining about waking up early, complaining about our puppy… and complaining about a sore throat.

So you're running for President?

The hottest topic in communication right now has to do with the candidates’ communications – what they say, who they say it to, and how they say it -- their tone of voice, their facial expressions, their gestures, their emotions; how people have interpreted what they’ve said; who’s liked…or hasn’t liked…what they’ve said, what they should – and shouldn’t -- have said, whether what they’re saying now jives with what they’ve said in the past, whether they really mean what they say or if it’s a pretense, and if so, then what’s their underlying intent and did they achieve that intent. Then there’s attention too to what their staff and associates have said and how they’ve said it and whether what they’ve said has helped -- or hurt -- their candidate. Assessing the impact of all of these communications that they, their staff, their associates, their supporters, the other candidates and their staff and associates and supporters have had then leads each of the candidates and their staff to think long and hard about how to improve their future communications, with the obvious desire of convincing us to vote for them. Which is to say that the candidate who is elected President of the United States of America by the public vote (and we all know that the person who receives the public vote is not necessarily the person who becomes President of the United States), may be the one who is the best communicator.

You -- like me – may not have run for president of anything for a long time. Nonetheless, if we think about our communications, the same analysis and rippling effects hold true as are evidenced for the Presidential candidates. What we say, who we say it to, and how we say it – our tone of voice, our facial expressions, our gestures, our emotions; how people interpret what we say, who’s liked – or hasn’t liked — what we’ve said, what we should – and shouldn’t – have said, whether what we’re saying now jives with what we’ve said before, whether we really meant what we said or if it was protocol or a pretense, and if so, then what was our underlying intent and did we achieve that intent – all of these are a part of the communication
mix!

Our communications have far reaching consequences! By being aware of that fact, we can't help but realize that we all need to try harder to say what we mean to say and to the person we're speaking to, and in a way that achieves the results we’d prefer.