CONNECT In Complete Communication

While on a gorgeous 3-day weekend retreat, my husband and I attended a conference. The facilitator explained our next communication exercise. He turned the lights down low, had us sit on a pillow,

facing each other to prepare for an intimate experience. My husband’s instructions were to give me a hand massage. My instructions were to communicate how I would like that massage to be done. Being married for almost 32 years, I knew my husband already had a pretty good idea of how I would want that. We had this in the bag! The facilitator said BEGIN. My husband, being the light-hearted jokester that he is, went at this massage like there was no tomorrow. He aggressively lathered up my hand with lotion and began rubbing it as if he was trying out for the deep tissue massage Olympics!

I immediately went into my head thinking, What in the heck are you doing? You know I have neuropathy and pins & needles in my hands. How dare you hurt me! After 32 years of marriage, you know this! I did not say a word. The more he rubbed, the madder I got! He was like a little boy in the candy store. He was on a mission. He was going to do it the wrong way until I communicated how I wanted it to be done. He was pushing that button all the way.

All the other couples were having this fantastic moment of connection and communication and for me, this was a disaster! I jumped to conclusions. I blamed him. This was his entire fault. Yet, I was the one that did not communicate. I was the one that assumed he would know what I wanted him to do.

Has this happened to you? Have you had a Lack of Communication Moment? This exercise was great for me. Although we had a fabulous marriage and never really felt that we had communication issues, it assisted us to realize how easy we can fall into the trap of getting in our head and losing our technique of using the knowledge and skills we have. Lack of Communication happens all the time! Every day! Even if you are not sitting on pillows with the lights down low! Right?

Communication is like a back bone. It is required if we want to be successful!

I train and keynote on Communication Inside Out all the time with Corporate and Personal clients and I always start with the basics. What I have found over the years is that most communication problems are started by not knowing or following basic principles and they expand from there. The other huge issue we have with communication is that we allow ego and emotion to take over. Once ego or emotion gets involved in communication, your skill level just went out the window. For this particular part, we are going to focus on the foundational areas that will give you instant success if you will just implement the information. A huge key here is to be able to assess where you are personally, and I mean take an honest look, and take action on improving your communication skills in several areas.

I teach that there are two types of Communication: Confusing Communication and Complete Communication. Let me go into this a bit for you.

I consider confusing communication to be any type of communication where there is an unclear message or a negative message during that conversation, or when the conversation is over. It is when things are unclear, questionable or upsetting. It is when there is judgment and harshness, as well as the silent treatment. It is when you feel that you have no voice as well as not using your voice. It can be when you are spoken to, not spoken with. There are probably a thousand ways to explain Confusing Communication, but allow me to give you a list of things to get your mind thinking about this and considering where you are in this area of your life and how this is effecting you in your relationships, your job or business and even with your productivity. Confusing Communication comes from things like:

That is quite a list, yet it is probably just a drop in the bucket. What you will find is that a lot of them come down to being negative emotions or negative ways of being, and yet how often do we allow this to come into play in our everyday conversations as well as in our very important moments?

Complete communication is when we have clarity, focus and listening all going on at the same time. It is when we are being non-judgmental and are filled with genuine concern and interest in what others have to say or in what they are talking about. It is about LISTENING completely and not trying to come up with our answer or opinion before they are even through with their statement. It comes from your heart. It comes from living positive traits in your life and have good genuine concern for other people. Let’s face it, it has a lot to do with all of the traits that we have been talking about already. It involves good values being put in place and lived by, as well as being conscious of our actions and alert to see where we can improve.

Complete Communication comes from:

And that is just for starters! As we up-level our lives, our communication levels improve. As we work on our personal development and our awareness, our communication skills improve. As we raise our love for others and our self, our communication skills improve. Interesting how that works, right?

I love to use the acronym CONNECT with concise communication, because if we are not connecting, we are really not communicating. Here is how I train on CONNECT in Complete Communication.

Watch the video with this article to get the information about each of these words and how they affect communication. I go over this in great detail.

Good communication & team work are a choice. You decide how you will show up!

“I have found that we create our reality and when we recognize what we are doing and make the corrections needed; we can be happier, healthier and more successful!” ~Kris Barney