How to Be a Good Communicator - A Split Brained Human Needs to Be Heard
The human mind was created and birthed from God, so why do some want to destroy the very thing that makes us humans? I find myself torn between what I believe and what I think others should believe. If you believe in the Tooth Fairy and you are a person who believes in fairy tales, then what is wrong with you? It doesn't make me a bad person, it's just that I like to think things are a certain way.
Some believe the Tooth Fairy does not exist and those people are right. But, I also believe in the concept of listening, and I believe one of the main reasons we all get so frustrated with people is because they don't listen? When we do not listen, we often say things we shouldn't and we argue and fight and blame and complain and that usually doesn't get resolved quickly. We need to be heard. And when we hear, we need to respond appropriately and not try to shut down the other party's opportunity to listen to them.
In one of my blog articles, I talked about how listening works, and it really is important, and it helps us become explicated and more human. The great philosopher Aristotle said, "That which we do not know can't hurt us, and what we do know can't hurt us." Well, that means, in fact, that in most cases we cannot answer the question or concern, for instance, if what I'm saying is not true, do I know that yet, until I have all of the evidence.
However, most times the question or concern is not answered immediately and we must wait until more information becomes available. So, humans are really walking around in their own virtual world, and in every human's virtual reality there is only one real thing they can do and that is: to Listen. Which makes it so very interesting to watch people negotiating in rooms with expert mediators, because each person knows that the other person knows what they're talking about and yet they don't know what to do. You see, they're sitting there expecting some signal from the other person, and they never get that signal. That's when you begin to see how important it is to be heard.
In one of my blogs, I wrote about the need to hear what we need to know, rather than trying to memorize thousands of words and think that memorizing is going to help us become deeper conversationalists. There is nothing wrong with memorizing phrases or being able to use highly advanced mental strategies or even software applications. All of those tools can benefit communication, and some can help you become a very good conversationalist, but memorizing never gets you anywhere except maybe toward the beginning, when you're learning to read and write. Therefore, unless you want to spend lots of time writing memorized phrases, listening is the best skill to master if you want to get better at communication.
This works both ways though, because even if someone has memorized all these super-advanced techniques to win you over, without listening to you, they will not get you anything. Remember, this isn't a game, it's serious. The people who write the books and courses on how to fix divided attention are the ones who are experts in this area. They have been doing it for years. They know what works, and what doesn't, and they would be glad to share it with you if you ever find yourself in a position where you really need to think about how to handle an important conversation or interaction.