Communication is not just about talking and engaging; it’s about the art of expressing one’s emotions, thoughts and ideas in a way that the other person understands them. When I was in high school, I used to believe that it was impossible for me to form sustainable and long-term friendships and relationships because no one understood me. Turns out, I never gave anybody a chance to understand me in the first place! I guess I was wishing for someone like Edward Cullen from Twilight who would have the ability to read my mind. I wanted the other person to do all the work while I sulked in a corner with my unrealistic expectations. More often than not, a lot of us are secretly wishing for our friends and family to have the ability to guess what we want or need. Guess what? It’s time to change tracks! You and I need to speak up about what we want and how we want it. And this is even more important now that our worlds have become virtual without ample scope for misunderstandings.
So, whether you’re trying to get better at your professional relationships or personal ones, I say, start communicating! How, you ask? Here are a few ways:
(a) Meet in person: When you meet someone, you can communicate much more than just your words- your tone, manner of speaking, your body language plays a huge role in getting a point across.
(b) Pick up the phone and call instead of relying on text messages and emails
(c) Use emojis! They are a heaven-sent creation to make your words look better! They’re often more expressive than plain texts. Of course, using emojis at work is a different story, unless you’re writing to your office bestie.
What are you waiting for? Make that phone call you’ve been waiting on. Remember: communicating is the golden key to success, in both your professional and personal lives.”
Choosing to share her experience about one of the key ideas behind Leora’s dawn -Communication, Naindeep, our another guest writer, has done a commendable job to tell us the significance of it in our lives with some wonderful ways to start practicing it as well. Adding on to her thoughts, all of us tend to assume and calculate most of the things before taking any action on them – be it the doubt that I was not invited to the party because they don’t want me to be a part of the group without even talking to your friends about it. Or, holding on to the conversation with your parents regarding your lives, blaming the generation gap that they would never understand. Just know, until and unless you put it across, nobody would know or listen. Communicate more… because conversations may not provide the exact solutions but can definitely make things easier!
We just need to keep one thing in mind and that is, we all are different and while we are expressing our thoughts or listening to someone else’s, we should respect the difference of opinions, experiences and perceptions. No impositions, accusations or judgements are fruitful. And as Harvey Specter from SUITS says, ‘Loyalty is a two-way street’ and so is an effective communication. Wanna be heard? Start speaking for yourselves and practice listening to others’ stance as well.
Guest Post by:
Naindeep Kaur Kapoor