EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

I heard this exchange from a young couple sitting a table away at my favorite coffee bar at the mall. They appeared to be arguing bout something.

Husband says ‘You don’t get my point’.

Wife retorts ‘You’re not listening to what I’m trying to tell you, this is how it should be done’.

This time the temptation is great to write about marriage and couples and how the twain never meets ever -- Except for some. But we won’t go there because somebody else somewhere is better at it than me.

When a person says ‘you don’t get my point’ – it’s true. And when the other replies that ‘you don’t see what I’m trying to tell you’ --- that too is true. Both are so much the same and yet so much different too. Maybe that would be considered weird or foolish. But fact is, both are simply stating the same simple fact and truth only from two opposing views.

You see the world according to you. I see it according to me. We come from different backgrounds, upbringing, experience, and learning. We separately perceive the world according to how we each understand it in the way we each have learned or been taught to do. You have formed your own perception, insight and opinion on most anything referring to people, theories, events, life, and living. Consequently you judge, censure, evaluate, condemn, appraise from your own individual standpoint.

So do I. I am everything that you are, been there in the travel from nothingness to something, was shaped and molded by my own growing and learning which has formed the character, personality, and attitude you perceive in me now. In our differences we still are basically the same. And that is true.

Yet we need not argue or fight over who is right or wrong, better or worse, smarter or stupid, brilliant or foolish. What is correct is when we can listen to each other in spite of our differing opinions. What is right is when we can look at each other with true understanding and respect. What is beautiful is when we can agree to disagree and be happy with that. And that brings us to a genuine unadulterated authentic communication.

"To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others." -- Tony Robbins