The Power of Communication

So you want to go to law school?

You better be a good communicator. After all, no one wants an attorney that is a communication disaster. The judge, the jury, the outcome of your case depends not just on the knowledge (hopefully correct) that the attorney has, but almost entirely depends on your counsel’s skill to get your point across.

Think that’s easy?

It’s not.

It takes a lot of practice, a lot of experience, a lot of life, work, classes, time, diligence, self-reflection, the ability to remain teachable, and the discipline involved in mastering those skills necessary to present your ideas to another human being clearly (hopefully, honestly too — but that’s a whole other blog post).

No one really wants a doctor, or therapist or a grocery store clerk who can’t get their point across without offending the patient, customer or human being in general.

Looking for a soulmate? Want to get married? Have kids?

Have you thought about your communication skills? Most marriages and relationships end without ever having had a chance at good, honest open communication. By the time people are totally honest about their feelings, they are in front of lawyers and judges, operating in fear mode.  The same two people who got married and promised each other holy matrimony through better and through worse become the losers of the white wedding dress and time wasted due to a lack of communciation.

My years in criminal law showed me things far worse than just divorce proceedings: crimes resulting from communication disasters. Countries go to needless wars over communication problems. People waste countless hours of their irreplaceable  gift of life they will never get back in angry silence, or yelling at each other. Somewhere, underlying all of it, is a communication disaster: a non-meeting of the minds with poisoned ego. To rid ourselves of toxic mindsets takes conscious action.

Good communication must be developed with the ego in check in order for us to evolve personally, and as a planet of humans.

Let’s start with ourselves. Have you ever recorded your voice when talking with someone and played it back to yourself? You should try this with a friend, spouse, child or co- worker. In fact, trying it with different people will help reveal to your own self what needs work. You would be surprised what you can hear and “get” from the sound of your own voice.

So what can you do to become an excellent communicator?

The very first step is learning how to listen. 

So many people do not take the time to clearly listen to what the other party is saying. The saying that “God gave you two ears and one mouth” is not be dismissed without prejudice.

How many years and tears can you save right now by enrolling in a communication course and bettering yourself for YOU?  There is no better time than NOW to get to work. The Landmark Forum is a great place to start. They offer courses all around the planet. In addition to being an attorney and former CEO,  (they don’t teach you communication skills in law school FYI), I am a Landmark graduate and highly recommend this rudimentary course that should be a necessary step in every person’s career, whether personal or business.

So you are working on yourself. Good for you. But there are people around you that are not. Boo for them. But all hope is not lost. Not unless we are alive and breathing. Every day is a new chance to begin to be better, do better. The power of communication is infinite and create possibilities unimagined. Communication is the key to our survival and evolution.

Most of the time the person with the communication problem is not aware of the problem at all.  So you want to tell someone else that they are a communication disaster? Do it. Just be nice about it. And guess what? You don’t get to tell that person what is not working for you until you get better at communicating yourself and guess what? The other person will notice. And then you can tell them what you did that worked for you. 🙂

Life is about making ourselves a better person every day. Every hour. Every minute. Strive to be better, greater than the last day, last hour, last minute.

Imagine a world where everyone is doing that!

❤

*Special thanks to my dear friend Turtle for inspiration for this post.

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