Mind your langauge

Nearly everyone who’s been on even the most basic communication course will tell you, if asked, that words only account for 7% in any communication (too see what the other elements are and how they interrelate, click here)

And possibly because of that, we often don’t pay enough attention to words and their impact.

I was talking with a colleague about this recently and remarked how communication skills trainers used to (maybe some still do?) advocate paraphrasing what someone had said so that they’d know that you’d been paying attention and understood. More recently, and particularly those of us schooled in NLP and/or Clean Language, we have moved away from this and use people’s own words back to them. To illustrate, I asked her to imagine I’d just told her I was cross about something and that the conversation that followed had gone thus:

Helen: I’m really cross about that

Colleague: so, you’re feeling angry about that

Helen: no, I’m cross about it

Colleague: so, what is it that’s making you so angry?

Helen: I’m not angry, I’m cross

Colleague: so you’re quite upset about this

Helen (getting angry and upset) too right I am now!

And then to compare it with this approach

Helen: I’m really cross about that

Colleague: Tell me a bit more about what it’s like being really cross about that

The first closes the conversation down because it( erroneously in my case) equates crossness with anger and upset. It assumes that we share the same understanding of the emotion. The second, opens up new possibilities and can help deepen understanding by exploring further and seeking clarification without muddying the waters by substituting any potentially value laden nouns or adjectives.

Another case of less being more.

Being me

Being me, I had- as I usually do – a sense of what I wanted my next blog article to be about and I went online to look for a pithy quote or two to help illustrate the point(s) I wanted to make. And this quote – which wasn't about what I had consciously set out to write about – just leapt out at me.

It’s by Virginia Satir who, as some of you will know, is one of the people Grinder and Bandler modelled when they developed NLP.

‘nuff said!

I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it - I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By doing so I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects of myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know – but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.

Appreciating what’s been there all along

On holiday last month I visited a number of gardens and took, as I always do at this time of year, great delight in the roses and herbaceous borders. The scent of roses and lavender, in particular, always remind me of happy childhood summers with my grandmother.

This year, however, as well as my usual 'must sees’ while visiting gardens, I’ve also taken great interest and delight in visiting kitchen/vegetable gardens – pleased with how much I can now recognise just from the leaves, and noticing different planting options and how, as well as being productive, several kitchen gardens have also been designed to make them visually appealing.

I’m sure these gardens have had kitchen gardens for as long as I’ve been visiting them – I’ve just not noticed them before. Now (and regular readers and those of you who’ve kept up with my various ‘veg talk’ entries will readily understand why) I think they’re every bit as lovely as the roses and borders.

So, what lovely things have been there for you all along that you’ve not been seeing? And how much richer are you now that you do?

One does not see anything until one sees its beauty
~ Oscar Wilde