Art of communication – An eye opener!

Effective communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity and communication is strong only when we listen to understand and not merely to respond or in some cases react.
Communication has always been a big barrier in my life and the challenge was/is with communicating my true feelings and emotions as it is to the other party. There was such overbearing fear on the reaction and the repercussions of expressing my opinion which led to suppression of my emotions or rebelling in an insane manner to get my voice heard both of which was were not productive approach leading to broken relationships.
Shift in perspective and life alerting change came about when I had to read a book called “I am Ok, you are ok” by Thomas A Harris and present back the findings to my batch mates.
I often wondered why school curriculums don’t include such profound topics which are essential life skills and are often left to broken ways passed on by elders and social norms in understanding some of the basic concepts of human interactions.
This book was life changing for me and light bulb moments to know the various positions we take during a conversation – The Parent, Child and Adult state of mind and the approach taken to communicate during each of the state of mind was fascinating and intriguing.
As someone with huge communication barrier knowing and understanding the concepts from the book unleashed a whole array of emotions and realization of where I was going wrong in my approach and the various state of mind, I was operating from in each of my relationships.
In depth explanation of various state of mind and how we wrap ourselves with one fundamental state of mind often due to our childhood influence helped me untangle some of the challenges I was facing in expressing myself which were colored due to the strong influences I have had in my formative years of growing up.
With the new found awareness I was able to examine each of my interactions and catch myself when I was not in the adult state of mind and bring myself back to an equanimity or request for a break to gather myself and reenter the conversation in a composed and adult state of mind leading to much better ways of dealing with conflicts and expressing my opinions with clarity, awareness and respect.
This awareness changed how I communicate with my spouse, my children and everyone around me and I was also able to identify the state of mind with which the other person was engaging and detach myself from the emotions and articulate my response accordingly.
Communication is a powerful tool and if used well we can break barriers, form deep meaningful relationships, nurture unbreakable bound with our loved ones and create a beautiful space for people to be just themselves without any judgements or resentment and once we are able to create this space to people around us we create a safe space for them to trust us, to open up , to be themselves leading to blooming of their own authentic self.
At the end of the day everyone wants to be seen and heard and if we are able to provide this divine gift then we can impact people in the most positive and profound manner possible.
This was truly game changer for me, and I recommend anyone struggling to communicate to read this book and be aware of our own behaviour and pattern that can be changed to make our communication effective and impactful thus changing the way we influence and form meaningful relationships.