The cost of being right

Isn’t true that we always want to be “right” about everything?  I talked at length on the last post about the power fear has over us.  Well, the second part of the fear and what it furthers in our lives is our obsession with being right.  This mostly comes into our lives through our relationships, personally and professionally. You see we cannot turn off our minds. We have these things in her mind called automatic thoughts, which I will go into greater detail in another post but they're always there. Right when you wake up in the morning it starts, unfortunately that little voice is not typically telling you things like, “it's going to be a great day” or “you can accomplish anything you want today”. 

Fear

Why are we so afraid of things in our lives?  I don’t mean spiders or the dark, I mean fear of success, failure, looking bad in front of others, etc.  How many times have you said this to yourself, I can’t say anything, what will they think of me?  Or, they will think I am a joke. I know what you’re thinking right now, I’m not afraid of anything, I can accomplish anything I set my mind to, really?  Then why aren’t you dating a supermodel and flying around in your private jet?  Isn’t wealth and financial independence everyone's goal? I'm kind of making a joke about the supermodel girlfriend and the private jet, because happiness does not revolve around those kind of material things, but I think you get my point. The bottom line is a lot of us are not where we want to be in life and there is a gap or a huge canyon in between where we are and where we would like to be. The question still remains of how do we bridge that gap, how do we cross that Canyon? I think the main component that prevents us from getting where we want to be, true financial independence and deeply connected relationships, is fear.

Mirroring and new info

Let's spend a little time talking about mirroring/reflecting to continue our conversation about active listening skills. This is a fairly simple concept in a conversation and one that is not used too terribly often. It is very effective in demonstrating understanding of what they're saying and encouraging them to keep talking. It's a brief fall along after they finish a sentence, by repeating the last few words. It also helps you get oriented to what they are saying and to obtain agreement and confirmation. The best way to understand this is to give you an example. Let's say you're talking with a friend about problems they are having with a spouse it might sound something like this, “she doesn't pay any attention to me anymore and it's really starting to make me angry”. 

New article

Check out my article for richerlife.com

http://www.richerlife.com/2011/11/life-or-death-communication-skills/

Great leaders make tough choices

"Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, which means that some people will get angry at your actions and decisions. It's inevitable if you're honorable. Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity: You'll avoid the tough decisions, you'll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted, and you'll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance because some people might get upset. Ironically, by procrastinating on the difficult choices, by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone equally "nicely" regardless of their contributions, you'll simply ensure that the only people you'll wind up angering are the most creative and productive people in the organization". 

Colin Powell

The wall in your head

I have done a lot of recent reading, research and discussions about personal motivation and accomplishing your goals. For a long time I felt that I was not able to accomplish a lot of things that I wanted to. There always seemed to be something either preventing me or causing me not to take action. It was hard to explain, but at the same time very frustrating. I wasn't really aware that something was preventing me, but I just felt that other people had all the luck and I was never given the opportunities to show my true talents. Then something changed. I don't know what it was and I don't know how it happened. That change has led me to dedicating my time to write this blog, go back to school for Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology and set new goals of writing a book around my concepts of life tactics. Looking back and being much more aware of life, we seem to have a wall that we create for ourselves in our mind that prevents us from accomplishing these goals.

Emotional Labeling

The next major component of the active listening process is emotional labeling.  Let’s focus on two things, what is it and also why do we do it. Emotional labeling is simply a statement of the emotions heard during a conversation. The first step to doing it effectively is listening for those underlying emotions in what a person is saying. The bottom line is people love to have others understand how they feel. If possible, I want you to never let a feeling go by in a conversation without labeling it. It really conveys that you are listening to what the person is saying and understand how they were feeling. Demonstrating that you understand how a person feels will have a significant impact during the rapport-building phase of conversation and ultimately determine how significant of a connection you can create with this person. People are rarely in a conversation where their emotions or feelings are identified. If it has happened to you, it feels great.  It is the exactly why we see therapist to help with our challenges in life, they listen to us.