All We Have To Do Is Keep On Talking
People have far more in common than we might believe. We all have the same basic physical and emotional needs. Deep down, we all have the same requirements for security, love and meaning. We are fundamentally social animals. Indeed parts of our brains called ‘mirror neurons’ only fire when in connection with others. Human beings naturally live in families and seek wider community groupings through friends and other social networks. This need for connection to other people is vital, that the lack of it is a primary cause of mental illness. Often, due to the pressures of economics, people tend to place undue emphasis on work as a critical way of obtaining their need for community (and indeed many other needs too). This can be a dangerous strategy for, as we know, getting paid work can often be a precarious activity in the modern world. When work goes, for many, that can be the end of their community life. They can quickly start to become depressed and listless. Many people retiring are looking forward to the freedom and rest they believe retirement brings and often find isolated. A far more self-determining attitude to building community is then desirable. With such an attitude, we can ensure our need for community is spread over many areas, helping feed our hearts and minds and stabilising our lives in the inevitable ups and downs of life. A primary skill in ensuring our community needs are met is our ability to communicate well with other people. Confident and effective communication will change our whole life, opening up unique new previously unseen opportunities for friendship, career and self-development.
The “dance of communication” that occurs when two people meet is part of our genetic inheritance. Often we are oblivious to the myriad of non-verbal and verbal signals that, even in a few moments, take place that facilitate this communication. Although we all have a very similar potential to communicate well, we do not all have similar experience and know-how in using this genetic inheritance to its best effect. It is like having a sophisticated musical instrument that can play Beethoven and yet only using it to play a simple nursery rhyme. It does not take more than one or two clumsy experiences or casual hurtful comments or glances from others to quickly put us off and push us back into our protective shell. Such remarks from other’s may not even be out of compassion but instead indicate their selfish interest to put other’s down in an insecure or aggressive attempt at self-aggrandisement and oneupmanship. Nevertheless, whatever the motive, our ego’s are easily damaged, and even a few troubling experiences can lead to an entire lifetime of hiding in the shadows.
Thankfully, however, due to the enormous inherent capability of our genetic communication resources, it is a relatively straightforward matter to identify and practise the component skills that make up effective communication. We can soon gain more positive experiences that increase our self-confidence and build a positive outwards movement in our lives. Even a few months of concerted effort to practise and polish our non-verbal, verbal and aural skills can easily overturn the habits of a lifetime and enable us to quickly build rapport and communicate with a much wider variety of people. Even where some of us are inherently shy (a perfectly natural and acceptable place to be), we can manage this shyness and open ourselves up comfortably, much more than we may have realised. Just because we are extroverts (which is also a perfectly natural and acceptable place to be) does not make us great communicators automatically (which is a two-way process). So all types of people can benefit enormously from allowing themselves to practise these skills and in so doing, more than any laws or rules, we can make the world a better place to live for everyone. As the famous scientist Stephen Hawking said, to create peace, all we have to do is “keep on talking”.
