Life, is. I should just leave the whole chapter as that but that would be somehow considered lazy or lacking elaboration. Anyway, in this chapter, I wanted to look at how our communication influences others. In modern day, a great deal of communication requirement is emphasised on what one says. If one has sweet mouth, they are someone that can articulate or has great capability to influence verbally. Naturally, we consider them great communicators. and presume they should take full responsibility for a given interaction. So, we somehow feel communication is the responsibility of the person doing the delivery. I am finding this does not show the whole picture. What we say and do rely on a great deal on the intake capability of the person listening. A person with what I consider having salty ears, would always change the sweetest thing said into something salty. In other words, their listening skills manipulates what is said. They hear what they want to hear, rather than what was articulated. They will find way to turn the sweetest thing said, as something hurtful or an attack directed at them.

 

So, what do we do in such condition?                Answer: Absolutely nothing. Someone reading this would think that is a heartless approach. It is the responsibility of everyone to calibrate their inner working both receiver and deliverer. If the words of a person you are communicating with is a dagger to you. Go back and calibrate the sensitivity level of your tuning to that individual. So, what I mean is through each interaction you have, find the average level of your inner tuning emotionally. Set your emotional sensitivity to the midpoint, if you find the individual you communicate with has volatile levels of delivery that you find difficult to tolerate. Again, to elaborate, volatile delivery meaning, each communication seems to go through different spectrum of emotion when delivered. You can be having a calm discussion and next minute the communication shifts profoundly on your emotional scale. You may be asking, is this point only to assist the person doing the talking or communicating? No, it is both to the listener and the person delivering. The main point on this is if you find your communication with someone has high range of volatility. Where communication starts of pleasant and leads to unpleasant within a brief period and you cannot determine what caused such adverse reaction, then we need to calibrate. If an interaction is leaving you feeling like you did something wrong when your delivery was not in such a way. It is time to reflect on what you communicated and find if you said something to cause such overly sensitive reaction.

 

I want to finish by stating that me mentioning this point is in no way to say you should be unkind and pay no attention to what you say to others. This chapter was to assist with situation where you are feeling guilt or shameful for communicating an information. Where upon reflection you found the adverse reaction received does not seem to warrant anything close to the delivered words. These cases do require us to readjust the delivery of our points. Now, if future communication ends up being too diluted due to adjustment of sensitivity. Then such subject should be avoided, or you may have to reserve your interaction in that context. I covered more into that area in a previous chapter on how to manage your emotion and interaction. If you were the person on the other side receiving the information, you also need to check if you appropriately reacted to the situation. If you feel you did, then try to communicate to the person who is delivering why you feel so sensitive to the point raised.

 

One thing with emotion is it is like a wave. Its ripple may have started so far away but the crashing wave only hits a certain point. So, you may be at those specific times feeling the crashing wave from emotional build up from other smaller waves of interaction. Sometimes they happen but if you are constantly the crashing point you need to calibrate yourself and ask if you want to carry the burden of impact. If not, then it is important we communicate that to the person delivering. Hopefully, this allows them to disperse their emotion accordingly throughout their other interactions or find an outlet that allows them to lighten the effect through other sources.