Communication & Mutual Problem Solving

This was a really interesting and important week for me. This week we talked about communication and problem solving. This is something my family really struggles with. We either tip toe around each other or are way to blunt and rude. Then there is my Dad who freaks out if you don’t do exactly what he wants when he wants you to do it. So when 7am came around on Tuesday morning I really didn’t not want to go to class. I am getting to the point in the semester where doing even the simplest tasks takes so much energy so as I laid in bed deciding whether or not I should get up and go to class. I looked up the topic for the week and decided that this was a week I could not afford to miss. Communication is vital. It's everything. It’s how people perceive us and it’s how we interact with everyone around us. Whether or not the way you communicate is verbal or non verbal you are communicating something to everyone around you all the time. When you are walking to class with your air pods in you are communicating to people around you that you don’t want to be talked to. You didn’t have to say anything because your non verbal queues did that all on their own. Communication is 30% tone, 14% words, and 51% nonverbal. That is crazy! More than half of what we communicate to people we don’t even say with our mouths. Also the other thing that is interesting with that is our tone and the way we are saying things to these people we talk to. They are only half as much paying attention to what you are saying compared to the tone you are saying it with. A huge example of this is being sarcastic. I know we all do it but it is so hurtful to the people we are saying it to. We may say that we are just joking but behind every joke there is a little bit of truth so I hope that maybe as you read this today you will be more aware of what you are saying to others and what tone you are using. One example I loved that my professor used in class was a story about how his son shot his other younger son in the eye with a toy bow and arrow. This happened back when there were no cell phones so he got a page on his pager to find a payphone and call the house phone and when he did his older son answers and he told him what had happened and that his mom had taken his brother to the hospital. In that moment my professor was so angry. He wanted to yell and scream and lose it on his son for hurting his 3 year old little brother but in that moment he stopped and he knew that this could be a defining moment in this relationship with his son. I think he also realized that yelling and screaming was not going to fix his son’s eye or help the situation at all. Instead he was calm and told him he loved him and how everything was going to be okay. Now when he told this story I thought this was incredible but I didn’t think it was incredible that he was kind to his son instead of yelling and making things worse I thought it was incredible because he chose to be kind. It is so hard in a moment of rage or anger to stop and think “oh wait how is this going to affect me and my son’s relationship” this is the part that is going to take practice and time to learn and figure out but I promise that as you are more aware of what you are saying and how you are reacting you family life and work life and social life are going to be 100 times better and people will be able to communicate with you better.