If there is one single thing that gets in the way of most of us human beings enjoying our life it’s the fact that most of us suck at communicating. Most of us really suck at sharing what we think, what we feel, what we need and what we want. And the only thing we suck at more than communicating is being interested in hearing from another person what they’re thinking, feeling, and needing.
Welcome to the experience of humanity.
On the other hand, one of my favorite mammals of all time, the orca or killer whale, are awesome at communicating with each other. Here is a family, also known as a pod, that isn’t dysfunctional in any way. They work together, they communicate together, they survive together.
Why is it we human beings suck at communicating? I think it’s because we’ve learned, somewhere along the path of our life, that most people aren’t interested in what we are thinking or feeling or needing or wanting. In fact most people are only interested in what they’re thinking, feeling, needing or wanting.
And this is all so natural to us human beings.
We are after all a very selfish creature. Yet, because of our ability to rationalize we can learn skills, such as communication, in order to improve the satisfaction we get when interacting with others while increasing the likelihood will actually get what we want from the relationship and out of life.
So then I guess that’s the 30 million dollar question, do we improve communication skills so that we can improve the quality of our life? And noticed the focus there. The focus is on me or you learning to improve communication skills for the purpose of improving the dynamics in our relationship for the purpose of one and only one thing: meeting our own needs and driving satisfaction in our life.
More on this topic later. Or if you have a comment or thought please leave one at the end of this post.
The Bob Zima Blog 