Stop Talking to The Wall

By Brian J. Stephens, on 22-01-2008 18:39

Stardate 01152008

Communication Rules Part 1 - Why are they important and some of the basics.

People communicate for one basic purpose. That is to transfer information to another. The reasons that they need to transfer this information are too numerous to list in entirety. Some include: letting others know about something that happened, perhaps a story. Communication occurs for instruction or training. We communicate constantly throughout or waking lives. Some even communicate to themselves or a most people say. ‘talk to themselves’.

So what is the difference between communicating and talking. For the later, talking is simply one of many methods in which to communicate. Communication is the transference of information from one source to another and again talking is a way to do that. Other methods of communicating include a look, a gesture, a smile, a frown, your stance. All of these also are sending information to the recipient.

Now that we have established that there are multiple reasons to communicate and there are many methods in which to do so let’s go microscopic in the world of information transfer and focus on effective ways of communicating in a relationship.

So why do we need rules for communication as I have suggested? It comes down to two basic issues. ISSUE 1: In general people struggle with getting across what they intend to. ISSUE 2: The recipient does not interpret the information properly. This may sound simple enough but there is a whole lot of cause for issue one and two. Instead of going onto detail at this point I feel it would be more enlightening to list some basic rules of communicating in a relationship and then go into more detail.

I guess I still have not clarified why communication rules are important. As your reading this you may be following me or you may not. The information is a bit jumpy and may or may not be hard to follow depending on your information intake preference. The key here is that your intake preference and your partner’s intake preference may not be the same. So I guess we have ISSUE 3: Intake Preference – or basically the way that you absorb information the best. If you are not following me at this point then I guess it is a problem with your ‘Intake Preference’ and you are on you own or could it be that my delivery isn’t meeting your needs. Thus ISSUE 4: Delivery – how you convey information is as important as the information you convey.

Now we have four basic issues. We started with two and in a paragraph we have four. This communication seems to be complicated. It is! Some people have trouble with ‘rules’ therefore from this point on they will be called ‘Guidelines’. The reason to have guidelines is not to constrain or restrict communication but to insure that most effective methods of communicating are available to us. You can talk to a wall until you are blue in the face. If it does not respond it is really just a waste of your time. Sometimes when you talk to your partner It Is Like Talking To A Wall. Is it his fault or yours? You will never know until you start communicating in a manner that meets BOTH of your needs otherwise you might as well be talking to a wall. You will get the same outcome. Nothing!