What is the Secret?
What you don’t say can ruin your life! You already learned the hard way that saying the wrong thing in a job interview can destroy your chances of getting hired. Or if you are working saying the wrong thing can wipe out your chance of getting a promotion or a raise. It can also turn people against you and wreck friendships. What you may not have known is that the things you don’t say can have the same affect and perhaps worse. People who would have given you an offer of your lifetime don’t because in their mind you weren’t among the group of people they were considering and that’s because you never said things that would have built a connection between you. Relationship failures, financial loss, unemployment, and divorce are outcomes that follow not making or maintaining connections with people in life.
Survival and success are not a matter of luck they belong to those who understand how and what to communicate. There are self-proclaimed experts out there who would try to convince you that success is all about positive thinking, visualization, personal magnetism, or the law of attraction. Those may help but the real workhorse that powers success is knowledge of how and what to communicate, such as the authentic communication of certain essential elements described in chapter seven. Success may indeed be about who and what you know. First you better be able to do everything involved in your kind of work as good as or better than anyone else. After that it becomes a matter of connecting with the people who can give you a break; to buy from you, offer you an opportunity, give you a promotion with higher pay, or someone who you hope will say yes to your proposal.
Visualizing what you want is a great mental exercise but only a starter towards solving problems. Positive thinking helps a person escape their fears and mask their worries. Platitudes can help keep your spirits up but they never change anything in the real world. Attracting to you what or who you want can be very disappointing, and it is not a practical lifestyle. It works for some people some of the time but not all of the time for everyone. Authentic communication is the only reliable means for achieving goals and solving problems.
The first secret is that most any problem a person ever has in life comes directly from some communication gone wrong! Communication gets fouled up and a troubled situation follows as a result. Money issues, relationship difficulties, production problems, interpersonal failures, family disruptions; nearly any difficulty you can name can appear only because the correct communication did not happen. Troubled situations tend to persist until the truth of how it was caused is found. The beauty of the matter though is that problems solutions are easy to find because the problem is the result of just type of communication: Either something that should have been said never was; or, something that should not have been said is exactly what happened. Owning up to which it is can be difficult.
Seven Simple Steps to Solid Success
Any of these simple methods can immediately increase your wealth and well-being!
1. Get more authentic with people (with everyone);
2. Admire ~ Tell others things about them that you like;
3. Appreciate ~ Express and show gratitude and thanks;
4. Validate ~ Tell which accomplishments you value and why;
5. Get face-to-face to say important things;
6. Listen fully ~ respond non-defensively; and,
7. Persist until you achieve understanding.
Anyone can use these simple methods in their personal and professional life and will find they become wealthier, happier, and healthier! Model those essential elements of what and how to communicate and you demonstrate communication excellence!
All of us members of the human race are dependent upon other people with whom we have direct contact. Whatever you do, wherever you go, no matter what your age, your life involves coping and dealing with others. In that interdependence we are forced to form relationships. Not all relationships are worth working at! You choose which ones are your payoff-relationships; the ones which can sustain or increase your wealth or well-being. A payoff-relationship is one that gives you a reward for creating, working at, or salvaging it. The parent enjoying their child’s learning experience is one type of relationship-payoff. Closing a sale turns a contact into a payoff-relationship for both the salesperson and the buyer; the sale enhances survival a bit for each one of them. Marriage and life-partnering is a payoff-relationship because wives, husbands, partners receive a steady flow of survival enhancements: food, sex, clothing, and other material and spiritual benefits and rewards. Employers get new alliances, productivity and profits from payoff-relationships with employees.
The secret of communication includes the fact that when it is authentic it can achieve miracles. There is a wonderful world waiting for those who decide to approach problems and goals as challenges to be resolved using authentic communication. Most people have no idea that authentic communication can make problems dissolve, hostilities fall away, anger disappear; bring prosperity, harmony, as well as emotional and physical healing. It can turn worry into a lost habit. People need to know it can do those things, yet most still need to learn how to make and keep communication authentic!
Although verbalization may be occurring the fact is that people are not communicating! What passes as communication is mainly a line of socially acceptable blather, prattle, chatter, drivel and natter. In the pursuit of acceptance by other people, and a desire to be popular, adults wear false smiles, utter insincere greetings, respond with pretended interest, and spread favorite distortions. The most gregarious personality is usually false, shallow, and completely self-absorbed. Sweet seemingly kind displays of caring mask hidden resentment, hostility, and a deep belief all people are enemies. Children copy these adult pretenses at communicating surrounding them. How does anyone manage to survive in this world where people do not say what they mean and can hide behind social machinery?
To tap into the total power of communication you have to deliver it in person to be sure the other person really gets the message. Emails, text messages, IM, videos, recorded, written, printed, or video messages all fail to convey vital elements such as intention and other qualities that give communication its power.
No one lives in a cocoon or on an island; we are inter-dependent upon each other. Every connection with another person is a relationship, no matter how brief or temporary. To connect with others we communicate. Some occupations are obviously tied to how well and how much the employee communicates, like sales. Sales people can’t support themselves or their families unless they connect and communicate with an adequate number of prospective buyers. With other occupations it can be harder to see how their communication ability controls their income – but it does!
See someone across the room or street that you wish you could spend the evening with? To connect you must communicate. You don’t need a line or a pitch; you need only to be authentic! That doesn’t always mean you have to use words; a look, nod, touch, hair flip, or other ploy can work to get their attention. Then sooner or later you must speak, and what you say will make or break the connection! Some people have scripted lines to say in an effort to communicate, which rarely works because social-pretense always fails to connect. That includes the pasted on smile, head-turns, glancing away, and all the rest of social machinery that is pre-programmed behavior. You really being there will connect because it is you being authentic!
Image is all about how you look, what you are driving, what you are wearing; your clothes, shoes and the watch on your wrist. Style is optional; those things help only if you communicate with excellence! How and what you communicate today will show up in your tomorrow as prosperity, loss or poverty. Here are the simple methods that allow you to easily cope with all kinds of people in life. Success comes with being absolutely authentic; it attracts people to trust and support you. That and a clear focus on communicating the three essential elements, Admiration, Appreciation, and Validation will get you winning more than you imagined! Success goes to those who don’t rely on social machinery and mental circuits that automatically greet, respond and converse like a pricey computer game!
o Knowing how and what to communicate is what makes connection happen. A relationship can get as stale as a month old loaf of bread and when that happens people stop communicating; the connection drops, and soon they are no longer enjoying each other the way they used to do. It can take imagination to keep the communication going; try sorting out what questions you can ask to learn more about the other person. My wife and I were married almost twenty-three years but I still hadn’t learned everything there was to know about her, or to tell her everything about me. Be curious about where a person has been, what they did, what life was like for them back then; it’s virtually impossible to run out of things to talk about. As they describe parts of their life you hadn’t heard yet, you discover new things and new reasons to enjoy them.
Communication is fun! Sometimes it is silly. People get very good at the games of making something out of nothing or making nothing out of something. When he says, “You are not going to wear that rag are you?” he is making nothing out of something. When she says, “You should always know how much we owe the electric company!” she is making something out of nothing.
All activity begins with an idea, but where do ideas come from? They come from an area beyond the heavens, beyond the physical universe, that place which consists of absolutely nothing. Communication is not a physical universe element; it belongs to the realm of that which created all things. Concert pianist Daniel Barenboim, the legendary music icon, refers to it in his master class as the place artists must go to be great. Even equipment operators demonstrate it by how smoothly they control a machine.
Men and women like to communicate but prefer exchanging ideas about different interests and things. Women are all about color, style, and odor. Men are all about shape, sound, and sensation. A woman chooses her wardrobe, interior décor, and table setting mainly by color and style. She is entranced by perfume, good smelling lotion or powder, and would use any product on her body that smells good. She is repulsed and repelled by bad smelling restaurants, houses, stinky people, scuffed-up shoes, torn clothing, and mangled or paint-bare cars.
Men are all about shapes, sounds and sensations. A man loves a car because of its design (shape), is attracted to a woman because of her looks (shape), and chooses or likes a house because of its layout (shape). Men enjoy sounds: engines, power tools, and birds and other animals in the woods or wilderness. Men favor certain musicians because of their signature sounds. Any man can be turned into a fool instantly by certain sensations given or received: smell, taste, or touch. Often men make fools out of themselves by studying the shape of physical anatomy passing by them. A couple, standing next to each other gazing at the scenery will agree they love the view. She will comment on the brilliant colors of the autumn leaves. He will be thinking how the distant mountains look like a woman’s breasts. I love taking lunch at a table under the sky on a dock or pier, next to the water, with the waterfront noises and all the while soaking up warmth from the sunshine. The one thing both sexes seem to share is an appreciation for good food cooked expertly. Perhaps there are other things they share as well?
When is a relationship over? No relationship ends on its own, you are the source of its life; it’s over the instant you stop creating it. Relationships are a form of game: the players have the choice of continuing or deciding to do something else. The moment one’s attention no longer includes the other person, the relationship is either suspended or ended! Putting a relationship on hold in order to do other things is a necessity; however, perpetually doing other things signals the end of the relationship. Relationships require that each person manufacture the time to continue them.
Communication is the only solvent for relationship problems; personal, marital, family, work, civic, or between nations. Anyone willing to exchange communication with good intent, sufficient energy, and adequate persistence can arrive at agreements that settle any dispute, resolve any conflict, and restore the respect between people. Things may not always work out just because you communicate; there is no chance they will if you don’t!
Advice from a counselor cannot save a marriage; truthful communications between tolerant, accepting, forgiving, marriage partners can save a marriage, however, it takes a trained counselor to know which communications the couple needs to exchange, and to coach them to do that properly. Pre-marital counseling can solve serious issues before they become extreme relationship problems.
The basic reason half of all new businesses fail within five years is because they do not put enough emphasis on what and how they communicate to and with their public. Often they have a product or service the public does not need or want at the price the business must charge. Other young businesses don’t make the money they need because they are not reaching the segment of the public who will buy their product or service or aren’t putting out the correct message. There is a buyer for everything, assuming what is being sold has fundamental quality and value. A whistle that looks like a whistle but doesn’t work is never going to be bought by anyone. Neither will a whistle that works but makes an annoying sound.
Make communication your weapon-of-choice; it’s the best weapon you can ever have, offensively or defensively! Communication is under-appreciated, under-utilized, under-applied, and its power is misunderstood! Communication is under-exploited as a means for dissolving problems, penetrating difficulties, and mastering the attainment of worthwhile goals.
Tony and Judy were counseling clients who lived in Loudenville, New York, an affluent suburb of Albany. They asked me to give some time to their teenage son who was struggling with his academic classes in grade school and had been doing so poorly they were afraid he was going to fail year after year. The young man walked around with his face dragging as low as his grades. After just a half dozen short sessions with their son he was suddenly on top of his studies and his whole attitude was better, and it continued at that level. The power of communication is unbelievable! I met with him and did no more than show sincere interest in the subjects he was studying. I got him to explain in detail what the class was doing in each subject at that time. I gave him Admiration on things he deserved it for, and I validated the intelligence and resourcefulness he displayed while talking with me. My expressions of Appreciation for the efforts he was really making lifted his spirits and he began solving problems that previously had baffled him! That’s how authentic communication works. To help someone only requires that you really have an interest in the person, be willing to do what you can to help them, and then show them sincere and genuine Appreciation, Admiration, and Validation. These are covered in detail in chapters seven through ten. It can take more than one discussion, but often that simple action will prove enough to turn a person from despair to hope, or replace thoughts of suicide with feelings of value. Advice, opinions, or threats are not therapy, nor is psychotropic drugs. Make the person cognizant of their strengths using the three vital relationship elements (Appreciation, Admiration and Validation). As described later in this book, those create magical changes, and can revitalize a person, marriage, company, or nation.
Feel like life owes you a break? The way to get it to give you one is to communicate! Communication is the secret that exists unseen in plain sight. Luck comes to those who communicate. Anyone who will communicate can get themselves out of poverty. Communication makes life beautiful! The person with the better life has better communication skills. Your willingness and ability to communicate is the sole, direct, and determining step, to personal success in relationships and lasting prosperity. Your future will be the result of how well you communicate. No other human skill or ability even comes close to accomplishing the fantastic things that communication does. Skilled communication will resolve problems. Solving problems with communication eliminates stress and creates prosperity, peace of mind and better health. Communication helps healing and is the best means for eliminating or preventing stress and creating harmony. The truth of the amazing power of communication seems unknown, a secret.
How many divorces would never have happened if one or both people had communicated better? How many career advancements will never happen because the employer decided the person lacks communication skills? How many children would not flunk a grade or drop out of school, if their teacher’s could communicate better? How many times have nations gone to war because one or both leaders lacked the ability to communicate well enough? Good leaders are good communicators. Becoming a good communicator will make the person a good leader.
The secret of communication is that disasters happen when the people involved are unaware of how and what to communicate. Persistence can replace skill, preventing even the worst outcome. Even an unskilled communicator will succeed if he or she communicates long enough and thoroughly enough.
Marriage is a partnership; it requires collaboration which in any instance can be difficult. Where does one find training or classes in communication for marriage? Who knows how to do it well enough to teach it successfully?
One of the secrets of communication is that success in any area of life comes with being a good communicator. Communication is the prime agent of durable change. It is the basis of all survival, social and commercial. It is how we exchange previously unknown information or truth. The common belief that you are communicating when you are chatting with friends, making conversation at parties, or getting on-going counseling, is misleading. The society of mankind needs to realize and respect the fact that communication is a precise comprehensive tool for making a successful life. Kids leave home knowing more about electronics than how or what to communicate. That’s not right! Anyone can prevent ruin and create a lasting success in their career, marriage, or family when they know how and what to communicate, even if they use that knowledge amateurishly.
There are communication techniques that help patients receive the full benefit of antibiotic medications; techniques for preventing shock, and others that can shorten recovery times from broken bones. The origin of communication is “thought” which is not a physical universe phenomenon; nor is it a measurable element or property. The entire world depends upon communication to drive its economies and its political, religious, and educational systems. Without communication there would be no society. How strange that as a society we spend so little time or money on researching and teaching the subject that we are so terribly dependent upon!
Children get the wrong idea about what adulthood is all about when grownups ask what they want to be when they grow up. Actors are the only ones who can earn a living by “being”. The majority of people in the world offer their skills to an employer in exchange for a paycheck. Survival comes by getting things done that an employer or customer needs doing. Every job has an end-result; a product which is valuable. Most things we do fit into a larger picture to form a final product, but every sub-product is complete within itself. Individuals survive by using certain skills to achieve a job-specific result, a product or sub-product. One of the most helpful things to do with a child is to ask them, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Success is a matter of getting a very clear idea of what the employer wants produced, the result they expect to get, and then doing exactly that as swiftly as possible. Success comes from doing; when you are doing something, you are engaged communicating.
Communication is as essential to living as breathing. Most people can go without air for only three minutes, or without water for up to a few days, and most of us can go for up to a few weeks or longer without food. How long can you be comfortable going without communication? Studies show that extended periods of isolation from human contact produces delirium, delusions, and eventually results in insanity. Communication is not something we do for the fun of it. It is not a simple amusement we pursue like some hobby or do for recreation on a Sunday afternoon. Authentic communication is how we survive! But that is no secret.
The lack of open communication may cause extinction of the human species. The absence of open communication between people and nations is the greatest threat we face as a species. Terrorist acts, biological warfare and nuclear holocaust are possible only when there is a lack of communication. The information not passed, the data not sent, the false statements and colored facts are ruining our lives. How many of the world’s problems are the result of no communication, insufficient communication, or communication gone wrong? Global warming, terrorist attacks, the threat of economic collapse, rape of the rain forests, genocide, and armed schoolyard bullies are failures to communicate. Many undesirable, unwanted, problem situations exist today because the people involved have decided they did all they can when in fact if they had been aware and willing to use communication more none of that strife would be in their life. Communication is the technology that lets anyone overcome barriers and accomplish goals. Communication can stop things from getting worse and bring hope for a better life.
The personal productivity of a person has a huge influence on his or her health and wealth. Your annual earnings are your FGP (Fiscal Gross Product). My father believed he should put money aside in an “emergency” fund and sure enough our family always had emergencies. Your solvency depends on keeping monthly expenses well below income to set aside for gifting, holidays and retirement. During our marriage, my wife and I invested in a walnut orchard instead of an IRA or other retirement fund, and we also set aside money in savings for holidays. We used the savings to buy gifts and take vacations. Our favorite go-to-relax spot became Marina Cay in the British Virgin Islands and the Pussers stores on Tortola. We loved it much more than Hawaii for climate, beauty, safety, solitude and good food.
The economy rules the world and history shows those who are better communicators rule the economy. Their reward is they get to enjoy the best of life. The ability to communicate is number one of all survival skills! We live in a world that has not made it a priority to teach or preach communication skills or their vital role in living life. The ability to communicate well requires a mastery of several separate skills, well beyond reading, writing, and vocabulary. Individual communication ability starts with vocabulary, but a person can be intelligent, educated, and bright and have underdeveloped communication skills. To them life and living becomes an overwhelming mystery. Successful communication requires an almost guerilla-like capability to cope with a wide variety of personalities and their spectrum of human emotions arising in a diverse number of situations. The ability to communicate goes further and deeper than basic or even super literacy. Children and adults who can read and write are able to lift themselves out of poverty. Developing an expanded vocabulary and grasp of grammar elevates you to yet another level. But every individual also deserves to learn how to use communication to make their life all it can become. To whatever degree a person is unaware of how to use communication that person will have unnecessary suffering.
Part of the secret of communication is that the potential effects of communication are not fully understood. Its power is not exploited widely, and is under-appreciated by those who make the world turn: the entrepreneurs, parents, teachers, and clergy.
o When you communicate authentically good things happen! Although we cannot always see the effects of our words and gestures or what is going on in people’s minds, how and what you communicate makes a difference in what they think and feel. When you focus past the eyeballs of your listeners and impinge upon the very soul of the people you have contact with there is no doubt you are making a difference in people’s lives!
Without meeting and interviewing you I cannot say specifically which communications are the ones you need to be do to get your life, finances, or health into a better condition. I do know that if you intend to change things for the better and leave unwanted conditions behind, pursuing communication excellence can do that for you. I guarantee that no matter how bad a circumstance you find yourself in that by applying the laws of communication in your life things will get better rather quickly.
Your communication skill is what has allowed you to survive up to this moment. Regardless of your motives, you have communicated and were rewarded with survival. Whatever you do regularly to win the wherewithal that gives you food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, you are using mainly communication. Whether you operate machinery, surgical tools or library books, dance or sing for a living, that activity is communication. The better you do it, the better your survival. Improving your life means communicating authentically to get there. Getting ahead from there means you continue with more authentic communication. Getting qualified to do a specific job takes communication. Getting hired to demonstrate your ability takes communication. Doing what you do becomes how you earn a living; that too is communication. Learning what you can do to increase your earnings will take more communication. Doing what it takes to be higher paid means communicating. For as long as we live we need to communicate; we live only as well as we can communicate authentically with those who are in our life.
Communication is Job #1 for each of us which makes it the furthest thing there is from a hobby. That does not mean it isn’t fun! Communication is how Man frees himself from any form of slavery. Authentic communication is the secret cure to the socio-economic problems of Planet Earth. Our survival as individuals and as the humankind species relies on our using our skill to communicate in a positive manner; to direct and affect the outcome of world events. The reason you need to read rest of this book has nothing to do with who I am or how old I am. You need to read the rest of this book because the more you understand about how and what to communicate the better your life will be.