Wednesday, February 16, 2011

How to improve your communication skills

Overcome hesitation by asking for "Ungettable" things at shops

If you are very sensitive or just a painful perfectionist, This exercise will set you free. Because of my huge ego, I had a "need to be right all the time" syndrome. Once I started this exercise, it was so revealing and relaxing. All you have to do is approach random people and ask for an opinion or visit shops and ask for things they wont have.

 Once I was feeling really stuck while solving a problem and wanted to  break away from the feeling. This is what I did to feel unstuck. I went to a Food Joint and asked for a Haircut! My heart was beating fast and I was sweating.
The waiter was confused so I asked again " Can I get a haircut?"
He said "Sorry we don't do that here".
 I said "ok. Thank you" and ran away. It was fun.

Now many of my colleagues and friends do it when they find themselves stuck in a situation. I don't know why it works. But I can tell you, it does wonders in improving your communication skills.


Learn a New Language.

Language is one of the greatest gifts to humans and probably all our progress is due to the fact we can speak and understand each other.The unfortunate side effect is that people are getting into more and more linguistically created barriers. It is not as complicated as it sounds

An example can help you.

You ask some one "Do you like reading books?" and they may say "No, I have never liked reading books". So this person is binding himself to not liking books for ever. How could he have broken this spell?

Well by saying something like "no, till now, I have not liked reading books."

That gives him a chance to like books at least in future. To come out of such binding linguistics, I suggest you learn new language.
It will refresh your existing language connections in the brain and improve communication skills in many ways.
Something like deleting the temporary internet files and refreshing the browser page for faster access to the web pages.

The Rewrite Rewire Effect

Language is just like your Face. It Expresses your emotion. We all get used to seeing different expressions on face but, forget to do so with our language. This exercise will go a long way in developing flexibility of language and develop your communication.

Take a 500 word article and rewrite it to express different emotions i.e. the whole article should reflect only one emotion. The more you can express with lesser words, the better. The idea is to make you juggle your language on demand. In turn this will flex up your brain and fire your imagination.


The Left and Right Co-ordination Exercise

Do the left and right coordination exercise to activate your creative abilities by making use of your non dominant hand.

Principle: The Creative functions are controlled by Right Half of your Brain. Right Brain also controls the left part of your Body. When you want to make use of the best of both worlds and when you want to improve communication skills, keep them synchronized.

Ninety percent of population is Right Handed and do not use their Left hand as much. Use your Left hand to do some of the basic things like Brushing your teeth and Eating. Engage your left hand in skillful work. This will start to activate your Right Brain functions  .

As you become comfortable with the simple activities, take it to the next level by  writing with Left hand. These activities will sufficiently increase the dormant power of your Right Brain. If you are left handed, do the same with right hand. The exercises are given in the order of difficulty. Feel free to tear it apart and do it any way you want. There are no rules for creativity.

The aim of these activities is to improve communication skills by improving your right-left brain synchronization.

Bottom line: Do things differently. it will improve your communication skills

1. Brush your teeth with Left Hand
2. Use only Left hand to Eat Food, but make sure you wash it thoroughly before you eat :-)
3. Draw with your Left hand.
4. Start mirror writing with right hand
5. Learn to write with left hand
6. Learn to write with left hand and right hand simultaneously

There is a lot more you can do. Let your creativity run and you will come up with some new ideas to take your communication to a whole new level!. To improve communication skills constantly is like sharpening your sword

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