What you will discover this week:

• Why people want so desperately to be understood
• Why there is so much misunderstanding
• The first step to becoming a great communicator

Transcript for this weeks message:

Thank you for joining me for this week's You Are Destined For Greatness. Coming to you this week from HQ, what I call headquarters, our in-home studio where we record the podcast and where a lot of the personal coaching happens, right here.  This week I'm sporting one of the latest releases from Cowboy Cuffs. You know, I saw this this material before the shirt was put together and I wasn't too fond of it, until I saw the final product and I thought it turned out pretty cool. It's got the shotgun cuffs, which of course is a double cuff, with our registered brand as a cuff link. Pretty cool colors.  They call this one ‘Rained on Hay,’ coming to you from Cowboy Cuffs. Elevate your style. Elevate your life. Anyway, proud to be a part of Cowboy Cuffs. Cool shirts.

Anyway, so this week we're gonna talk about an important subject and that is communication. So, it says you know it's one of the four core principles and here's why. It's not just some random principle and pick four. These four principles are key. These principles we found that we model in horses, we see how horses use these principles. But it's not only that, these four principles I have noticed in my life and in other people's life, that if you just focus on these four principles... And they are big and deep and broad principles, but if you had nothing, if there were no other things that you did than focus on these four, in my opinion, these would be the four to focus on, right here. Which are faith in God, faith in yourself, personal responsibility, and today's topic, four, is communication.

This is a big subject, you've heard a lot about it, and you've heard a lot about… I'm going to try to make it simple, explain a little bit about our perspective, and just give you a little bit, a little piece of it today of what you can work on. There's more information. We have a podcast where I go into much more detail, actually a series of podcasts. We're going to have a series on communication for You Are Destined For Greatness as well.

Today we're going to cover the foundation, the basics, the beginning, and start with one key takeaway that you can begin to do right now, today, that's going to make a difference for you. So here we go. First of all, it's, you know, when we look at horses with communication, it's so important, you know, they are totally different species and so knowing how to communicate is so important because horses hear everything. They listen, they observe, and they hear, and they react to everything. Okay, so everything that we do matters.

Julie Goodnight was on The Horsemanship Journey Podcast. I had her on as a guest, and she said one of the two biggest challenges in her experience of decades of training horses and people, one of the two biggest challenges that she sees that people face with horses is miscommunication. And then she went on to explain that, you know, most people are just, the horses continually trying to communicate, you know giving signs and trying to communicate with people, and most a lot of the time we're just like oblivious to what is going on. And I believe because in my experience of what I've seen and experience myself is, first of all, if you don't know how horses communicate, you just don't know what you don't know and you don't know what you're missing. You don't know what you're not seeing. You know, they can be expressing something, trying to communicate to you, and unless you know what that is, you don't know what it is.

Second of all is that, like she said, we get wrapped up on our own mind, and this is what we do with people because I think we do mostly know the basics of how to communicate with people, but we get wrapped up in our own thoughts and we forget about the other side. Okay? And there's a big price to pay when we do that. Our kids are just like horses and most people are too. They're hearing, they're hearing. We may not know, we may not be paying attention at the time, we may not be thinking about how much they're hearing, but they're paying attention to everything and they're taking it in.

So, first of all, let's just define communication. So what is communication? You can say that communication is simply transmitting information. You're transmitting information, you can call that communication. For this purposes and for my definition of communication, communication is not simply transmitting information, communication is understanding. That’s the way that I define communication. And you can’t have too much communication if that’s the definition. You’ve heard of TMI? You know too much information. You can have many words, right?  You can write volumes and volumes of books and papers and endless, you know, words and endless transmissions of information. But you may have an excess of that, but you never have an excess of over-understanding. You know, there's just not over understanding. You don't hear people say, "Well, you know, it just would have worked out better, but we understood each other too well.” You know, that doesn't happen. What it is, is it's always a lack of communication, a communication breakdown.

What hurts people's feelings is a miscommunication, right, or misunderstanding, misunderstandings, right? It's not, you know, we had way too much clarity was the problem, that's never the problem. So, there's not too much, such a thing as too much understanding is not possible.

So, how do we go about that? Because we're all so different individuals, communication, getting understanding. In other words, you understanding me and me understanding you becomes quite a project because you make meaning different than I do, right? My computer is different than your computer because my DNA and my experience that I've experienced, my lifetime is different than your DNA that you came with in your experience. And so, we have make different thoughts which equals different beliefs, different meaning, and that can be from the same words, right?

So how do we go about this and what's important? I think what's important to know, first of all, that communication is understanding. And next is to know, next is to know, I'm just checking my notes, make sure I haven't missed anything... That communicating is important, right? Like I said it's one of the four core principles for a reason and here's why, okay. It matters because if you become a great communicator it will improve your ability to progress in everything you do, okay, in everything. You'll have stronger deeper relationships. You'll have more efficiency in the things that you do, in reaching your goals and your progress. You'll have more cooperation with the people that you need/want cooperation from. You'll operate with more intention. And here's the deal, you'll have less stress, less frustration and better results.

What we see with horses, and we see it a lot and I've done it, I've made all the mistakes with horses or a great deal of them, I mean a lot. And that's why I know what goes on, and I've seen a lot of mistakes be made too. So here's how it goes with horses, we ask a horse to do something and he doesn't do it. All right, and we ask, and we ask, and we try to figure out how to get him to understand. He's not understanding. He's trying to figure out what the hell you're trying to say, and he's doing all these different behaviors trying to figure out what it is that you want him to do, and none of them are what you want him to do. And so, you're getting frustrated and pretty soon you're getting your emotions get involved and you're like this stupid horse, and he can't figure out anything. And he's stubborn, and he's mean, and he's defiant, and he's this and that. And so you start to get angry, and then that changes how you act and how you feel starts to change how you act. And it gets worse, and your horse is over there, and he's just confused. And he's then he starts to get angry and starts you know, it just goes from bad to worse, okay?

Same thing happens with people. And one of the biggest things to begin with, okay, in communication is to understand the other, okay? To seek first to understand. Like Stephen Covey said, “Seek first to understand, and then to be understood.” Now, every communication is not meant to be a two-way communication, right? This is a perfect example. You're not communicating to me; I'm simply communicating to you. However, okay, this is the key. To the extent that I understand you to start with, is gonna be to the extent that I'm gonna be able to clearly communicate my thoughts and feelings to you, right? So I still have to know a little bit about you, and the more that I understand you the more that even my one-way communication will be effective, okay. That's how important understanding is.

So, listening, you know, as we know people communicate, now that we have this vast vocabulary of words, and then we put words together. We call that in context. And then if we're speaking, you know, we put a bunch of words together in a context or in a sentence or in a paragraph or in a paper or in a, I don't know, in a collection of words. And then we pronounce them, and then we enunciate them, and we can communicate with all of the senses right? We can communicate with, the more senses that we use to communicate, the better chances we are of being understood. So that's of course why through this texting and emailing, and when we don't have the hearing sense to be part of it, when we only have the seeing and reading sense, then that's where we have so much more lack of understanding, right?

So, let's go back to what we can do today in the beginning part of this, okay? So what's important about hearing is to know that human beings, that we all have a need to be heard, okay? We want to be understood. So, all of us. So, why? What does that even matter? Why do you think that is? Why it is, is because when people take time to hear us, okay, and if we think that they understand us, we have a connection with them. So if somebody's taken time to hear us and we feel heard and we feel understood, we feel a connection. Because we start to have thoughts like, “Hey, they think we're important. Okay, they value our perspective.” And so, we start to have positive thoughts about ourselves and positive thoughts about the listener when we feel heard. Those positive thoughts equal positive feelings about, like I said, and then we have positive feelings about ourselves and the listener. Which equals positive actions, which equals positive results. Okay, this is a big deal.

So if you can buy into the idea, first of all, that communication is important, because I can guarantee you it is a tremendous skill. Some have said that it's the most important skill that we can develop in our lifetime, on our way to getting, you know, accomplishing and the things that we want in all of achievement. So, if it is important, and I hope that you believe it is because it is, then here's a couple of places to begin. One is just to know, again, that communication is understanding. To start looking at communication as understanding is one, know it's going to take some effort, okay? Not everybody out there is going to be a total badass and go for it and want to be a super communicator, like you, like me, like us, okay? We do, but the rest of the world does not. So, you need to know it's going to take a little bit of effort. It's not, anybody can do it, it's not going to take a tremendous, you know, effort. But it's going to take a commitment to make effort to be good at on a consistent basis. Because this is something that you develop over a lifetime. It's not something that you achieve and it's over.

The next is just to begin. Just for a place to begin, the first step is just to know, to seek first to understand. And then to be understood, but just seek to understand. Just start with listening, okay? Just listen, listen with your eyes, and then listen with your ears, both. And just observe, and ask questions. Just begin with that, okay? Just begin with that. There's so much more to communication, but this alone, you will be surprised at the results that you have, the connection that you start to develop. When people feel heard, and they begin to feel understood, just by this little simple process… If you take the time to put down ‘this’ when somebody's talking to you. When you take the time to totally focus and totally listen and make an effort to understand with your eyes and your ears and all of your senses that you have that are available... When you seek to understand, just notice the difference that that has alone.

There's going to be much more on communication coming up, some cool examples with horses, and all of that, and much more as we dig deep into it. These are the things that we do inside of Stable Living. We get good and we practice and we go through, you know, our life examples of, you know, what we need to do in certain situations to improve our communication. And then we look at the results. And the results are staggeringly incredible, and it's pretty exciting.

I thank you for taking your time to be with us today, and I need you to do me one more favor, and that is remember, You Are Destined For Greatness.