SGM May 2016 Weekly Message One: “4 Tips To Be A Powerful Communicator”
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Welcome to the May 2016 Edition of Spiritual Growth Monthly. I’m Kevin Schoeninger. It’s great to have you with us here at SGM!
This month, we conclude our exploration of Penney Peirce’s classic manual on developing your intuition, “The Intuitive Way,” (Beyond Words, Second Edition, 2009). In this week’s message, you’ll learn “4 Tips To Be A Powerful Communicator.” These tips align your body, mind, and spirit and help you express yourself in a way that engages and attracts others.
How often do you launch into an important conversation without thinking much about it ahead of time? You just start talking or blurt out what’s on your mind, without really considering what result you are aiming for. How often do you then find yourself tangled in a mess of misunderstandings that took you away from what you really wanted to say and what you really wanted to happen?
Or, maybe you find yourself meandering aimlessly through a presentation, wondering how you got off track, where you going, and when this nightmare will end?
What if you could use your intuition to access exactly what you needed to say and how to say it, so your communications would bring you closer to others and closer to your goals?
The secret is to understand the different layers of every communication and use them to create more conscious intentional interactions. As Peirce says, “We communicate simultaneously with each of the three aspects of ourselves: body-to-body, mind-to-mind, and spirit-to-spirit.” (p.170, TIW)
What does she mean by that?
1. Spirit-to-spirit
Effective communication begins at the spiritual level by asking yourself, “What is my highest intention for this interaction?” Before you start speaking, check in with your higher self and see what’s important to you and what outcome you desire. Then, consider who you are talking to and what’s important to them. What would be the best outcome for you and the others involved?
You can use your intuition to tune into your higher self and to tune into the higher selves of others to pick up on what is important for each of you. Just imagine that you could know this information and see what comes to your mind—for you and for them.
In order to communicate well, have your higher intention in mind ahead of time and bring it with you. You might even begin your conversation by stating your intention straight out in a very honest way. For example, before a potentially difficult conversation about finances, intimacy, or a health-related issue you might say:
“I have something sensitive I’d like to talk to you about. It’s important to me, and maybe for you, too, though I feel a little vulnerable discussing it. However, I hope that talking this out will help us understand each other better and bring us closer together.”
Can you imagine how such an honest statement of positive intention could set the stage for a genuine heartfelt discussion?
Or maybe, you are presenting or teaching. Before you outline your material, ask yourself, what is most important to me about this subject? Why am I interested in it? Why does it matter in my life? Then ask “Who am I presenting this to? What might be most important to them? Use your intuition to imagine your audience and tune into them. See what comes up. You might surprise yourself with your ability to know your audience ahead of time.
Then, when the time comes to speak or teach, begin your presentation by speaking to “Why we are here and why this is important” so you engage your listeners—and yourself!
2. Mind-to-mind
Once you are clear about “Why” you want to communicate, it’s time to organize your material in a way that will effectively achieve your goal. Keep your positive intent in mind and ask your intuition “What are the most important points to emphasize? What sequence might work best to achieve my desired result?
Returning to our “sensitive subject” example, consider framing your conversation with a little context to help your partner understand where you are coming from and to give you some common ground. You could let your partner know when the issue came up, how it made you feel, why you were concerned, and what you hope might happen.
You could say “My insecurity came up the other day when you were out late and didn’t call me, which made me feel like you didn’t care, and honestly made me worry that you might leave me. What I really hope is that we could have an agreement to call or text each other if one of us is going to be home later than we had talked about.”
If you are teaching or presenting, you could organize your material in the “Why, What, How, What If? Format. After engaging your audience with “Why this might be important to you” you could go on to define specifically “what” you will talk about. You could follow this with an example or demonstration of “how” to apply this or put it into action. Finally, you might allow some time to answer questions, such as “what to do if this or that happens,” so your listeners understand how to use your material in the different circumstances of their lives.
For example, when teaching Reiki, I first ask my students “why” they want to learn Reiki. I then describe “what” Reiki is while relating it to their “whys.” We then go on to learn “how” to give and receive Reiki and finish with plenty of time for questions and practice of different “what if” scenarios.
The basic idea is to organize your message in a way that communicates what is important in a way that others are able to value it, understand it, and use it effectively.
3. Body-to-body
Once you know your highest intention for your communication and have organized it in a way that enables your audience to value it, understand it, and engage with it, a third element will bring your message home on a subconscious level. This has to do with your body.
Without you consciously knowing it, your body is giving off and receiving information all the time. Sometimes called “body language,” this is one of the most underappreciated and overlooked aspects of being an effective communicator.
Your posture, tone of voice, eye contact, gestures, and facial expressions convey volumes of meaning beyond the words you are speaking. And, you are intuitively picking up on all these meaningful cues from others as well. Our bodies are having intuitive conversations beneath our awareness, and this is often dictating the outcome of our interactions.
To be a powerful communicator, it’s important to take charge of your body language and make sure it is congruent with what you want to communicate. Two ways to do this are to “visualize” the information you are communicating, by having a picture of it in your mind, and then “feel” the meaning of that information.
Feel why what you have to say is important and convey that to your audience by painting a picture that is filled with descriptions that create felt sensations. You can do this with stories and real-life examples. As you talk, imagine yourself in those scenes, feeling those feelings.
For example, you might convey the value of your “4 Tips To Be A Powerful Communicator” message with the following two contrasting scenes:
First, imagine yourself before you’ve ready this message. You are in front of a room at the podium with a thousand eyes on you. A bead of sweat runs down the side of your face, your armpits are wet, your legs are stiff, and your heart is beating 140 beats per minute. Your throat is so dry you could drink a gallon of water. The sound of silence in the room is deafening. Your mind is stuck on one train of thought, “No one wants to hear about elephants. Get me out of here!”
Now imagine that you are at that same podium with those same eyes watching, but this time you are smiling and the audience is talking excitedly in anticipation of what you are about to say. You are excited to share stories that convey your passion for elephants and why we should help them, because you’ve used the “4 Tips To Be A Powerful Communicator” to prepare your talk. You stand tall, take in the whole crowd, and give them a hearty welcome. All eyes turn your way in rapt attention. . .
Now, once you have prepared for communication by knowing your intent, organizing your message with your goal in mind, and visualizing and feeling it passionately, there’s one more tip that will make sure your message comes across strong and clear—and that it’s well received.
4. Congruence
Have you ever been asked a question that you didn’t really know the answer to, yet you answered anyway, as if you knew? You are basically “faking it,” trying to appear more knowledgeable than you are.
Or, have you found yourself saying one thing, while underneath you are really wanting something different? You have a hidden agenda underneath your words.
Whether consciously or not, your listeners can pick up on the lack of congruence in what you are saying and they will immediately undervalue or discount it as being less-than-true and less-than-important. In fact, as you are speaking, you yourself will be discounting what you are saying and it will show up in your body language. You might slump forward a bit, avoid eye contact, and the tone in your voice might waver.
Now, creating congruence in yourself is not always easy. You might not always be confident in what you are saying. If that’s the case, what if you were straight-forward about that? What if you expressed it as a conjecture, a possibility, something you are experimenting with?
Being congruent is about being authentic, being real. People respond well to honesty and vulnerability. They will connect with your human-ness. Most people find that attractive and engaging.
Being congruent begins with accepting where you are at the moment. You can use your intuition to connect with your authenticity by asking, “What do I really feel about this situation? What is important to me here and now? What do I know? What am I afraid of? What do I wish would happen?”
Which brings us full circle to your highest intent. What if before each interaction, you took a moment or more to ask your intuition, “What would be best for me and others in this situation? And, “How can I facilitate that by what I say?”
When you communicate from this place of positive intent, organize your words to match that goal, and match your feelings and body language with your words, your communications will be powerful, heartfelt, engaging, and attractive to those you interact with. As you do this more and more, you will become a powerful communicator.
I would love to hear your questions and comments in our discussion below.
In next week’s message, we’ll explore how to intuitively use food, music, smells, textures, and symbols to make great decisions.
Until next time,
See if it’s possible to bring your highest intentions into all your communications,
Kevin