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Seven Destructive Habits that Kill Solid Communication
Threatening
When we threaten someone, we become a source of fear and control. That doesn’t exactly lend itself to great communication.
Instead of threatening, open up about why your request is important. This shows you trust and respect someone enough to tell them why something matters.
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Key Ideas
Criticizing or Listening
Do you tend to hear your partner out when she’s sharing his or her perspective or do you jump in quickly to point out the problems with their views?
Try listening and giving your partner space to share their opinions—it’s easier to find a compromise or the best solution when everyone has a chance to share their thoughts.
Blaming vs. Supporting
When things go wrong for your partner—on the job, with friends, or personally—do you tend to identify the faults in them that may have led to their difficulties or do you offer support and a willing ear?
Tearing down your partner when the world is doing a good job of this already does no good for your relationship.
Complaining or Encouraging
If your partner is taking on a new challenge or trying to solve a problem or fix something that’s broken, do you complain about their success and pace or do you offer encouragement and act as a cheerleader?
Improve your partner’s chance of success by giving them space and positive encouragement. You should view yourselves as a team, not as rivals.
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Key Ideas
“Micro quotas”
In the process of finding a balance between your desire to dream big and your day-to-day activities, create macro quotas.
These refer to the minimum amounts of work that you must get done every single day to make the bigger goal a reality. Quotas make each day approachable, and your goals become achievable.
Behavior chains
Creating new habits that stick is easier if we make use of our current routines, instead of trying to fight them.
Use "if-then planning": choose a regular part of your schedule and then build another “link in the chain” by adding a new habit. For example: "If it is lunch time, then I will only eat meat and vegetables.”
Simplify decision-making
Making repeated choices depletes our mental energy, even if these choices are mundane and pleasant.
If you want to maintain long term discipline, aim for fewer decisions during the day: identify the aspects of your life that you consider mundane and then ‘routinize’ those aspects as much as possible.
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Key Ideas
Active listening
Is a technique for developing our ability to listen, to make a conscious effort to understand what people are really saying.
As a communication technique, it is used in many professional settings (counseling, training, therapy) but is also valuable for everyday life.
Core components of Active Listening
- Comprehending: To communicate, we must first understand what the other person (or people) are actually saying.
- Retaining: To respond in an appropriate manner, we must understand and retain what the other person has said.
- Responding: An active response should show that we understand what the other person has said, have paid attention to their words and also read their non-verbal cues.
Improving Active Listening skills
- Educate yourself on common cognitive biases and shortcuts;
- Avoid trying to respond immediately. Allow the other person time to finish speaking, then provide a considered response;
- Minimize conversational narcissism by keeping track of your use of pronouns(I, me);
- Seek to develop a clear picture of the other person’s logic;