| MIND DEVELOPMENT COURSE 3 - EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION |
Get better in touch with others - and with yourself
Your relationships with other people have a great impact upon every aspect of your life. The essence of relationships is communication; and yet, even between people who care deeply for each other, communication sometimes becomes blocked. We cannot put our feelings into words. Our partner speaks but we do not hear. We stare helplessly across an abyss of silence, or in frustration we hurl attacks that drive us further apart.
Poor communication skills can damage all your relationships. This can affect your performance at work, your self-confidence and your physical health.
Communication is a process involving both the transmission and reception of information; the reception of auditory information involves both hearing and listening. In schools, almost no instruction is offered on the subject of listening. Recent experiments suggest that a person's attention is absent about 50% of the time, and that with re-education, a person's mode of listening can be enhanced such that their attention is in place 80 or 90% of the time. In children this causes an increase in IQ of up to 19 points; in an adult the improvement will be a little less but still substantial - attentive listening transfers to many of the cognitive processes involved in intelligence.
Effective Communication teaches powerful communication skills that enable you to be more effective at home and work and in all of those situations of everyday life where better relationships can make all the difference.
Benefits to you...
- Understand how communication breaks down and how best to repair it
- More affection, empathy and mutual understanding with the people in your life
- Feel free to express and release unspoken feelings
- Have much better ability both to listen and to make yourself understood
- A sharper, more intelligent mind
- Be well-prepared for further mind development practices such as concentration, speed-reading and study.
The most basic action, in being alive, is to reach and withdraw; it is the basic survival dynamic, to reach out for food or to withdraw from danger. It is also the basis of communication. If sufficient intention is used and another is paying attention and duplicates that which is being put across, then communication is taking place. The basis of communication and interaction, then, is: reach - withdraw; speak - listen; give - receive. In practice of course, people have different objectives and viewpoints in life and these can conflict. But if viewpoints are shared through a process of honest and sincere two-way communication, affection and empathy may be built up, reinforcing a mutual understanding.
Misunderstandings and lack of communication are the basis for problems between people. For example, when a couple are unable to effectively discuss their feelings and ideas together, their relationship - including their sexual relations - may eventually break down. Furthermore, if you are experiencing problems in your relationship and because of a lack of communication skills you inappropriately attempt to share your feelings, you may experience even more rejection, hurt, and misunderstanding. This may result in your avoiding intimate communication and putting up emotional walls.
The key to emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to sense, understand, and effectively apply the power of emotions, appropriately channeled as a source of energy, creativity and influence - and to be able to clear and release emotions which have outstayed their welcome. Sometimes, for most of us, we may be afraid to face our deepest feelings, needs and thoughts. We may be afraid to express them to another because of how we imagine the other may react. So we live private lives, partly cut off from partners, friends, colleagues and family, and even from ourselves.
A wall of frustration or emotional 'charge' develops between two people (or between a person and an organization) when what is felt is not expressed, or what is expressed is not listened to with understanding and empathy. The communication skills practiced on the Effective Communication course help us to break through these sorts of impasse - so that alienation and estrangement are replaced by contact and intimacy.
The Effective Communication course offers a series of practical exercises which develop the skills of communication and help the student to apply the fruits of his or her learning here and now - both to his or her personal growth and to the practical issues of personal relationships and business.
Learn to use the whole of your brain
Modern man, because he has a highly developed speech and writing ability (using one hand), has become specialized in his use of the two hemispheres. In short, as a result of developing writing, verbal functions became neurologically centered in the left hemisphere of the brain. However, the price of this new freedom has been a tendency towards mental imbalance, and as a consequence, neuroses. Generally, the left hemisphere is over-developed at the expense of the right. The right hemisphere has the function of giving a sense of strategy and purpose to life. Because we lose some of this function, we may tend to feel our lives are without aim and purpose.
Improvement in our ability to communicate externally is reflected by a similar gain in communication between parts of the brain. The practice exercises enable development of all areas of the brain, even those which have been long under-used. They affect, particularly, the integration of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Each hemisphere governs a different way of thinking and seeing the world. By doing the exercises thoroughly, the student can bring both halves of the brain into mutual communication, so that he or she is freer to think holistically and experience the world from an expanded point of view.
A practical course to improve communication
Communication is the vehicle for all further techniques, so communications skills are a vital aspect of Mind Development. The Effective Communication course includes practical exercises to enhance your capacity to listen attentively and comprehend. Following that, questioning skills are practiced, which have relevance to communication, memory and understanding. This will help you to maintain control of communication in practical, social and business situations.
The essence of this course is developing your interpersonal communication skills through actual practicing and training ... so that these skills become automatic and are at your finger tips just when you want them, rather than just in your mind.
The skills you will learn are based on tried and tested methods. You may even know some of them. But knowing is not enough. You need to develop these skills through practice and training.
The truth is that there is no royal road to learning. Few can just read a book and apply its teachings - even when these teachings are excellent. You need the opportunity to practice in a secure environment with a like-minded partner so you can attain your goals.
Therefore to do this course you will need a similarly-motivated partner (or group of friends) and a few weekends when you can work together intensively. You'll learn a lot about each other and about yourself!
Buy the Mind Development Courses 1-8 Package for just US$ 29.00!