Are You Being Heard

As human beings we are so bad at communication. I have no doubt you’ll agree with me. Most of us find it so hard to actually get our message across. What exactly is clear communication and how do we achieve it so that we do feel like we’re being heard?

We lack ability to clearly communicate because for the most part, when in conversation or participating in any dialogue with others, it is almost our default to listen to respond rather than to listen to hear or understand what others are saying. When this happens, it almost always leads to miscommunication and misunderstanding of what the other person is trying to say or convey and vice versa.

Having said that, do you feel like you’re not being heard? I did such an interesting reading for a gentleman a few weeks ago and towards the end of the reading, it became clear to me that his greatest struggle and challenge is that he feels like people don’t hear him. You know that we all have this thing called our personal truth and we generate the results in our life through what we believe as our personal truth. We went back to this gentleman’s earlier life as a child of 6 children and being right in the middle, with all sisters and only one brother much older than him, it became very clear that as a child, what he had to say was never regarded as being important. And so that became his personal truth. And now as a much older man, this is something that he has had to deal with his entire life. When you feel like you’re not being heard, your communication is such that you make yourself small and before you even engage, you are of the belief that you are not going to be taken seriously and so people don’t take you seriously. They disregard your feelings, they disregard what you are saying because of the way in which you come across. People who are for the most part introvert, also have difficulty in communicating. They come from a place where they do not want to engage with people or dislike engaging with people and because of this, any communication is going to be brief and lacking in expression.

Good communication is the effective sharing of information, meaning, thoughts and feelings between people. The good news is that you can develop good communication skills through :

1. Practicing active listening. Those who communicate effectively are always good listeners
2. Focus on your non-verbal communication. Your body language also says a lot about you and people pick up on it
3. Manage your emotions. Our emotions have a huge impact on our communication – think about it.
4. Get feedback and give feedback. Say things like, what I’m hearing you say is….
5. Public speaking is a great way to develop good communication skills

Whilst language is a natural part of our development as human beings and through language we learn to communicate with others, good communication skills are not natural, it is not something we are born with. It is something that we have to develop and hone as we go through life. And of course there are different ways to communicate different things and with different people especially in terms of emotional maturity, age, gender and culture.

So my advice for you is if you feel like people don’t hear you, practice talking in front of the mirror and listen to what you say, how you say it and put yourself in the shoes of others and see if you would understand if you were the person on the receiving end. What would be your reaction if you were the person on the receiving end. Notice your facial expressions and tone of voice. Do you speak softly? Are you too loud? Do you come across as meek and mild or do you come across aggressively? Do you look interested or are you mostly non-committal? All these things affect the way that we communicate and they have an impact on how the other person perceives us and what the other person hears when we talk.

Working on your communication skills will have an overall impact on your life. You will find that as you become more engaged in a positive way, so others will become more engaged with you. As you learn to be more clear in what you are wanting to say and not expecting that the other person should know what you mean, or assuming that they will have sufficient background information to make a meaningful connection with you. Connecting with other people takes work but it pays off every time. And when you feel like you are not being heard, then do the work. Ask yourself if it is your perception or you misinterpreting the situation or what is it that you could be doing better to make sure that people hear what you have to say.