People often ask me why heart to heart communication is so important in relationships. When you learn to speak from the heart you develop rapport and this in turn allows people to trust you and you to trust them. You connect with people in a way that is not superficial and connect on a deeper level. It’s critical that you don’t just jump in a talk to people about all the various thoughts that are just flying around in your mind, but rather, quiet down, listen, and allow the person to become comfortable with you before you just jump in.
For example, suppose a difficult situation comes up with your teenage son or daughter the worst thing you can do is to just start lecturing. You haven’t developed any rapport. Even though you’re the mother or father, you don’t have the necessary rapport to jump in and start badgering your teenager. You’ve got to sit there for a moment and make that connection.
This is where you have to use your intuition and really do a vibe-check. You sit with the person, listen; quiet down; check out the feeling, and make sure the time is right. Ask if this is a good time to have a conversation.
By doing this you’re already one step ahead. You have already been given permission by the teenager, or by the person you’re talking to, that it’s OK to have the conversation.
Heart to heart is really a loving way to communicate with people. I try to talk heart to heart with people all the time. I’m trying to talk heart to hear with you right now. To me, when you’re badgering someone, or speaking to quickly, or jumping in out of turn, you’re wasting communication. Very often it will elicit a defensive response and it encourages people not to listen to you.
One the other hand when make sure it’s the right time to communicate with someone and you set the stage well, then you are really connecting with the other person and it almost guarantees that the conversation is going to go well.
Letting go of your expectations of how the conversation should go is really important to have effective communication. A lot of times we plan out in our mind in advance how we want the conversation to go. For example, you might plan out in your mind before a conversation that you’re going to say this and she is going to say that and then I’m going to say this and it’s probably going to turn out this way.
When you do this, it’s taking you completely out of the heart space and you’re totally in the mind. When you’re in the mind you it lowers your spirits; it makes you tighten up and it prevents you from listening to what’s really happening because you’ve already determined in your mind what’s going to happen.
When you communicate from the heart, you let go of your expectations. You intuitively sense it’s all right and just see where it goes. Consequently you’ll learn something from the conversation most of the time. Sometimes the conversation will go one way and sometimes it will go a different way.
When you speak from the heart it makes life richer; it makes your communication richer. It makes the conversation fun. When you speak from the heart the other person doesn’t expect you to say a certain thing or expect you to look at them in a certain way, you just allow them to be free; to be a human being; to speak from their heart. People will be drawn to you; they want to be around you.
Everybody wins, you develop better relationships, and so many wonderful things come about as a result of speaking from the heart.
