Awareness Isn’t Enough
Expanding your self-awareness is always the first step toward becoming a better communicator. But simply knowing something about yourself isn’t enough. It takes intentional practice to build strong communication skills. This is where creating a daily practice comes into play.
As you get to know your communication style, you’ll have moments where personal insights come in a flash. What previously escaped your attention is now quite loud and clear. The question then becomes, what are you going to do differently to address the insights you’ve gained into yourself?
If you want to change the way you communicate, you will need to apply new strategies and techniques to support your ability to change the way you express yourself. For example, maybe you’ve suddenly recognized that you frequently dominate conversations and realize that you’re the reason others don’t speak up. And so, you commit to reining it in and develop strategies to change your behavior:
Speaking once for every three times you have an impulse.
Muting yourself when you’re on calls to stop yourself from constantly chiming in.
Listening more and letting others speak before you say anything.
The next step is to create a daily practice so you have a system for converting those strategies into skills and transforming the way you communicate.
In fact, your success depends upon putting intentional systems in place. It’s simply too easy to slip back into subconscious patterns of behavior that have often been entrained for decades.
CREATE YOUR DAILY PRACTICE
Creating a daily practice provides you with a structure for developing new communication skills through positive rituals that keep you on track until your new behaviors become second nature. As you practice these ideas, you will establish a daily rhythm for yourself that allows you to flow from one activity to the next while staying connected to your intentions and strategies.
The more you practice these new behaviors and learn from your experiences, the faster you'll build the skill you're working on. Remember, repetition is how we entrain the brain and turn intentional practices into positive skills that shape who we are and how we communicate.
LET’S GET STARTED
Choose any skill that you’re working to develop and build your daily practice. If you’re not sure where to begin, explore the exercises in Chapter 7. Mastering Your Communication Style. Or you can join one of our Communication Programs where we guide you through the entire process of building the skills needed to communicate at your best.
If you’d like to deepen your understanding of how to build your practice and how it works, you can watch this video training that’s a module within our Self-Study Program.
When you understand why something works and how it's been designed, it's much easier to activate what you need to do. And given that changing your behavior often feels uncomfortable, it’s always a good idea to give yourself every advantage you can.
OR YOU CAN GET STARTED RIGHT NOW!
Here are the steps for creating your daily practice.
1. Set an intention. Setting intentions helps to program the conscious mind and reprogram the subconscious mind. Begin your intentions with the words "I am..." Add in an elevated emotion that captures how you want the experience to feel. Write it in the present tense, as if it's already a behavior you own. Review your intentions every morning and throughout the day to bring them into your conscious awareness. You’ll want to remind yourself to activate your strategies again and again.
2. Connect to existing rituals. Identify something you're already doing to start your day and weave the practice of reading your intentions around it. Think of it in terms of "If...then" statements. "If I am...making coffee, brushing my teeth, walking my dog...then I am reading my intentions.
3. Activate your practice. As you review your intentions, identify opportunities throughout your day where you will put your new communication strategies into practice. Commit to activating your strategies every day. The more you practice being intentional about how you communicate, the faster your new behaviors will become positive habits.
4. Design your environment to support you. Use visual reminders as a cue to activate the communication strategies and intentional practices that will entrain your new skills. Vision is our dominant sense and seeing a reminder makes it easier to follow through. Look for ways to use technology to support your practice, as well. Use meeting reminders to build in time to prepare for how you want to show up and use notifications to keep you connected to your intentions.
5. Check-in. Carve out a few minutes at the end of the day to reflect on how well you're following through on your intentions and new communication behaviors. Celebrate the small wins; those times you shifted your behavior and followed through. Recognize when things could have gone better and decide how you can course correct.
6. Refresh your practice. Once you've mastered a skill and it begins to feel like second nature, go back through the process and look for new areas for skill development. You may also find that your practice needs a little variation from time to time; there's a fine line between hitting a groove and hitting a rut. Pay attention to how your daily practice feels and refresh your strategies when needed.
I hope you enjoy building your daily practice and experience the positive impact that improving your communication skill has on your relationships, well-being, and sense of purpose. Even small changes in how you express yourself will strengthen your connections, reduce stress, and increase feelings of satisfaction.
I’m so glad you’re here and I’ll see you soon.
Happily,
Maryanne