Have you ever had an experience where you have said to yourself 'I must be speaking in a different language because I'm just not being understood' or something similar. I know I have.

Language is so interesting, the more I learn the more I am intrigued and excited by it. I'm not talking about different languages like german, chinese etc. I'm talking about the words we use, the tonality, non verbal cues etc. that all impact the message we intend to deliver and what people hear and respond to.

You all know that our experiences and beliefs impact the way we hear and understand (filter) the information we receive. For example someone says to you 'you should focus more on what's possible' - one person might interpret this as being told they are too pessimistic and another might interpret this as a suggestion for a different way to convey a message i.e. focus on possibility vs necessity as a convincer. Same 7 words that have at least two different interpretations.

Did you also know that when we feel connected to someone (we can easily communicate and feel understood) it is because we are in rapport with them. There are many aspects to creating rapport, for now I'm talking about verbal communication. The words we choose can have a huge impact and they are probably not the words you are thinking of. I'm talking about the difference between using the words 'see, hear, feel & think' for example. Which one of these sits more comfortably with you - 'Can you see how this will impact'; 'Can you hear what others will say about this'; 'Can you feel the difference this will make' or 'Think about the impact this will have'. Four phrases all saying the same thing yet each one will have a different impact based on our different communication styles. How cool is that! Imagine that by using different words that match someone's style of visual, auditory, kinesthetic (feeling) or auditory digital (thinking) we can improve rapport.

Did you also know that we learn/interpret in one of four primary ways? It's either important to understand the why, the what, the how or the what if. And depending on which one we prefer, that is usually the way we explain things to others. As with our preferred communication style above, this may not always match with the person we are connecting with. If someone values the 'why' then you would want to be able to answer the 'why they should do this, the benefit'. If someone values the 'what' then explaining what it is that you want them to do is more important. If someone values 'how' then then of course an explanation of how it works or how to do it is far more important than why they should do or what they should do. The 'what if' person wants to know what else they can do with the information or what possibilities it will create. You can imagine then that harping on about why something is so important to a child, your partner, your colleagues etc. would really not be of any interest or value to someone who just wants to know how.

This is just the tip of the iceberg! Two concepts that we can play with to notice how people react and then adjust accordingly, that will increase rapport with more people - anywhere anytime.

Being the evolved and adaptable human beings that we are, we all use each of the four communication and the four learning styles, but, we all have a preference. What's yours? And what is it for the person that you have the most challenging relationship with?

Worth thinking about?

"Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity." Joseph Sugarman

There have been times where  I have chosen not to believe that there is an opportunity within every problem. Times when I just wanted to 'wallow' in the problem, blame someone or something else even. Of course this was not a very useful strategy since it didn't make the problem go away :-)

These days however I choose to 'look for the silver lining', look at what I did to create the problem and more importantly what I am going to do to change the situation. Sometimes that is much easier said than done because some problems just feel really bad and even unfair. Not accepting the challenge to change it might seem like an easier choice, maybe it is. We could stay within our comfort zone and continue to blame others for what's happening, but how does really benefit us? We don't learn? We don't get to experience something new and maybe even uncomfortable, we have one missed opportunity after another. One day we might just look back over our life or a period in our lives and say 'I wish I had done... I should have done...'

My motto these days is "what's the worse thing that can happen and can I live with it?" It's pretty empowering, you should try it.' I want to make the best of any opportunity that comes my way. Even if it is cleverly disguised as a problem!

Almost everyone I talk to wishes they had more time in the day or say they have too many priorities which causes them to feel frustrated or stressed.

We all have the same amount of time in a day, why is it that some people seem to have plenty of it and others not enough? Maybe some people don't have the same amount of things we do? Or maybe they choose to spend their time differently.

How do you decide what to make something a priority? Is it based on whether or not you like it? How urgent you feel it is? How important it is to someone else? How it would make someone else feel if you did it? How it would make you feel? Or... the list of questions is endless and is intended to get you thinking about how you decide to do what you do, when you do it and even how much time you will spend on it.

You've heard me say before that everything we do, say, feel or think is a choice. So what do you need to help you to choose how you spend your time?

1. Be aware of your 'time wasters', we all have them. These are things that distract us from what needs to be done, they aren't necessarily bad, they can have a productive purpose. So what are some examples - email, the phone, TV, shopping, internet, games, etc. Just about anything can be a time waster. When you know what they are you can choose how to manage them.

2. Schedule your priorities based on the goals you have. This means you need to be very clear on your goals for the year/quarter/month/week/day. If you know what you want to achieve the choice about how to spend your time will be clear.

3. Understand how you are choosing to spend your time. Are you spending the majority of your time achieving your goals or helping others achieve theirs? There is no right or wrong answer, in fact often we do both. Just notice what's happening and the reasons you are doing it. Is it because it is part of your overall goal or role or is there something else you 'get' (significance? not disappointing others? or ?) out of it?

4. Procrastinator? If you keep putting things off then it's either not important to your goal (note in a work situation it maybe your work is driven by a higher goal and you don't buy in to it or understand how you fit within it). Or, deep down you are afraid to 'fail' and therefore don't start something. By the way we all have our own definitions of what failure is. Choose to believe that there is no failure, only feedback and you free yourself to act and to learn.

5. Perfectionist? The only difference between this and procrastination is that the choice is to spend too much time on something versus none at all when procrastinating. What would happen if you spent less time on something? If you spent an extra 20% of your time on it would it significantly change the outcome?

How will you choose to spend your time today?

“We realize our dilemma goes deeper than shortage of time; it is basically a problem ofpriorities. We confess, we have left undone those things that ought to have been done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” ~ Charles E. Hummel