My wife and I met in grad school. We were both students and teachers.
She taught relational communication - I taught public speaking. We both delivered lectures, lead activities, and GRADED PAPERS (fun!) 🤩 She developed an expertise in relational dynamics and communication patterns while I developed an expertise in rhetoric and confident presentation.
Funny thing is that I was SUPER NERVOUS when I first asked her out on a date. Despite actively leading lectures and working with students in the Speaking Lab, I barely was able to muster up the confidence.
And it was LOW STAKES - we walked around campus with my roommate’s dog.
But I'm SO glad I did it.
And I think a lot of our life is bound by the same rule - our personal and career growth plateaus at our ability to express ourselves.
This is why I spend my weekends offering communication consulting to people who work full-time jobs but want to embrace more. Why I stay up late to post YouTube videos that extract practical takeaways from global conversations. And why I'm developing a keynote and book about the power of social connection and articulating your thoughts.
We leave SO MUCH on the table by not prioritizing our communication. And the best antidote to this is to actively choose to improve your communication.
Here are some ways you can do that:
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Read more - our brain digests structure and logic when we read and this will help with our sentence formation and verbal expression.
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Talk on the phone more - just call and check in on people.
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Challenge yourself to ask NEW questions - TODAY I WANT YOU TO ASK A QUESTION TO SOMEONE THAT YOU’VE NEVER ASKED. This doesn’t have to be juicy - for instance, I’ve never asked someone, “what are your thoughts on tuna fish sandwiches in the winter?”
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Sit down and write one hundred words about something that interests you. Writing our thoughts out is the most critical examination we can give them. If you’re currently depressed and thinking, “nothing interests me” then I love you and I’m going to give you a topic: write a story about 100 people who set out on the task of creating the world’s largest grilled cheese.
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Watch yourself talk.
But simply put - if you read this whole thing - you’ve become a bit better at processing words. Maybe a lot better since I’m not a Hemingway writer and you had to piece everything together.
