Good communication … to talk more or less ?

I think mankind has always been enthralled with the idea of making the right impact through the right communication. If we search on google or youtube with the word “communication” we will get hundreds if not thousands of links and videos. As someone who has spent considerable number of years in corporate world in various leadership and managerial roles, I know exactly what does Communication mean to corporates. Right from day 1, I mean seriously , right from day 1 in the corporate world, I have been told in direct and indirect ways to be mindful in my communication - to be aware of how I talk , or write emails or present something before an audience. Communication trainings were of course numerous at various stages of my career in various forms. 

Lets take another aspect or dimension of the society that we are living in right now. The society or the era of the information explosion !!! There is so much information that everyone is giving out, that it is literary an explosion. Much like an actual explosion, this explosion too is unpleasant. As each individual or group of individuals clamours to get your attention, it is your “attention span” that becomes the victim. You are struggling everyday with the processing or over-processing of gigabytes of data either on your official mail or personal mail or social media or even more traditional media like TV and newspapers. The sources who are sending this information or communication are trying to come up with intelligent ways to get your mindspace ! If you see a hundred billboards or a hundred advertisements , of course you will remember the one who is different. In this race to be different , we have seen some outrageous twists in ads too ! But I will not get too much into those details, as it is not my intention to talk about those things here.

Lets try to make some sense of this all. From childhood till this day , various people have come into your life, some at a more personal level, some at less. If you count up the no of words you have spoken or heard, it will probably add up to terabytes and terabytes of data . But ….. how much and what have you remembered ? Out of all those millions of interactions that you may have had with hundreds of people in your life, which are the interactions that you remember most , or have made a mark, or have taught you something ??? When I think back, I can remember only those interactions that have really touched my heart because of the elements of honestly , sincerity , integrity , love and compassion built into them !!! THATS A revelation. And how many communication classes have we attended where the teacher has told us - be honest, speak from your heart to make an impact !

Now I am going to talk about something even deeper… Do we know what is the most powerful organ in our body for communication ? Is it our voice or is it our hands ? You will be surprised to know that the most powerful organ that we have is our Eyes ! A single glance from your eyes can convey what thousands of words could not convey earlier. We might be talking something totally unrelated, but what happens in our heart is reflected through our eyes. Eyes are indeed window to our souls. Just go back to our days of innocence, when we talked so much with our eyes. And a 100 times more powerful than our eyes is our very presence. Our presence can be either comforting or  torturous to others. Just by being with some people is such happiness. Their bubbling enthusiasm, or their belongingness brings calm to the minds and warmth to the hearts. Whenever we meet such people, our problems seem much insignificant, and we are inspired to do something really great. When our best friend was in trauma, what did we do ? Did we go to her / him and blabber a lot ? No we just hugged her or him tightly or held their hands to show I am one with you in your pain. That is the power of silence , the silence of our presence. When we see the setting sun, or a very beautiful scenery, communication happens then too, in that silence. This space around us is not dead, it is lively with intelligence and knowledge. Deep secrets of creation have been passed onto mankind, when he sat in deep samadhi. That is how the Vedas got created ! Vedas are said to be “Aupouroshiya” or not authored by any man. They are supposed to have happened as “Shruti” or what was heard or perceived by the great ancient Rishis and Rishinis in deep samadhi. There is no reason why , we , the modern humans can not tap into that intelligence of silence and communicate with each other in lesser time and effort and still make a very powerful impact.  The 3 building blocks of a good communication are good observation, good perception and good expression. These 3 can be greatly improved by practising few minutes of pranayama and dhyana every day. This has been my personal experience too over the last several years of practicing the tenets given by my Guru - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

Before information starts to explode, lets detonate that bomb by taking an inward journey. We will see not only we are able to understand and remember the most important things easily, we are also able to tell the most important things effectively to others.

I believe I have struck a chord in you ! :)