Satisfactions

Premise: From newborn infants to dying adults, we all communicate to reduce local discomforts - i.e. to "fill current needs." Doing that promotes satisfaction. Anything you do that causes a significant emotional-spiritual-physical-mental change in another person can be called communication. It´s impossible to "not communicate" with other people, for silence and inactivity cause reactions and presumed meanings.

    The quality of your life and key relationships depends largely on the effectiveness of the way you communicate - yet you probably don´t know what you need to know about this vital life skill. To reality check that, mull these five challenges:

1) Name a learned skill that you rely on more often than communicating to get your key needs met. Note that thinking is internal communication.

2) How do you distinguish between effective and ineffective communication? If you´re not sure, how can you tell if you´re communicating effectively in important situations?"

3) On a scale of 1 (totally ineffective) to 10 (totally effective), generally how effective a communicator would you rate yourself in calm times __ and in conflicts __ recently?

4) Identify the five most important people in your current life. From 1 to 10, how effective would you rate yourself in your communication with each of them in calm __ and conflictual __ times? How effective would each of them rate you?

5) Take your time, and see how well you do with this communication quiz. Then return.

Would you like to improve your communication effectiveness with others and yourself?

Seven Essential Skills

This unique guidebook describes and illustrates seven vital communication skills that any motivated person can learn, with practice. They are:

• Awareness

• Clear thinking,

• Digging down,

• Effective assertion,

• Metatalking (talking cooperatively about communication),

• Empathic listening (listening with your heart), and...

• Win-win problem-solving (conflict resolution).

Can you describe each of these skills and when to use each one? Not one of my 1,000+ clients and students could. Our culture doesn´t value effective communications enough to teach us these skills yet - perhaps because most people don´t know what they don´t know about these skills and their great benefits.

The skills are simple, learnable, and effective. They help people fill their current personal and social needs. The skills are sequential, starting with awareness.

Why Read This Book?

There are many books, tapes, and programs claiming to teach effective communica-tion. Satisfactions is unique for six reasons:

It´s based on a well-researched "inner-family" theory of personality, and (b) the series of seven skills (above) that promote effective thinking and problem-solving. Communication effectiveness soars when your true Self guides your other subselves. The related volume Who´s Really Running Your Life? - free your Self from custody and guard your kids (Xlibris.com, 2010, 3rd ed.) describes how to achieve this.

This book proposes that effective communication happens when people (a) get current primary, vs. surface needs met, (b) in a way that leaves them feeling good about themselves, their partner/s, and the process between them. I´ve never seen any other communication materials propose the skill of digging down to identify primary needs as a requisite for effective communications; Another unique foundation of this book is...

The keystone concepts of R(espect) messages, E(motion) levels, and "Awareness "Bubbles." I´ve never seen these described together in 40+ years of research and teaching. If you can´t describe the five messages we all decode from each other semi-consciously, you´re probably unaware of how R-messages may degrade your most important communications.

This book is one of a kind because it contains status checks (conceptual reviews and reality checks) and Web-link addresses to many resource articles, skill-practices, and worksheets in this Break the Cycle! site and others; and...

It includes (a) a 95-page communication and relationship glossa