In this post, you will learn,
What is internal communication?
How internal communication influences our interactions with other people.
Three steps to intentionally change the tone of our internal communication.
In our communication essentials series, we have covered starting from a place of seeking to understand then we looked at making connections and in the post this week we will look at our internal communication which forms the basis for external communication.
I will start the blog post with a story to illustrate the power of our internal communication. There once was a man who was driving through the countryside. As he was driving, he felt a sudden jolt on the steering wheel and realised that he had a flat tire. The man pulled over and got out to change the flat tire only to realise that he did not have a jack to lift the car to get the wheel off. The man scanned the horizon looking for some form of hope to get him out of the situation. He spotted a distant farmhouse and decided to walk to the house and ask for help. As the man walked, he started to wonder who the people were that lived in the house, and if they would be willing to lend him their tools. He then remembered reading an article about these farms and how tough the people were who survived in these remote areas. As he kept walking, he convinced himself more and more that the people would not even open the door to speak to him. He eventually walked up to the door exhausted by the heat of the day and knocked on the door out of breath. When a man answered the door happy to see a visitor, the man with the flat tire blurted out, “You know what, who needs your stupid jack anyway, I will be just fine,” he turned around and stormed off with the owner of the house standing in the open door perplexed and confused.
While this story is somewhat funny and exaggerated it does ring true about a lot of our interactions with people. Think about this common phenomenon for a moment, how many times have you inserted emotions into a text message and responded according to the emotion you inserted rather than the actual message of the text?
Our internal communication sets up the way we react, interpret, and interact with the world around us. The reality is that many of our interactions are not based on other people but rather on how we feel in that moment or based on the insecurities that are triggered rather than the person standing before us.
We in other words tend to project our internal communication onto those around us. If we are not intentional about it, we may find ourselves having to apologize for things we said that were never meant for others.
Three ways to manage our internal communication.
Become aware of the tone of your internal narrative.
The first step to managing our internal narrative is to become aware of the overall tone of our internal narrative. Are you internally tired, bored, sensitive, excited, or positive? Listen to your internal tone, it will uncover a lot of our general emotional state.
Invite Jesus into your internal communication.
The second step is to invite Jesus into your internal communication. As your mind starts to drift, thinking about people, their motives, and their tone, especially in written communication, invite Jesus’ opinion into your internal communication. The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5 that because of the love of Jesus, we do not know people according to the outward anymore. Let Jesus transform your opinions about others.
Allow yourself to expect the best of others.
The third step you can take to manage your internal communication is to allow yourself to expect the best of others. I must confess, this is one of the hardest things to do for me. As humans, we like to generalise our opinions about people according to identifiable indicators from past experiences. These generalisations create stumbling blocks in our communication because it causes us to judge the person in front of us based on experiences that they were never involved with. By allowing yourself to expect the best of others you let go of generalisations and focus your attention on the person before you.
Coach U
Start by taking an audit of your internal narrative’s tone. Try to spot the most common tone in your internal narrative.
Then invite Jesus into your internal communication at least three times a day.
Lastly, look for opportunities where you jump to conclusions based on general assumptions, and choose to allow yourself to expect the best of that person in that interaction.
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© 2023 Ivan Venter, All Rights Reserved.
Photo by Fares Hamouche on Unsplash
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