Blog

Today let us remind ourselves about the five foundations of mindful communication that we have discussed.

To practice mindful communication,

1) Get in touch with your intention. Cultivate positive intentions for your communication and remind yourselves of these before you engage in conversation with others
2) Have an attitude of curiosity and compassion. An attitude of curiosity helps us listen better and get to know people while judgmental attitudes block communication.
3) Be willing to learn and to act. Change and growth means that we are open to learning new ways and willing to act on our learning and put it into practice.
4) Practice self awareness. Shine the light of awareness on how you interact with others and be open to feedback.
5) Be mindfully present, which means having your attention in the same place where your body is.

Which foundation do you find the most challenging?

The fifth and final foundation of mindful communication is mindful presence.

What is mindful presence? In the context that we are talking about, it means to have your mind and your attention and your body all in the same place. Sounds simple, right?

Being mindfully present where you are physically is rather challenging in modern times. This is because we have so many things to distract us all the time.

Think of all the times when you talk to people or do things during the day but realise only after you have done them that you have no memory of what you did or said. This is because while we are doing our daily actions or conversing with people that we speak to regularly, our attention is somewhere quite different. Many of us live with background noise of the TV or devices on all the time. Or we are so hooked to our devices that we are connected with those who may be far away from us physically while not connected to those who are right beside us.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

...

One of the most effective tools for developing self-awareness and opening up lines of communication with others is the Johari Window.

Invented by Psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, the Johari Window (cleverly named by combining the first names of its developers!) helps us to become more self-aware and shines the light on parts of ourselves that we may be unaware of, but which may be impacting ourselves and our relationships.

The premise behind Johari's Window is that there are certain things which we know, and things we do not know about ourselves. Similarly, there are certain things others know and do not know about us. Johari's window attempts to help us see that there may be major aspects of our own personality that we are unaware of.

The premise is that there are four areas of our identity: a public self that is known to ourselves and to others (such as our obvious likes and dislikes and personality traits), a private self known only to us and not to others (things that...

Continuing our discussion on foundations for mindful communication, today let us talk about self awareness.

"Self-awareness" is a phrase we often hear in spiritual contexts. There is a famous Islamic narration which goes: "He who knows himself, knows God". In other words, to become aware of God and His magnificence, we must become aware of ourselves.

So far so good. But what on earth does it actually mean to be "self-aware"?

Self Awareness means having a clear perception of your personality, including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and emotions. It is, in essence, the ability to become an observer of oneself, to consider our own selves from a somewhat objective perspective.

Without self-awareness, we are full of "blind-spots" – we have no real idea of our own strengths or where our challenges lay. Without self-awareness, we tend to have little agency or control over own thoughts and emotions, and live in a reactionary mode most of the time. Without self...

Yesterday we talked about how acknowledging our need to learn new ways to communicate is one of the foundations of mindful communication.

Today, lets deepen this conversation just a little more.

How do we know that we need to work on something, in the first place?

"Remember that Reform starts with the four Rs"

1) Reminder – everything in our environment can act as a reminder if we let it. We hear an inspirational story, a lecture, an article or even a social media post. This reminder confirms what is true within our nature. It makes sense because the knowledge of what works and what doesn't is already hardwired into us. This one reason why inspirational quotes are so inspirational – they eloquently express what we feel and know to be true within.

For example, here is a quote about the power of words:
Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words...

Continuing with the foundations of mindful communication . . .

Do you know the difference between between someone who is behaving in a certain way and someone who IS a certain way?

It is a persistent unwillingness to learn and to change or grow.

All of us lack skills in certain areas of our lives, including communication. This is not problematic AT ALL.

What causes problems is when we refuse to learn from our mistakes, from feedback of those around us and to change our behavior in response.

When we tell ourselves or those around us things such as

This is who I am
I am not one for expressing my feelings. I'm just not comfortable with it.
I am too old to change
I am not going to change so get used to it
I have always talked like this
Everyone in my family raises their voices – what is the big deal?

. . . or any version of the above . . .

We are blocking our own path to growth and losing chances to make our relationships and our lives better.

Acknowledging that we may have something...

Before we start looking at the communication skills, let us explore the foundations of mindful communication.

Mindful communication, as we said yesterday, begins in the heart and so the first step in learning to communicate mindfully is to become conscious of your intention when you speak and listen.
And then begin to set intentions for all your conversations.

Setting intentions for our communication is a powerful exercise. Intentions determine the full consequences of our thoughts, words, and actions. It is our intentions which form the spirit of our activities and the emotional tone of our efforts.

From an Islamic spiritual perspective, intentions form the foundation of all acts of worship. Without the intention, even prayer does not qualify as an act of worship. And conversely, by setting an appropriate intention, any act of everyday living can become an act of worship.

This implies that two actions which look apparently identical, will be different in spirit depending on the...

Here is your daily dose of Wisdom for Living Your Best Self!

Our desire to communicate mindfully starts with a recognition that the ability to communicate is a gift – a gift of the Creator who gave us the desire, the knowledge, the ability and the equipment to communicate with others.

Imam Jafar As Sadiq (as) says:
Consider the blessing of speech, bestowed upon him by the Almighty, which is the medium for the expression of his inner thought and his warm feelings springing from his understanding and with which also he understands the inner points of others. Without this faculty he would have been like quadrupeds, neither able to convey his own inner thought to others, nor to understand the words of the speaker.

The physical process of speaking is rather complex and involves four different process which start in the lungs, go to the larynx where there are the vocal folds, then to the pharynx where the air goes up the nasal or oral cavity and finally to the mouth where the...

Today let us expand our definition of effective communication.

The skills of effective communication, which include excellent use of language and grammar, saying what we mean and meaning what we say, are extremely valuable in a professional, public and sometimes personal context.

In personal relationships, however, the skills of effective communication may not be enough to connect authentically with others and to build relationships.

In personal relationships, I prefer to use the term Mindful Communication or Conscious Communication.

Mindful communication goes further than effective communication in building relationships.

Mindful communication is communication that is intentional, purposeful, conscious and compassionate. It is communication that comes from the heart and aims to reach the heart of another. To communicate mindfully means to have a "heart to heart" with another human being.

To communicate mindfully we focus on:

Self-empathy: a deep and compassionate awareness of our...

"Effective communication" is a buzz word in psychology and self development literature. A quick Google search on effective communication resulted in about 74,600,000 results in 0.63 seconds - yes that is 74 million plus results!

Clearly this is something that we human beings care about and are concerned about.

At some level, we know that communication is what connects us to others of our species. We can sense that we can meet our human need for connection if we can be understood by, and in turn, understand those who matter to us.

The impact of our communication skills, of course, goes way beyond intimate relationships. In the workplace, in the community, in leadership roles and in the world, our effectiveness as a human being depends greatly on our ability to communicate with others.

Something that is so intrinsically tied to our success and wellbeing should just come naturally, right?

Turns out that while the ability to communicate is a God-given gift, the ability to communicate...