What’s the Point of This Communication?

What’s the Point of This Communication?

photo credit: Sergio Pani

There’s always a goal. In every communication, in every expression, there is always a goal. It may not be conscious and it may not be visible, but it is there. Whenever we communicate, we do it for a reason.

In both our business communication scenarios and our personal ones, our goals design and determine what we achieve, and what we receive. Through our language and logic, our (conscious and unconscious) goals reveal themselves; and through our resulting action, these goals are realized.

When we take the space to consider our goals before we take action and communicate, we support our selves in consciously creating effective communications. For when we consider what we want to achieve and why we are communicating, we’re taking responsibility for ensuring our expressions are authentic. And that we’re consciously creating the reality we desire.

4 Conscious Communication Goals

For your next communication, consider:

  1. Your Information: Are you sharing essential information?
  2. Your Motivation: Are you inspiring action?
  3. Your Professionalism: Are you elevating your credibility?
  4. Your Brand: Are you supporting your values and value?

If you’re answer is ‘No’ to any of the above, it’s probably a good idea not to communicate until you’ve done more internal work and can answer each with a ‘Yes’. In taking this space, each time you and/or your business chooses to communicate, you’ll feel confident you’re creating a growth opportunity.

photo credit: Sergio Pani

If I Deserve It

If I Deserve It

Judge

Despite my best efforts to prove the contrary, what I do (or do not) deserve is not in my jurisdiction. I don’t get to decide whether I am worth it. When Life provides me with something wonderful, it’s not my job (or right) to decide if I deserve it. That decision has already been made.

What I (or anyone) deserves is not in my authority. I am not the judge.

When I reject the good things in my life, when I decide something is too good to be mine, I am choosing my unconscious feelings of unworthiness. I’m deciding I’m not worth it, and I don’t deserve it. And if I’m not careful, I’m going to sabotage myself out of the gift I’m being offered.

It’s not in my jurisdiction to judge my worthiness. Whether I accept the gift or not, it’s already been offered to me. Not feeling I deserve it is besides the point.

Choosing gratitude.

To bypass these nagging questions of worthiness, and to grow the good things I receive from Life, I’m improving my focus on gratitude. When I look to my gratitude, I see how it supports me in avoiding the rejection and sabotage my unworthiness creates. In choosing to be grateful for, rather than questioning, what I deserve, I gracefully accept my gift and bypass my unworthiness.

Standing in my gratitude, I understand the truth — this gift is mine to have. Life has deemed it so. Whether I am deserving or not, my real work is to accept this gift with as much grace as I can.

photo credit: Joe Gratz

Reaching for Perfection

Reaching for Perfection

Perfection

Many of us dream of reaching perfection, not realizing the cost of it. Many of us dream of the day we can banish our imperfections from our lives.

Perhaps, you too feel you’d be happier without your imperfections. I’m certainly not here to disagree. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve your Self.

But there is a difference between transforming your imperfections, and removing them.

Transforming them allows you the ability to choose to see your imperfections in a different light. In recognizing them clearly, you can begin to feel different about them, and to empower your Self to use them differently.

Removing or denying your imperfections, however, un-grounds you from the truth of your Self, and the reality you’re trying to ignore. By removing and denying your imperfections, you’re removing and denying your ability to feel different about them, and to change them.

In one, your reaching for imperfect perfection; in the other, you’re reaching for impossible perfection. One nurtures, while the other destroys, your sense of Self.

You can feel different. You can grow in your perfection. You have the power to change what you do not like about your Self. But to do so, the changes — and changing — must first come from within you.

You must face and embrace your imperfections. You must be willing to see them. In doing so, you can learn how to be with them and how to use them differently. In embracing your imperfections, you begin the process of transforming them into something of beauty. Something imperfectly perfect. As defined by You.

Reaching for your perfection is not easy. Transforming your imperfections is hard. But it’s the cost of realizing your dreams, and it’s always a goal worth working on.

photo credit: Michael Coghlan

A Taker’s Approach

A Taker’s Approach

photo credit: Heleri

When I share I practice with Pay What It’s Worth pricing, I often receive one of three perspectives: The Giver loves it and is intrigued by it; the Matcher is curious, has questions, and wants to know more; and the Taker gets angry.

It is the Taker’s perspective, for me, that’s absolutely fascinating and holds a wealth of information… Perhaps more so than the people and perspectives who are open to the idea.

Being taken from hurts. Being a Taker hurts too.

The Taker’s perspective tells so much about the human condition, and how we as individuals process and express our collective feelings of separation and of lack. The Taker is extremely victimized by their feelings of lack, and they’re not yet capable of constructively processing them. The Taker lives within each of us — we experience it in the places in our life where we have, in fear, not yet owned our responsibility. It’s more than we’re capable of handling in the moment.

In the context of money and pricing, the Taker thinks and feels it’s stupid to not set prices. Their perspective is: humans are inherently not fair, nor generous. The Taker challenges the validity of, the sustainability of, and the authenticity of not setting prices, and they challenge my own authenticity as a seller, for choosing it.

The Taker does not believe I could be truly be happy with what they give, nor will I feel it’s fair. This perspective perfectly reflects their own story about relationships, and more specifically about money and finances, and it justifies their own actions in relationship. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, really. They ‘know’ they won’t be fair, and so they question how I could possibly be happy with what they give. In not being capable of fairness or balance in their own relationships, they project this lack onto me, and everyone else.

Engaging in emotional jeopardy.

The Taker, rather than look at their own feelings, thoughts, and actions, instead looks elsewhere, at something external; such as at me and my offerings. Rather than observe their own intentions and actions in relationship, they look for the inevitable holes in mine. When allowed, they use this vulnerable space to show their Ego that others take in the same way they do. When given the freedom, the Taker uses this space to justify their behaviour and to feel victimized by the relationship — either by assuming they must take more than is fair in order to survive, and/or by feeling that they haven’t received enough.

The Taker is not yet capable of investing in fair exchanges and balanced relationships. They lack boundaries and a sense of responsibility. And when allowed by others, like me, they will unconsciously use their exchanges and relationships as a mirror to confirm what they already ‘know’.

The Taker’s immense value.

In recognizing the importance of the Taker’s perspective, I’m being emotionally self-protective. In being self-protective, I’m enabling myself to remain emotionally self-aware and self-nurturing without being hurt or taken advantage of by others. In caring for myself in this way, I’m simultaneously supporting the Taker in re-writing their story. For I’m not engaging in the drama of their Taking, perpetuating it and co-creating it. In remaining attentive to the person, and their drive to Take, and interacting with them in realistic ways, I’m not putting myself in emotional jeopardy. I’m co-creating healthy relationships, and I’m supporting the Taker in their healing and recovery.

Creating the balance you need.

The Taker has the powerful ability to show you where your boundaries need to be strengthened and transformed, to ensure you are truly creating relationships of mutual fulfillment. Interacting with your Taker will guide you in creating the balance your relationships need.

photo credit: Heleri