Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Podcast where power is refined, impact sharpens and leaders move from success that performs to powerful legacy.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Alara Sage.
Today I want to talk about communication. Always a big conversation in anything to do with people, leadership teams, because it is literally how we can create together, how we can accomplish anything is through communication.
But I want to take the teaching of communication a little bit deeper because where most teachings are going to focus on how to communicate with another person or a group of people.
I want to point it back on yourself because here is the fundamental truth.
Your ability to communicate is only as good as your ability to hear yourself, AKA communicate with yourself.
Let me give you an example.
I have a program where people use a GPT to recognize where they are in the here and now so that they receive support in this state of being.
The biggest issue with this kind of program is that people don't actually know how to articulate what they're feeling. They don't know how to articulate what they're experiencing. And something that is very logically aligned as AI is cannot read them clearly.
So they misinform the AI and the AI misdirects them.
So now bring this concept into leadership or bring it into your intimate relationships, bring it into your teams, bring it wherever you want. And notice for a moment how a misunderstanding of what the problem is is then a miscommunication of that problem and then a direct either can't even begin to solve it because it's that miscommunicated or the solution doesn't hit the nail on the head because the solution is created from some perspective, some idea of where the problem actually originated from the source.
How many times have you experienced that in your life or in your business? Whether it's with your partner, Maybe you experienced this from the receiving side where your partner tried to express something and you tried to respond, but it wasn't right because their expression wasn't actually clear.
They weren't actually connected to what they were experiencing. Or maybe you have experienced this in your business or your teams.
So take a moment to notice and perhaps let your mind naturally bring up situations that you've experienced this because that's that lived experience, that's that, that's the wisdom that you've already experienced. What I'm speaking to here today.
Now let's come back to the origination you as the source of the communication.
What are you feeling?
Not in some superficial level of I'm hungry, I'm tired, an emotional level because you cannot communicate clearly if you don't know what you are feeling emotionally, period.
You also cannot communicate clearly if you don't know what you're thinking.
And to take that even deeper, believing.
Because in any given moment you not only have thoughts and feelings, you have beliefs about the experience.
And that belief equates to your perspective. You perceive your reality based on the beliefs that you have about yourself, about others, about your business, about money, about the world, about the economy, about politics, about everything.
And you perceive all of that through those beliefs.
So how can you communicate clearly when you cannot see that?
That is like you're looking at a book and you open up one page of that book and you read one page and you're expecting the entire teaching or story of that book to land it can't.
There might be some kind of an inclination. Depends on which page you pick, right? Some page might actually grasp quite a bit of it. Other pages would be totally abstract and obtuse and you wouldn't have a clue what the book was about or what the book was saying.
That's the equivalent to you not communicating with yourself.
So then when you go to communicate anything, you don't have the clarity of that communication.
You don't have the clarity of what you think about that experience, what you believe about that experience, what you feel about that experience. Now you are communicating from any one of those without the awareness of which one, first off? And second off, is that even really what you want to communicate?
So taking it back to the example of the program I have, or you might have again received this type of experience from your loved one or even a colleague or one of your co workers, where somebody expresses something to you and you misinterpret it.
Now there's two reasons why that misinterpretation happens. A their communication is not clear.
B you are perceiving their communication through a thought, belief or emotion that is distorting what they say.
That really opens a can of worms of communication, does it not? Now perhaps you can begin to recognize why communication is so challenging for people.
Why communication is so challenging for humanity at large.
Because when is it that two people are communicating with each other and have that level of self awareness that they are aware of their thoughts, their feelings and their beliefs in that moment and therefore can articulate what is actually what they desire to articulate rather than a belief, a thought, a feeling that is articulating for them without even them knowing.
Confusion, miscommunication, miscomprehension constantly.
And I see this a lot because I have the ability to hear beyond Words.
And I will listen to people communicate. And I can see where they are not communicating clearly.
Where one is feeling one thing, but they're saying something else. One other person is thinking one way but speaking a different way. And then the communication misses the mark.
Not because they're not trying, not because they're not present and listening and attempting to communicate, but because they only have the single page in the book, they're trying to articulate from a single page.
So how do you become a better communicator?
And it's not just you expressing yourself, right? Communication goes both ways. How do you become a better communicator? AKA how do you speak more clearly, articulate more clearly, and how do you hear, receive more clearly?
By being self aware.
By being clear on your own personal thoughts, beliefs and feelings in any given moment about any given situation.
Now this takes a lot of practice.
Self awareness is the most important skill that any leader could actually have.
Because when you become self aware, you become aware of self, which is the same as other humans. We are not separate.
You become aware on many levels of your being.
You are able to hear and feel and receive people in ways that the mind alone cannot.
So it takes a lot of practice.
But you can start this process by slowing down and spending some time with a given problem on your own.
So let's say you're having a problem with your partner, your intimate partner, whether it's your wife or your husband or your, you know, intimate partner.
Sit down and write out, what do you think about this problem?
What do you feel about this problem?
What do you believe about this problem?
Just write it up. No need to A, analyze the information, B, judge the information. Self awareness is not a state of judgment.
It's a state of the willingness to see, hear, feel, whatever, without judgment.
So write it down. Write down all your thoughts.
Let them just flow through you.
Write down all of your feelings. Write down all your beliefs.
Now read it.
Become aware. Period. That's it. Become aware. These are your thoughts, these are your feelings, these are your beliefs. None of that means that it's necessarily true. It may or may not be true, but that is the current perspective through which you are receiving any level of communication from your partner.
So what I mean is your partner says something to you and you are receiving that sentence through your thoughts, your feelings and your beliefs.
And you can see, once you see it clearly, you will see how you can perceive what they say in a twisted fashion.
Not twisted as in wrong or manipulative or anything like that, but simply slightly adjusted and you can, I recommend to first just write down it all first and then you can bring through what your partner said.
That's most powerful. If you can bring through exactly what they said, and you might have to ask them that because you will have received what they said through your thoughts, feelings and beliefs. And you may have heard different words than what they said. This is communication. That's how profound our perception is. We will hear it differently. If you go and you ask them, what did you say exactly? They'll say, oh, I said this. Well, no, no, no, you said this. No, that's not what I said. I said this word for word.
I remember you saying this, but they didn't. Because memory is a mechanism of the mind that is there to validate your sense of self, AKA your thoughts, your feelings and your beliefs. So your memory will always validate those three things.
Isn't that interesting? This is why people say, no, that's not what happened. Yes, that is what happened. Because both of those people are experiencing that same exact moment from different perspectives. And that perspective is based off of fundamentally what you believe, but it can also be expressed through the thoughts and feelings.
If you do this practice again, it's not about, okay, now what do I do with this information? It's about becoming aware.
The awareness is the skill.
Because now you can see. Now you could go and ask your partner, okay, let's have another conversation about this. Because now you're aware of the ways that you're trying to perceive their information. But that awareness creates a availability to the truth.
It's like a zoom out. You zoom out of those thoughts, beliefs and feelings and now you have more space for wisdom, truth.
So that zoom out of what awareness grants is all that is needed.
I guarantee if you were to practice this and then ask your partner again, or the person, let's have this conversation again, you would literally hear them differently. Maybe not completely differently. I'm not saying the conversation would be like as if it was having a completely different conversation, but you would hear it differently or you would hear something you didn't hear before.
That's awareness.
And the more that you practice this, the more you become able to do this in the moment so somebody can be speaking to you, you are actively listening. Simultaneously you are able to recognize your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs in the moment you have self awareness, which is granting you more availability to what is actually coming through in the most authentic way. Their words specifically as they are intending them to be heard, rather than a what they are saying, which often is misconstrued.
Or what you are hearing.
This is the reading beneath between the lines that I spoke about that I can do because I have that self awareness.
So I can hear somebody's words that are saying one thing and their intention behind those words, which, which could be completely different, they could have a completely different intention than the words that are coming out of their mouth.
If you cannot feel your feelings, how are you possibly a good communicator? You're not.
I don't care how great you think you are at communicating, this is the hard truth. You are not.
Because what that means is that there are emotions going on in your body that, that are affecting how you perceive your reality. You're just not aware of it.
Can you name the feeling? Not just feel it. Can you name it? That is emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence equates to communication.
There's a lot of people that A, can't feel what they feel and B, don't know. What are you feeling? I don't know.
That's not emotional intelligence. That's not clear communication. Right. If you say to somebody, how are you feeling? And they say I don't know, that's not a clear communicative exchange.
But that's what you're doing with yourself.
How am I feeling? I don't know. What are my thoughts? I don't know. What do I believe about this? I don't know. Complete disconnection of communication, full stop.
And then you are trying to articulate any of those three things or what you desire or what you want accomplished, or what you see or what you perceive or your opinion on any of that. From a state of absolute disconnection.
Ineffective.
Ineffective on the largest possible way, you are an ineffective communicator.
And this is all I see in humanity.
Largely because we're not self aware.
And yeah, it takes a lot of work.
Yeah, it takes, guess what? Looking at yourself.
Yeah, it takes practice. But this is mastery and this is true leadership. So if you want to stay relevant in the coming years, I recommend that you learn these skills. Because these are the people who are going to lead humanity are those who are self. Aware. Those who can communicate, both express and hear beyond the word, in this state of awareness. Awareness of self and therefore awareness of others.
Because there's a beautiful truth to this whole process I'm speaking of here today is. It's much more intimate.
Just consider that for a moment. For one intimacy with yourself.
Right again. Into me I see. Into me I see intimacy.
If you cannot into me, I see. You don't have intimacy not with yourself and not with anybody else.
Intimacy starts with yourself. Same as communication. It's the same. There's no difference here.
So when you have self awareness into me, I see now you, you can actually cultivate true intimacy with other people.
And intimacy is not just valuable, it is going to be the value moving forward in humanity. Because we have AI coming in, which is extraordinary. I'm all for it. But AI cannot.
AI cannot be intimate with humans because it lacks emotion. And therefore it lacks that connection to that experience of being human.
It will never get there. Once it becomes emotional, it's no longer artificial intelligence. One other topic. Anyways, with all of this AI, humans are going to crave.
Crave intimacy with the each other. Crave connection, crave the human experience. Because everywhere we turn it's going to be AI, AI, AI, AI. We want humanness.
Humanness.
This is humanness.
Humanness is your imperfect thoughts, your imperfect feelings, your imperfect beliefs. That's being human. Guess what? You're perfectly imperfect.
Any fear about seeing any of that because you are scared to recognize yourself will always hold you apart from the real game that we are playing on this planet.
And from a real level of leadership.
Intimacy with your people.
Intimacy.
Feeling them.
Feeling them beyond their words, hearing them beyond their words. They don't need to express it because you already feel it.
Then they feel seen.
Then they feel heard. You know what happens when somebody feels seen and heard? They show up.
They show up for the person that sees and feels them, hears them. Because it feels good. Who have you ever met that doesn't want to be seen and heard? And if they say they don't, it's a lie. They don't understand themselves.
They are disassociated. Because humans crave being seen and heard by each other. We crave intimacy. We crave into me. I see.
Crave it. We crave into me. You see, we're scared of it largely, but crave it.
So when you cultivate relationships of intimacy, people want to show up for you.
They want to get behind whatever you're doing.
That's what creates true leadership.
Not that you are leading from fear or control or some sort of hierarchy. You are leading because you're connected. And they want nothing more than to support you and do what you're asking and co create.
That is a beautiful state.
And that is what we speak to when we speak of communication.
It starts with self awareness. What am I thinking? What am I feeling? What am I believing about this moment or about this problem, or about this person or about this business or about the situation.
Play with it. You can take even something political.
Take a political idea or political problem or political situation. What do I think about it, What I feel about it, What I believe about it? Write it down and witness.
Look at it. Observe yourself. Period. That's it.
And practice, and practice, and practice, and practice.
And watch how your communication shifts at the core.
Not some idea, not some checkbox of how to communicate clearly. Actual, clear communication through the intimacy, the self awareness of self.
Chef's Kiss as always, thank you so much for being here.
Much love.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Power of Edge podcast with host Alora Sage.
Connect with us on Instagram at the Power Edge or on YouTube @aloRage.
