It seems, that being great at communicating is common sense for everyone I meet and speak too, but very few people actually master this skill in a way that creates pleasant vibes between two loving people. We often take words and communication for granted and think that the other person “should” know what we think, without actually making it clear to them first. So in order to dig a little deeper and understand why communication is so vital in a relationship we first need to look at the different types of communication we get across in our daily lives.

What are the different types of communication?

If we break this word up into the different types of communication, we would get 4 categories which all consists of a “sender” a “Message” and a “receiver”. Each of the categories has a different medium where they send this message and we all stumble across these 4 types in our everyday life. Maybe we are not being aware of them at first, but in order to improve our communication skills, it is important to understand, that it is not only the spoken word which exist.

Visual Communication: art, drawing, charts, graphs, presentation
Verbal Communication: Face-to-face, telephone, Radio, Podcast, TV, Other Media
Non-verbal Communication: body language, gestures, how we dress, act, our scent
Written Communication: Letters, email, social Media, books, magazines, internet

How Is A Communication Created?

In order to create a communication there has to be a “sender” a “Message” and a “receiver”. The Sender and Receiver can be many different things, situations and persons. As an example, we actually don’t have to be in the same room as the receiver and we often don’t even know the person or people we communicate with. Communication is wired into our existence and we do it all the time, all day long.

Imagine this; You wake up and scroll through your social media platform. You are now receiving all these “messages” through pictures, written content and maybe even in a video or a podcast. You then open the Radio and hear your favorite program while preparing for work. Then you commute to work where you meet thousands of people in the bus, on the street or in the coffeeshop.
All these situations are communication.

You might not be the person actively sending out communication yet, but you have been on the receiving part of the communication circle for a few hours already.

The message maybe wasn’t intended to you directly, but you still saw it, read it or heard it, and trust me – your brain has digested it and your mood might have changed due to these messages.
Your subconscious has been overloaded with messages all morning BEFORE you have even said a word or written any emails or actively send any messages yourself.

Except you have! Without being aware of it. How you smell, how you dress and how you stand, sit or walk is sending millions of small signals out to the other people on the street walking pass you.
So do you see now how communication is an integrated part of who we are as human beings? Without it, we would simply not exist!

How Can I Improve My Communication Skill?

Now we come to this interesting question, that I have had for a while. While we do not want to be fixated about what other people think of us, feeling judged and weight down, I do though believe, that we need to be aware of how we come across to another person.
Let’s go further and see how you can improve each of the 4 types of communication:

Visual: art, drawing, pictures, charts, graphs, presentation.

A Visual Communication is anything you do without words (both spoken and written form). A perfect example is Instagram. If you want to improve your visual communication, dig deep into yourself and decide how you want to express yourself and who you are in your pictures. Would you like to show skin? Do you want to be more professional? How much of your private life do you want to share ecc.

Personally, I have been through this process not too long ago. I had to understand who I was and therefore how I want to express myself in social media. I think it is important to decide this based on yourself, not how you feel society pushes you to be or show up as. To find and live in Integrity and alignment, is the biggest gift you can give yourself and if you are scared if people will like you or if you will loose certain positions or friendships, please do not take for granted the power of being who you are. You will feel free, happy and very light and you will attract the right people, for you in your life by doing so.

Verbal: Face-to-face, telephone, Radio, Podcast, TV, Other Media.

Verbal Communication is the most “normal” one and probably the type of communication that people think about when the word “communication” comes up. Verbal communication includes every spoken word, both recorded and in the present moment. If you want to improve this type there are a few factors to consider.

First and foremost your mood. When your mood changes, so does your communication and if you are annoyed, angry or irritated your cells in your body are closed and you often say something that you later on regret. So a good way to improve this, is to count to 10 when feeling angry. Take a breath in and respond instead of react. It is easy to lash out on the other person right away, but often it is wisely to not do that and instead take, what I like to call “the purposeful pause”. A great Mentor once taught me this trick as “Mind the gap”-exercise. When you step into the train there is a small gap and there you have your little pause, which is the secret to either reacting or responding. Have this in mind when you are in this situation next time.

The other thing to consider is your health. Both your physical health, as you might feel tired and exhausted when getting the wrong nutrition, but also your mental health. We are easily influenced by what we see and hear, so try to be very aware of how much time you spend on following other people lives instead of living your own. Spending less time following other people’s lives can really free you up and your mental health will improve tremendously.

Between stimulens and response is a space. And in that space lays the power and freedom to choose our response.
In those choices lays our growth and happiness.

Stephen R. Covey

–

Author Of 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People

Non-verbal: body language, gestures, how we dress, act, our scent, what we stand for

Have you ever heard of the 7% – 38% – 55% Rule? It is a concept that states, that 7 % of communication is the words we say. 38 % is the tonality of how we present the words and a shocking 55 % is our body language and therefore the non-verbal communication form.

That means, that our body language actually is the most important medium of communication. To improve how we communicate, we therefore need to look into how we show up in terms of clothing, scent ecc. but more importantly which gestures we do. How we sit, move our arms and especially facial expressions as well.

Without knowing It, we constantly change our facial expressions and send thousands of signals a minute, only with the face. That is why you often can get annoyed by another person just by looking at them, because their gestures triggers a feeling within you.

Written: Letters, email, social Media, books, magazines, internet

This blogpost is a great example of written communication. I have put effort and time into creating this article and now you are reading it. Written communication is everywhere and we use it to exchange information, learn, express ourselves, among others.
We learn how to read and write in school, and we write different compare to the receiver we have in mind for our text. Therefore, if you are looking to improve you written communication first you need to understand to whom you want to write. Is it a children book or poem, a professional CV for a work you are committed to do, a blogpost, a text message to your best friend or a newspaper article for the business section?

Surely your language, the choice of words and as well the length of the text must change regarding.

What Are The Benefits Of Good Communication Skills?

There are direct and indirect benefits of improving your communication skills.

Direct Benefits include areas like:

• Increased productivity
• Avoid misunderstandings
• Greater levels of trust
• Improve satisfaction
• Create intimacy
• Build and maintain relationships
• Reduce conflicts
• Strengthen bonds

Indirect Benefits include areas like:

• Attracting the right people in your life
• Creating more wealth for yourself
• Live a happier life
• Feel in integrity with yourself
• Feel free
• Be connected with your true self
• Thrive and live in flow
• Engage and inspire people around you
• Increased self confidence

Great communication skills really do have a huge impact on our lives directly, but as you see above, it also has an immense improvement of our lifestyle as a whole. Once you start being aware of a 360-degree communication flow around you, you can change or simply just improve the type of communication you need and you will change your life for the better.

Do remember though, that society and language is in a constant change and therefore our skills need to adapt to the change of society. There is no right and wrong, there is only right and wrong for you and you will make mistakes often. We all do! But you will learn, as well as grow from them and slowly you will find your style of communication where you live in flow, create intimate relationships around you and attract and influence the right people in your life.
That is an amazing feeling and I wish you all the best of luck in the search of yourself.

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