The 4-Step Shortcut to Good Communication Skills (The R.E.A.P. Formula)

https://youtu.be/4DQySecbFXg

All of us know that having effective communication skills is important, although some of us may not be sure how and why.

We are used to hearing that getting a high salary and scoring high marks in exams are indicators of ‘success’ – but we might not be aware that our communication skills have a huge part to play in our ‘success’.

Effective Communication Skills Might Land You a Better Job or Get Better Grades

According to research, ‘Excellent Communication Skills’ is one of the topcriteria that employers look for in a potential employee. This means that Communication Skills should be taught from a young age.

Sadly, many educators strongly prioritise the academics and exams – and sometimes, life skills such as communication skills are taught as an…afterthought.

When I was a counsellor, I noticed that students with stellar communication skills tend to be more cheerful, more resilient, surrounded by reliable friends and are well-liked by teachers.

From a practical point of view… it helps a whole lot when we have people willing to help us, willing to cooperate with us and if we are well-liked and respected. Having a satisfying school life, work life and social life become (almost) effortless.

Strong communication skills, coupled with good grades or work ethic, is a recipe for excellence.

Most of us would want this for ourselves and our children.

So how do we start attaining ‘effective communication skills’?

The R.E.A.P. Formula for Effective Communication Skills

1. Respectful

Being respectful to others is a no-brainer. This means viewing everyone – regardless of status – as someone who has something valuable to teach us.

(Even the seemingly nastiest person we know teaches us something – for eg: patience, tolerance and resilience.)

People might have different opinions from us – but this is not an invitation for us to argue with them to prove that we are ‘right’. It takes immense strength to not react when someone has a different opinion from us regarding a topic.

It helps to accept that people may not view the world through the same lenses as we do. We don’t have to agree with everyone, but we respect that everyone has a right to their own viewpoint.

2. Empathy

This means to be sensitive to other people’s feelings. If a colleague just got demoted (and is upset about it) whereas we received a pay raise, this is not the best time to go to that colleague to ‘share’ our good news.

Some might argue and say that we should express our happiness no matter what – and the other upset colleague should automatically be ‘happy’ for our good news.

Let’s do a role-reversal: Would we feel better or worse if a colleague flaunts her pay raise to us when we just got sacked? It probably feels terrible as much as we want to be happy for our colleague.

Human beings are complex in nature. In theory, we know that we should feel happy for that colleague… but in reality, we’ll most likely feel down in the dumps.

Emotions tend to drive most of our decisions as human beings.

Being empathetic means being able to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. And being able to decide which questions are appropriate to ask and which aren’t. How to give negative feedback. And when to stop talking about a certain topic and move on to the next.

3. Active Listening

What is active listening? In simple terms, it includes paraphrasing and asking questions.

Paraphrasing is a common technique used by counsellors. Basically, you summarise your partner’s story in your own words. This means that a) we need to listen closely and b) the other party will feel understood when talking to you.

Asking questions is another way of showing your interest in the other person’s story.

You can ask close-ended questions, open-ended or specific questions. The best questions to ask are definitely open-ended and specific questions.

Example of a close-ended question (or a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ question) : ‘Did you go to work today?’

Open-ended question: ‘What do you like about the food at that new Italian restaurant?’

Specific Question: ‘You mentioned that you started a consulting business. What is your niche area?’

I think the examples above are pretty self-explanatory.

4. Positive statements

It’s easy to criticise and pass negative judgement about something or someone. That’s because our brains have a ‘negative bias’ – a tendency to focus on the negative aspects of life to ‘protect’ us from harm.

Having effective communication skills means that we utter more positive statements than negative ones. In fact, according to research, the ideal praise-to-criticism ratio is 5 to 6 positive remarks to 1 negative remark.

If you are a leader of sorts, you might want to consider giving your colleagues 5-6 affirmations before giving that 1 constructive criticism.

This makes it more likely for your colleagues to listen to you and be open to your suggestions. This high praise-to-criticism ratio is a characteristic of high-performing teams.

(The low-performing teams have a praise-to-criticism ratio of 0.36 positive comments to 1 negative comment).

People are also more motivated to perform well when they are affirmed or acknowledged to have done something right.

The R.E.A.P. Formula is a basic but practical start to attain some good communication skills.

As mentioned above….

Effective communication skills + Good Grades or Work Ethic = Big achievements

Have a good week!

We all hate to be criticised. At some point, we will face criticism – be it at work, in school or even by close family members.

If you are a critical person, chances are you are very hard on yourself and criticise yourself a lot. Being overly-critical does not make us an intelligent person – ironically, it makes us seem uptight and petty. Sooner or later, people will stop hanging out with us because critical people are just not fun to be with.

On the flipside, when we get criticism, we all react differently – some of us will counter attack, some of us will be defensive, whereas the open-minded ones will reflect.

How should we handle criticism in school or at work such that it serves us?

1. Be calm and open

Do not shoot your critic immediately. Be open minded and see whether there is any truth in that criticism.

This is a humbling act. But it expands our minds and if the criticism is true, we can use this opportunity to improve ourselves. It also makes us more aware of our flaws, if the criticism is indeed true.

If you feel angry and upset by the criticism, take about 30 minutes to calm down first before replying or you might say something you regret.

2. Decide if the criticism is fair or unfair

If your critic has your best interest at heart, you can listen to him. If your critic is giving you useless feedback based on his envy, insecurity or lack of knowledge, you can take his criticism with a pinch of salt. It’s just another form of bullying.

3. Get help if needed

Harsh criticism, name-calling, insults, put-downs are a form of bullying and emotional abuse.

Be aware that someone who is constantly bullying other people is someone who was likely to be bullied in the past. A person like this is insecure and gets the feeling of power and superiority by attacking someone whom he sees as quieter, milder or ‘weaker’.

It’s not easy to run away from him if you see him everyday at school or work. Thus, get the help from relevant people if you need to.

In conclusion…

It’s safe to say that some people are critical by nature and nobody and nothing will ever make them happy.

They will always find some nitty-gritty detail to pick on. These people are probably very critical of themselves as well and constantly bullying their own selves inside.

Hopefully we can all accept that making mistakes is part of learning, it’s part of life and be easy on ourselves and be easy on other people as well.

Have a good week.

How to Stop Comparing Ourselves with Others (and be happy where you are)

Comparing ourselves with other people is a natural thing to do. It’s also the fastest way to kill your own happiness. With social media, it’s so easy to compare ourselves with the perfect pictures that other people post online.

So why is it not good for us?

When we compare our own weaknesses with another person’s strength, it’s a losing game.

A person your age might be running a lucrative business and you are not working, for example If you compare yourself with him, you might be beating yourself thinking I should have done this, I should have achieved that, I feel like a failure etc.

Well…you might not be talented at business like your friend, but you might have a gift for something else. So your friend adds value to society by offering his business services whereas you can add value by sharing your talent or skill – be it teaching, cooking, care-giving or anything else.

There is no point comparing yourself with him because you are both likely talented in very different areas.

I have chosen 3 ways for us to stop comparing ourselves with other people.

1. Know yr blessings

This is so cliche, but be aware of your own blessings. There are other people out there who think u are lucky – maybe you have a loving family, a supportive husband, genuine friends, you have well-behaved children or u are doing a job you love. So your friend may be running a multi million dollar business, but you have a group of genuine friends who love u for u are – which your successful friend might or might not have. Everyone is blessed in different ways.

2. Stop Yourself

If you catch yourself comparing yourself with another person, take a deep breath and pause for a bit. Don’t beat yourself up for thinking that way but acknowledge that you are now comparing yourself to your friend Wendy and gently change the focus of your thoughts.

3. Be Happy for Others’ Achievements

It’s easy to feel envious when a friend has achieved something that we secretly want to achieve as well. If you feel envy, it’s good to be upfront and say, ‘I wish I have the same success as you! I’m so envious.’ When you are honest about your envy, it feels as though a weight has been lifted off your shoulders and it’s the first step to improving yourself. Also, celebrate your own successes. Share with trusted people if you feel good about a job promotion, if you have a pay raise and so on.

So essentially, life is not a competition, it doesn’t matter if you are up in the ranks or make the most money or not. Let’s face it – as long as you have people who love you, health, a place to live, food, you are blessed. And I’m sure many of you watching this have all of that and more.

So the 3 steps to stop comparing yourself with others are 1) Know your blessings 2) Stop yourself 3) Be happy for others’ success

Have a good week.

4 Basic Ways to Bounce Back from Embarrassing Mistakes and ‘Failures’ (Resilience)

https://youtu.be/BUXj0v8MoI8

Why is resilience important ? Let’s face it, we can’t avoid certain stressful events from happening.

At times we will make mistakes and fail at something. This is normal and part of life.

For some of us, we brush away challenges and failures very easily. For the rest of us, setbacks make us feel depressed and we give up.

So how do we be more resilient?

When I was a school counsellor, I noticed a few key factors which set strong students apart from the not-so-strong ones.

Firstly, strong-minded people practise reframing. How do we reframe? Ask yourself after a setback: ‘What do I learn from this setback?’. ‘What will I continue to do or not do after this experience?’ ‘How can I be a better, stronger person after this?’

Secondly, gain perspective. On a Scale of 1 – 10, how would you rate this unpleasant experience? How will you feel about this 1 year from now? Will this event still matter 1 year from now? There will be some of us who will worry what other people think of us and our ‘failures’. Well guess what. Other people are too busy living their lives to think extensively about you. So don’t let your past mistakes haunt you till today.

Thirdly, recall your past successes. You have had many successes – big and small – in the past. Recall them to build your esteem. Ask yourself to remember a time when you had to cope with a difficult situation. What helped you to overcome that challenge? If you could overcome your fears and setbacks in the past, you can overcome this.

Lastly and fourthly, lighten up and see the humour in setbacks and mistakes. Even the most successful person you know has made mistakes. In fact, successful people are likely to make more mistakes than the average person. They learn and grow very fast with every mistake they made.

As you can see, building resilience takes practise and takes time. It does not happen overnight.

I hope these 4 resilience tips are useful to you.

Reframe your thoughts, get perspective, recall your past successes and see humour in your situations.

See you and have a good week.

3 Ways to Overcome Indecisiveness and Take Action

https://youtu.be/MroGtRlO4Ug

Feeling indecisive is frustrating.

It makes us stuck and not able to move forward. For some of us, it is due to perfectionism.

We want to make the most ‘perfect’ decision because we are immobilised by fear of failure. So how do we be more decisive?

Number 1: Stop overthinking.

Thinking for a long time does not mean the right answer will come. Instead, take action and adjust along the way. If needed, do a pros and cons list for your options – it helps to clear your mind.

Number 2: Choose a decision which makes you feel happy.

Sometimes we are influnced by other people’s opinions. For eg, you want to be an actress, but your father tells you that you ‘should’ be a teacher because you have a Masters Degree although you are not keen. So making decisions following others’ opinions is not going to work – you can’t unwant what you want.

Sooner or later, you will end up following your heart – might as well do it now.

Number 3: Reframe your thoughts.

This means, instead of being afraid of mistakes, we view mistakes as learning lessons. It’s okay to make the ‘wrong’ decision and fail.

Ask yourself what is the worst that can happen? Can you change your direction if you made the ‘wrong’ decision?

More likely, the outcome of the so-called wrong decision will not be as scary as we think.

I hope the 3 tips are helpful to you. Stop overthinking, choose a decisions which make you feel good and view mistakes as lessons.

Have a good week.