Effective Communication With NLP & The Enneagram

Two of the first self improvement books i read were Follow Your Heart and Being a Happy Teen by Andrew Matthews. These two rank among my favourite books, and i still talk about them in some of my trainings.

A chapter in Being A Happy Teen talks about how important it is to always give our best in what we do. Even if we do not succeed, we still feel a sense of happiness for giving our all. When you give your best, people can feel it, and they will appreciate it.

One story i remember fondly in the book talks about how, at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the world was brought to its feet by someone who totally personified the Olympic spirit. Eric Moussambani swam for Equatorial Guinea in the 100 meters event. The thing is, Eric has never seen an Olympic swimming pool before. He trains in a little hotel pool when there are no guests around.

During the heats, the other two competitors were disqualified for false starts, so Eric swam against the clock himself. It was the first time Eric had ever swum in a 100 meters race, and he was struggling to finish even the first lap! In the second lap, he was nearly drowning!

But Eric refused to give up, and fought with everything he could give. As he struggled his way back, the noise in the arena was deafening! With every stroke, the noise got louder. Some spectators were crying, some were praying, some could not even bear to watch. When Eric finally hit the wall, he brought the roof down!

Eric clocked a time of 1 minute 52 seconds, probably one of the slowest times in Olympic history. But did anyone care? No! He became a hero in everybody’s heart. Just by giving his best!

I’m sure many of us had such an experience before. When you were touched by the determination and courage of individuals, and couldn’t help but root for them. Of course, you might think to yourself, “But that’s the Olympics.. I’m just swimming in a small school meet”.

Well hey, do your best in a school meet, and someone will spot you and you might one day swim in the Olympics as well. Make it a point to give your best, however small scale it may be, and it’ll lead to the bigger stage.

Are you giving your best?

Very often in my trainings, i come across individuals who are not willing to give their best for various reasons. Here are some of the common ones,

“”The customers don’t deserve it” – If you think about it clearly, the customers don’t suffer because of the lack of effort. Usually the one who ends up on the losing end is the staff. A lot is at stake here. Morale, Reputation, Self Worth, Career, etc.

“I’ll put in more effort if my salary increases” – This is an interesting statement, because if I’m the boss, I’ll be looking at it the other way round. “I’ll increase your salary, when you put in more effort”.

“Nobody recognises my work, why should i work so hard?” – How do you know? You never know who is observing your work. And if you’re in customer service, you never know who your customer really is, and the potential opportunities that could be coming your way.

Of course, I’m not saying we should give our best because of secondary gains. The bottom line is, it is important to give our best because it builds up our character. Always giving our best builds up the respect for ourselves. We live our life with integrity and self worth, and results will show eventually.

What has Effective Interpersonal Communication got to do with Personal Mastery? Well, for a start, I strongly believe that what we communicate is a reflection of ourselves. As we all know, communication is made up of verbal and non-verbal elements.

The verbal element is all about the words that come out of us, which is not too difficult as long as you have a good grasp of your language. However, being a master communicator isn’t all about the words you use. I’m sure many of us have come across people who made us feel that what they say isn’t really aligned with what they are.

That brings me to my point. Effective communication is made up of many things, the words we speak is obviously one of them. In addition, our body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, these are things which can be seen or heard on the surface.

Going deeper, our beliefs, our identity, our personality, our character all adds up to the way we communicate. And crucially, these are things that make up who we are. Things that cannot really be seen on the surface, yet constituting to a potentially greater aspect of the communication that comes out of us.

So there you go. In order to communicate effectively, we must first live effectively. This site is dedicated to sharing the strategies of effective interpersonal communication through mastery of ourselves.

I’ve trained in countries across Asia and interacted with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures, and one consistent thing i noticed is that many people don’t realise they have total control over self excellence. Very often, an individual is let down by his or her own limiting beliefs, and they wonder why they could never achieve success. Of course, success is defined differently by every one of us. Be honest with yourself, are you denying yourself greater success because of limiting beliefs?

Through my postings, I’ll be sharing skills that you can apply in work and personal life, that will enhance the way you communicate. So let us embark on our journey towards effective interpersonal communication through self excellence and mastery!