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How to Become a Master at Communication

In this week’s communication tip, I talked about my son, a semi-professional musician, who teaches History by day and plays guitar in restaurants by night. 

I can’t tell you how amazing he is – you would just think I am just biased. I could tell you for instance that:

he has mastered not only the 6-string but the Brazilian 7-string guitar
he knows hundreds of songs in English and Portuguese by heart – chords, and lyrics.
I marvel at how he moves up and down the neck without even looking at where he places his fingers,
he can transpose a song into any key
he can listen to a song once and play along the second time
and I could go on. 

But you might say it sounds like I’m bragging about my son, and you might be right. If you watched this week’s video, however, you heard that I also was making a huge point. You see, despite how good of a musician he is and how well he has mastered the guitar, he practices his core basic scales very slowly every day, up and down for a minimum of 20 minutes!

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Be Interested – PLEDGEtalk Thoughts

In this week’s Tune-up Tuesday video tip I spoke of wanting to spend some time with a man I have only known mostly at a distance – so we did a breakfast together just a few weeks ago. I spoke further about the impact he made on me by how much time he took to express interest in me, rather than seek my interest in him.

This same man turned out to be the speaker I heard this week – at a gathering called Impact Wichita. His name is Damon Young.

I was struck by a number of points Damon made, but one big takeaway for me was listening to him speak of how we are ALL important…even that person whom we might deem to be less important. Hearing about Damon through the person who introduced him, and then listening to Damon share, I heard more of how and why he values others and takes the time to be interested in them. I was stirred and grateful to have heard him speak.

As I write this, I think how ironic it was/is that he spoke at a gathering entitled IMPACT Wichita. Here’s why:

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Exercising PLEDGEtalk

In this week’s Tune-up Tuesday communication tip, I talked about taking note of those relationships or those moments in relationships that aren’t going well.

Don’t ignore those moments!

Take note of them and exercise the principles of PLEDGEtalk in hopes of restoring the relationship.  You can watch that video HERE if you missed it.

Easier said than done.

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Slow Down – and think HOW to communicate!

As a marriage counselor for over 30 years.  I have spent a lot of time listening to what people are frustrated about, and observing how they communicate those frustrations to their spouse. My concern is we don’t spend near enough time thinking about the HOW.

Emerson Eggerichs, author of Love and Respect for marriages, says that a husband or wife could say just about anything to their spouse if they thought long and hard about HOW they were going to say it.

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Debate or Dialogue? Which will it be in your next conflict?

Debate or Dialogue? Which will it be in your next conflict? It’s a really important question for all of us today! Here’s why:

I am writing about an idea that occurred to me just a few weeks ago.

So there I was in a conflict with my wife and noticed something. I was communicating in a way that was meant to drive home my point. (I failed at the number one step I teach in PLEDGEtalk – that of Pausing when you find yourself in a conflict!) When Zerrin replied with her own thoughts, I came back again to make my point clear. To my chagrin, I had gotten no closer to convincing her of my point than after the first time. Why? What was going wrong?

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ANXIETY? You can do THIS to find calm.

Not sure about you, but my anxiety level goes up and down in life a lot, and even more so these days with CV19.

​The latest for me has been my daughter’s wedding. It is coming up soon–in Oklahoma. It’s been in the works for months but has created a lot of uncertainty for weeks now with the pandemic. Should we have postponed it or changed the date? How many people should we have invited? We had 250, then 60, then 10, then 30, and now – who knows? What really matters is that they get married, right? Yes? No? You get the point. All kinds of questions and uncertainties in my head.

​Or how about another source of anxiety – finances. They are a source of anxiety all the time for most, but especially during CV19. What happened to your retirement funds (if you had any in the first place)? Will they ever recover? Will you have a job yet throughout this year to provide for your family? Will the economy come back as some say it will or will it get worse? Will there be a second wave? Will it ever be the same as it was?