You can not, not communicate

You can not not communicate

Yes I know, it sounds like a brain teaser but it’s true… you can not not communicate.

Everything you do communicates something, even turning the other way, not saying anything and not showing any facial expression communicates something… I’ll leave it up to you to decide what that would communicate if someone did it to you.

Neuro-Linguistic Programmming is often accused of being manipulative as it teaches you to control your body language and be ‘in tune’ or ‘in rapport’ with the body language of others… yet as you can see even doing nothing is manipulating what you are saying… or not saying.

The truth is that NLP is a way to help communicate much better by actually meaning what you say, rather than communicating the wrong thing. So here are a  few classic examples of how people communicate the wrong thing.

  1. By accidentally ‘breaking rapport’ with the other person, for example by folding their arms while the other person has an open body posture.
  2. By saying things to kids like “Don’t slam the door” this has an embedded command to slam the door, plus our brain’s can’t process negatives… don’t think of pink elephants… oops too late, you see!
Telling others what NOT to do is a classic, simply rephrasing this to a positive makes all the difference, as there is then only a positive suggestion of what to do.
So tomorrow, think clearly about your language, be precise and let others know what you want them to do, rather than what you don’t want them to do.
Go on… I dare you!

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