Tag: Speaking

The sound of silence

Posted on by philipdodson

There’s a great song by Simon & Garfunkel called the ‘sound of silence’. It is all about people’s lack of ability to communicate – ‘People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening’.

It is interesting how often we do not really listen to what is actually being communicated to us, either verbally or by other signals. Either from our own inner voice or that of others.

Then when we get to the talking part, how often do we miscommunicate what we really want to say?

We often say things, either without thinking or knowing, where we are not saying what we truly think, because we are being held back by fear.

If we want to avoid silence in response to our communication, then we need to learn how to speak more effectively and articulate more clearly what we really want. In addition, we need to learn to actually listen and comprehend what is really being said to us by others and our own voice.

We need to think about how our messages will effect others and ourselves.

If our message is not being heard, or we are hearing nothing back, may be it is time to look at how we are communicating.

That one voice

Posted on by philipdodson

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We create something, we refine it, we polish and then we share it with the world. We have that feeling of accomplishment and pleasure in having finished it and shipped it.

We have overcome our doubting voices and then we hit the ‘publish’ ‘send’ ‘tweet’ and we wait. Or we do a talk and the audience clap and then we wait for the feedback.

We get a like, a favourite, a re-tweet and we’re happy. We get a lovely DM to say ‘really loved your talk’ or ‘a great post’ in the comments.

Often though, what we are really waiting for is the negative feedback, there must have been someone who didn’t like it.

Then it comes, either a comment after our talk or a negative feedback, a critic.

Then we go off into a spiral of doubt and we say I knew ‘I shouldn’t have said that’ or ‘included that section’, and so the list goes on.

There may have been 25 likes and one ‘dislike’, but it is the one dislike that we focus on in our heads.

Two things I have learnt.

1. not everyone is going to like our stuff, and that’s great as we are not here to create bland stuff for the masses.

2. the one voice does not matter, as the critics are sitting on the sidelines, while you are in the ring taking the ‘punches’ and being brave enough to do it.