Why It’s Hard to Communicate Well in Conflict When Stressed

If you’re like me, you find it hard to communicate in stressful moments. Scientifically, it is impossible to communicate well when under stress. The body experiences a primal response that agitates people in conflict. A stressed guy will tense his facial expressions, breathe shallowly, raise his voice, respond faster, and not think clearly. (If you controlled these, you wouldn’t be stressed). Not only does the tension hurt your communication, it also creates a viral effect as the emotional rigidity infects those you talk to.

Conflict is probably synonymous for you with stress. To be in conflict with someone is to be stressed. For me, however, I can have my mental and physical tension under control so I can communicate effectively to improve my relationships. If I don’t manage my stress, it inevitably gets the better of me, as it will to you.

Stress makes us mentally ill. A psychiatrist could diagnose you with depression, mania, psychosis, bipolar disorder, or another mental illness when you are stressed. The difference between you and someone diagnosed with one of these mental health problems is the time you and they spend in those states. A person diagnosed with depression feels down for most of the day while you may temporarily be depressed only when you are under loads of stress. No wonder it’s difficult to communicate well when stressed.

Fight, Flight, or Freeze Response

Stress in conflict evokes the fight, flight, or freeze responses. An argument, disagreement, or confrontation elevates tension as you yell, withdraw, stand confused. You do things you later regret.

Aggressive behavior towards another person temporarily feels okay, but then reality kicks in as you feel even more stressed from hurting the person. When you are submissive as you try your best to hide the tension, your suppressed emotions eat at you, which then hurts your relationships.

When under stress, your communication style will change in response to the situation. You can go from a cool, collected person one moment, yet when a stressful situation impinges your tolerable threshold your calm style can quickly shift to aggressive or submissive behaviors. What behavior you fall back on in stressful situations is the one comfortable to you in the past that offered momentary protection.

When someone has surpassed their tolerable degree of tension, telling them to get their act together or how ineffective their current communication is, does not work. It won’t work for you either. It’s human extinct to block out external factors, such as other people’s feelings, and listen to internal ones as your interpersonal communication skills decline. Better communication in intense conflict is a matter of managing stress otherwise it is next to impossible to deal with conflict.

“What Did I Say?” – Memory Loss and Other Dangers of Stress

Stress motivates us to take action, but it too often works against us. We yell, withdraw, or shut-down in tense communication. Our bodies produce cortisol, known as the “stress hormone”, to compel us into action. Without this double-edged hormone, we would accomplish little. If you are completely relaxed in conflict and untrained in good communication skills, you could overlook the problematic issue or give an unsympathetic response.

Research has shown cortisol to improve cognitive functioning. Too much cortisol, however, causes impairment. If you have ever forgotten what you said in a verbal fight, cortisol has literally shut off short-term memory. Cortisol obtrudes neurotransmitters that are chemicals responsible for communication between neurons and other cells. That is why you can memorize a speech 50 times and forget it when you present it. A stressful crisis temporarily results in a blank mind.

Stanford neuroscience professor Robert Sapolsky found that cortisol also causes long-term memory loss. When the receptors for cortisol located in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for long-term memory, gets flooded overtime, it melts like microwaved Swiss cheese.

The affects of stress are too numerous to list here. From rapid aging of the body and heart disease, to poor sleep and skin conditions, the effects are real. You need to learn techniques to manage your stress; not just for your communication, but also for your health.

Stress Reduction Tips: 9 Key Lessons for Intelligent Stress Management

Because we have primal responses that arise deep from within our neurology, we need to attack the issue at that level. Thinking positively or talking yourself through stress isn’t going to reduce tension. I have developed nine effective ways and techniques to manage stress that you can use to keep calm in stressful moments so you can communicate better and live a happier life:

1. Prevention is the best cure. The best technique to deal with stress is to stop it before it begins. Create the appropriate measures, boundaries, and strategies to interrupt rising tensions. If the tension between two people rises beyond a safe level, one strategy is to pause, walk away, punch a pillow, and take slow deep breathes before commencing the conversation. You can incorporate other stress management techniques listed below into your plan to be more calm in conflict.

2. Accept your feelings. Never tell yourself you shouldn’t feel what you do. Do not say, “I shouldn’t be feeling stressed right now.” You must accept your feelings otherwise they will persist or repress into forms that severely affect your mental health and ability to effectively communicate. When you accept your stress, you move one step forward to taking personal responsibility.

3. Accept responsibility for how you feel. It is tempting and too easy to release your stress on other people. Do not treat people inappropriately. If you treat people in a way they don’t want to be treated, you make them tense, which they will be happy to put back on you.

Blame can only make you more stressed because anxiety is directly related to events within your control. What is beyond your reach makes you anxious. If you blame a spouse for making you angry by yelling, the only visible solution to you is for your spouse to lower his or her voice. Your anxiety and stress will continue to rise because you have little direct influence over your spouse’s voice.

When you accept responsibility, you eliminate blame. You live in truth. You do not become a victim of others. You take control of your feelings. Your new levels of responsibility cause you to do something about how you feel.

If someone causes you stress, address the person. Explain to them how you feel, why you feel that way, and what can be done to fix the problem. Do not worsen the problem by blaming them for how you feel, but focus on the problem. Be problem-oriented; not person-oriented.

4. Breathe. When tension in your body rises, you automatically take shallow breathes. This is one of the first stages prior to full fight, flight, or freeze responses that hurt effective communication. When your stress levels rise, take several deep, slow breathes and you will instantly reduce your stress levels.

5. Take time out. A walk away is guaranteed to refresh your mind. Don’t call for the travel agent to book a Caribbean cruise though, because a temporary break is all you need. Go for a walk or workout at the gym. Be active to release hormones that counter stress. Exercise is the body’s emotional reset button.

Absence from the situation that created the tension takes your mind off the problem and gives you clearer thoughts to attack the problem. Be sure to address the problem after your time out, however, otherwise you will only have temporarily avoided the real issue.

6. Be flexible. Stress is like the sunrise and sunset. It is inevitable. It is a part of your human body. Therefore, the best way to deal with it is to change your behavior and communication.

Be soft; not brittle. Recognize signals of stress by reading people’s verbal and nonverbal language, then adjust yourself accordingly. Be flexible by going a bit out of your way for them to assist their temporary needs and wants. Don’t run around the world for them, but do be more aware and respondent of them. This can lead you to less stress.

7. Discuss the problem afterwards. Combine this tip with the prior tip of remaining flexible and you have two keys to manage tense people. You need to address the problem following the stressful moment otherwise destructive, repetitious behavior occurs. Also, if there is someone you know that finds it difficult to manage their stress in communication, you can refer them to this article by clicking the “ShareThis” link at the bottom of this article.

8. Ask others about your responses in stressful moments. You are to do this because you cannot provide an accurate self-assessment when stressed. Your short-term memory loss makes it impossible to recall information.

Also, an awareness of your behavior can trigger a pattern interrupt. If the person says you consistently yell when stressed, raising your voice can trigger an awareness that your stress needs to reduce before the conversation continues.

9. Listen to binaural beats. Discovered by Heinrich Wilhelm Dove in 1839, binaural beats describes the low-frequency pulsations in the brain created by different frequencies played into each ear. The brain integrates the two sounds to form a third sound that relaxes the mind.

In terms of stress, binaural beats is a miracle. A correctly made binaural beat will scientifically make your brain produce alpha waves, which is the same brain wave you have when resting. That wonderful feeling you have when lying in bed almost asleep can be produced by binaural beats. Imagine how better your life would be by simply putting on a headphone the next time you’re stressed as you enter a relaxed state at will!

If you’re after binaural beats, Paul Kleinmeulman has a good program that includes a series of binaural beats for different purposes. You can check out his program here, where you will learn more about the proven science behind binaural beats, which can make you motivated, sleep better, intensify your focus, learn efficiently, and keep relaxed.

Conflict does not need to be synonymous with stress. Neither has to make you miserable. Stress can be a good thing – just like conflict is good for creativity, openness, and growth – when it is controlled with the above tips.

Your body experiences stress because it is threatened in conflict. Do something about it. You don’t want to feel the same way in a fight as you do when watching the Simpsons. Harness this primal response and you will be communicating more effectively in your next confrontation.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. How to Manage and Deal with an Aggressive Boss
2. The Complete Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Process for Compassion, Understanding, and Peace
3. The Benefits of Communication Skills
4. How and When to End a Long-Term Relationship
5. Getting Over a Relationship Break Up

“Hang out the washing”, “Stop moping around and cheer up”, “Fix what you broke”, “You need to improve your skills with customers”, “You need to get a new attitude”, “Obey your mother and father”. There are four reasons why such statements kill your relationships.

4 Reasons We Hate Receiving Solutions

The most common communication barrier people use to send solutions is advice. We give advice to help a person or to get things done, yet the outcome is destruction. Whether you’re a child or parent, brother or sister, employee or manager, we hate receiving advice and being told what to do for four reasons:

1) Loss of control. The other person takes the reigns of our life as they control what we do. No one likes being controlled – it impedes their freedom. To be in control of one’s life is a fundamental human need. Psychologists say the more you’re in control of your life, the happier you’ll be.

If you get controlled, you respond with rebellion. Humans seek to reestablish freedom by engaging in a threatened behavior. You may refuse to carry out the order, do the task poorly, procrastinate, or blame others for the task not being completed. Your response to being controlled is natural human behavior, unhealthy for relationships. Rebellious behaviors strain relationships – pulling on the fabric that binds a peaceful relationship.

An insurgent individual causes the person giving advice to continue giving their solutions because no change has occurred, which furthers defiance. The problem is not the nonconforming person, but the stubborn person blind enough to continue controlling the individual. “They just keep doing the same goddamn thing that doesn’t work and worsens and perpetuates the problem,” says Robert Fisch, author of Brief Therapy with Intimidating Cases: Changing the Unchangeable. “What people are doing is ‘common sense’ to them. People say ‘it’s the only thing to do.’” We need to stop attempted ways of changing people that fail to work.

2) Feelings of inferiority. A side-effect of being controlled is feeling inferior. We feel like a lesser person when we lose control of ourselves. Solutions and advice prevent people from feeling good about themselves and developing a healthy self-esteem.

We seek to feel important. To make a man hate you, simply take away what makes him feel good about himself. Tell him what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, then you’ll have yourself a lifeless human doing, not a human being.

3) The problem is not obvious. Humans are complex creatures. Even our simple processes are complex. Has someone ever given you a piece of advice on a serious emotional problem? The person tried to help you, but you became frustrated because he or she “just didn’t get it”.

Chances are you didn’t change. You probably rebelled against the person to regain freedom. As a result, things got worse. You became angry, silent, or defensive. Perhaps the person then tried even harder to assert their way of thinking was right, but this only pushed you further from where they wanted you to be. They didn’t understand what you were going through. I know, I’ve been there.

Advice subtly communicates the solution to your problem is obvious. It communicates you must be stupid, incompetent, and inferior to overlook the solution. Aeschylus, an ancient Greek playwright in 500 BC, said, “It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.”

When you’re tempted to send a solution to someone, remind yourself that you don’t know the whole story. Even when you think you know the truth, you probably only know one side of the story – your story. Why? This leads us to the fourth reason people hate receiving solutions from others.

4) People are oblivious to the truth. Human behavior and everything we experience is like an iceberg. An iceberg’s visible tip is 10% of the entire iceberg because the ice’s density is less than the sea water’s density. The remaining 90% of the iceberg is below the water’s surface, not visible to the common eye. How the 90% of the iceberg is shaped cannot be determined by looking at the iceberg’s tip.

Our likeness to an iceberg is a double-edged sword. On one side, most people never concern themselves with understanding the 90% of a person or story difficult to see upfront. They prefer to focus on themselves, stick with what they know, and never seek to fully understand people. We don’t follow or become inspired to change by someone that doesn’t understand us.

On the other side of the iceberg of human behavior is tremendous potential for you to connect with people in a way they have likely yet to experience. People’s poor ability to understand others stores further energetic potential to have them connect with you. When someone hides what matters to them in the dark from fear of being told what to do, your understanding through empathetic communication shines a light on their life to open them up.

Unfortunately, very few people know these secrets of communication. That is why they are secrets. Most people try to make knock-out blows by giving advice, criticism, and other communication barriers. They hope to change people and their relationships through solutions, yet all this does is make people hate them and resist change.

What I have discussed here is only the first of five solving barriers people use almost everyday in their communication. This is not even 1% of information I share in my communication secrets program that teaches you how to become a charismatically persuasive people magnet. There is more to the advising barrier, four other solving barriers, and an additional seven judging and avoiding barriers people use to kill their relationships, reduce their persuasive power, and decrease their charisma.

If any of this resonates a message in your life, you’re sick of misunderstanding people, and you’re tired of people resisting your helpful advice, and you want to know the true way to change people, I encourage you to learn about my Communication Secrets of Powerful People program here.

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See if you can find a link between the following short scenarios: Your partner leaves the room in anger after another argument; A friend lashes out at you despite you having done nothing wrong; Your children’s constant disobedience makes you extremely frustrated and causes you to yell and do things you regret.

Why do the above scenarios, or similar situations, constantly play out in your life? There are thousands of situations like the ones listed above that all have a common thread. We know there is a better way to handle the situation, but we cannot figure it out. Our emotions often get the better of us as we poorly handle the situation. We know something is wrong and that we can fix it, but how? The answers to these questions and the secret human need I will show you how to fulfill is through a method of communication called “nonviolent communication”, also known as NVC.

An Overview of Nonviolent Communication: Your Key to Compassionate Communication for Shared Understanding

The process I am about to discuss in this article is one created by the Center for Nonviolent Communication. The organization is a nonprofit organization founded by Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Rosenberg and a couple hundred other NVC trainers, conduct workshops throughout the world where they teach people their nonviolent communication model. The NVC process has changed millions of people who learned the techniques directly from trainers or Rosenberg’s book, and people who have been fortunate enough to have those trained in the NVC process use the model on them.

If you are after a process that changes a person’s behavior, NVC is not the best one to use. NVC builds a deep intimate relationship and connection with effective communication by satisfying people’s needs. It achieves a level of connection most people never experience. It can be used to change a person’s behavior, but the primary purpose of the process is to help people face what matters with compassion to connect at a very intimate level.

Once you have sufficiently gone through certain steps in the process, then you can use your negotiation skills to persuade the person. If you try to persuade the person upfront before you use NVC, you will often find the person resists you and ignores what you have to say.

When a person disagrees with you, refuses to comply with a request, or is angry at you, a poor communicator tries to firstly express oneself. The person seeks to be understood before seeking to understand. An NVC user, on the contrary, seeks to understand the person, which in turn leads to their own need of being understood. Once you understand others, they will want to understand you.

The commonality amongst the situations I mentioned earlier, and hundreds of situations you experience throughout the week, is people’s desperation to be understood. Your angry partner wants to be understood. Your friend wants to be understood and will have almost zero frustration once you understand. Your children want to be understood, which will naturally compel them to talk with you about intimate issues. Nonviolent communication helps you understand people and have them understand you.

The need to be understood is possibly the greatest unmet human need. Fulfill this need and you will trigger new experiences, intimate sharing, and connect with people at the heart. Thanks to Dan Kennedy, a great marketer that I intently learn from, I came across a quote by Cavett Robert, founder of the National Speakers Association, who said, “Most people are walking around, umbilical cord in hand, looking for a new place to plug it in.” If you can be that “socket” by understanding the person and empathically receiving their needs, you automatically share an electrifying connection with the person. Something about the person will change before your eyes. They will know something deep is going on without knowing what you are doing.

Unfortunately, the majority of people never arrive at this stage of electrifying intimacy. Answer this question truthfully: How many people truly understand you on a frequent basis? Think about the question for some time because it is important to understand understanding.

I ask this not to make you blame others for their failure to understand you, but to show you the scarcity of people who seek to understand. If you are like most people, you will not have one person that frequently and truly understands you in conversations. Few people care about understanding others, which causes themselves to be misunderstood. People who complain that “no one understands me” are constantly misunderstood because they live on a one-way street seeking to receive before they consider giving.

Violence is widespread because one person or group desperately wants to be understood while another party they are in conflict with also wants to be understood. The failure to see each other’s needs means neither gets one’s needs fulfilled. The result is an outbreak of emotional or physical destruction. So much pain in the world is caused by misunderstandings.

The anger and frustration present in everyday situations appears to be irrelevant to deeper issues, yet it is our inability to effectively face conflict that contributes to a global scale of war and hatred. Our everyday wallowing in resentment, frustration, and misunderstandings has as much – but probably greater – impact on peace and love than kind actions. If you cannot resolve your minor nuances in relationships that are suppose to be intimate and love-filled, you cannot expect nations who have hated each other for centuries to resolve major conflicts. To understand another person is a secret of world peace. “Peace cannot be achieved through violence,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, “it can only be attained through understanding.”

The nonviolent communication process is a simple once you know the process; though it’s not always a fun slide to ride on because emotional pollution clogs your use of it. With practice, you will become better at NVC and be more successful in your communication and relationships. Over time, provided you continually practice the techniques and polish your skills, you will become excellent at the process.

The Four Step Process

The process has four steps: observing, feeling, needing, and requesting. There are really eight steps, however, because you firstly apply the four steps to the other person, then you apply them to yourself. Remember what I said before about seeking to understand before being understood? The first four stages make you understand people so you can be understood when you apply the four steps on yourself. This is the most critical part of the concept to grasp.

Unless the person is a compassionate communicator, go through the four steps first on the other person otherwise he or she will not listen to you. Use the visualization of a vacuum empathically “sucking up” the person’s communication. Until the person feels “cleaned”, you will be unable to clean yourself. Once you have sucked up the person, and hence understood them, you are then ready to use NVC on yourself.

Most people identify a few problems in firstly focusing on the other person. If you have not identified one of these now, you will as you continue to read about the process. The biggest concern I had with NVC is that you forgo your own needs, concerns, and emotions like anger. NVC prevents destructive expressions of anger and frustration via harmful attitudes and behaviors (think of the sarcastic teenager or the employee who does poor quality work). The process encourages you to express intense emotions – especially anger – in a healthy way that fulfills the underlying need.

At first glance, I understand the model may overwhelm you, but keep at it and reread the pages in this article to refine your ability to understand people and be understood. The NVC process as described in this full article will give you a good idea of what to expect in my Communication Secrets of Powerful People Program should you want to invest in it. It could be one of the greatest investments you make. Once you know how to understand people and help them understand you, you can mold your relationships however you want. It is time to kick into the first stage: observing.

Other Articles That Might Help You

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2. The Heart of Effective Communication: How to Love People
3. How to Manage Stress in Relationship Communication: Keep Calm with Scientific Stress Management
4. The Benefits of Communication Skills
5. The Greatest 15 Myths of Communication

Let’s say the problem is being overweight – as it is for many. You have 20 pounds you want to drop. You are sick of the extra weight making you feel bad and not look your best, which motivates you to lose weight. You build the willpower and determination to drop a few pounds to feel good again and improve your looks.

Through determination to solve your weight problem, two weeks later you jump on the scales to discover you have lost nine pounds. You’re ecstatic! The tension you once had about your weight eases. Because you feel more comfortable with your body – and your willpower drained a lot of mental energy – you return to old habits. You take less action to lose weight.

One month passes since your weight loss accomplishment, yet the nine pounds finds itself back on you. It feels too difficult to exert willpower to maintain a strict diet and exercise regime. You criticize yourself over your weakness and your inability to change. You feel helpless in forever creating a permanent solution to your weight loss problem.

The scenario above is by no means unusual. Weight loss challenges occur everyday in diverse forms. Other common examples include: managing anger, but we still blow up; quitting smoking, but we still smoke; getting a new job, but we remain in the old one; starting a new healthy relationship, but we remain in a destructive relationship; communicating more effectively, but we don’t communicate effectively and remain true to our ourselves. Why is this?

The Problem: The Tension-Resolution Model

Robert Fritz in his book The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life says we fail to change ourselves when we problem solve. That’s right! Problem solving is responsible for, well, not solving the problem.

Problem solvers feel victimized for not receiving what they want. They often miserable and depressed, and blame circumstances for their reality. Their circumstances clinch them by the throat to direct what they do.

Fritz says we fail to change when we try to solve our problems because mental and emotional oscillation occurs between tension and resolution. One moment the pain creates tension. For example, you could be sick of loneliness and your failure to find an attractive partner who has a great personality. The tension pushes you along to improve your dating skills and better your life to attract a wonderful partner. Your efforts help you find someone you love. The tension dissipates – as does your efforts to improve your life. Eventually, you stop doing what worked to attract the person. The attraction disappears and you fight with each other more, which causes the two of you to break up.

The tension-resolution model describes tension as the problem. As the tension builds, you feel compelled to solve the problem. The intensity of the problem lessens as does the tension when you problem solve. You have less motivation to keep the problem at bay. The end result: the unwanted behavior returns!

Old habits reenter our lives because we problem solve instead of changing the underlying structure. Fritz says to solve a problem means to remove something, the problem. We try to remove anger, smoking, swearing, complaining, blaming, and negativity. In each of the hypothetical examples provided earlier, weight is regained because you did not want the 20 pounds and you lost your partner because you feared loneliness. We try to make something go away rather than create what we want. Our reactive nature to problems ensures we remain stuck in trouble. It is easy to think problem solving will make you happy when it only makes something go away.

Problem Solving Hurts Your Relationships

Problem solving also does not create what you want in relationship communication and persuasion. Too often we try to change people by building tension in them – and they may temporarily change to reduce the tension – but they quickly revert to old patterns. Sending people solutions makes them resist what you try to create!

One third of my Communication Secrets of Powerful People program is about effectively creating solutions in others. We desperately try to change people by criticizing, ordering, threatening, questioning, or advising, for example, but this creates a tension-resolution dynamic to prevent change. You can pain someone into changing, but if they don’t have the underlying structure to change, they will not change. (I strongly encourage you to get my program by clicking here if you are interested in being a charismatic individual that changes people’s minds.)

The Path of Least Resistance

If you have visited Boston, the crazy road structure probably befuddled you. It appears Boston had no planning in their road infrastructure. Rumors say that Boston’s road structure is based on seventeenth-century cow paths. When cows walked the land, they walked on paths that provided the least resistance. Step-by-step the cows walked paths easiest to them.

Dirt paths developed overtime, reaffirming these paths to be the easiest direction of travel for cows. When humans populated the lands and began constructing roads, they followed the cows. Settlers paved over the dirt roads because it was easiest to work with the paths created by the cows rather than construct new paths. Because the cows followed their path of least resistance, rather than strategic paths optimal for human travel, Boston’s roads are meandering structures confusing to its travelers.

William Fowler, director of the Massachusetts Historical Society, says Boston’s road paths were not founded on cow paths. The example, nonetheless, serves its purpose to explain human behavior: energy flows along the path of least resistance.

In physics, objects travel through a system following the path of least resistance. Like water in the Amazon river, our energy flows along the easiest path. Like wind blowing through the Grand Canyon, our energy flows along the easiest path. Like pedestrians walking along a busy New York street, our energy flows along the easiest path.

Laziness is human nature. Our innate desire pushes for easier ways to do activities. Does this mean we secretly desire to sloth in front of the television while eating a bag of Doritos and sipping our favorite beer? Of course not. What it does mean is that we take the easiest path to get where we want to go. Our energy flows along the path that provides the minimal amount of resistance. Fritz says, “You got to where you are in your life right now by moving along the path of least resistance.”

Why Self-Help and the Law of Attraction Sucks

We try to fight the path of least resistance by using techniques like willpower, affirmations, and positive-thinking. We use these self-help techniques to motivate us to change, but our attempts to solve the problem fail to create a solution.

The problem with traditional self-help does not stop there. The messages sent through affirmations, willpower, and positive-thinking create the opposite effect to one’s desired outcome! These techniques create a paradoxical effect of no change. The subtle messages communicated from traditional self-help skills is that “I lie to myself because I find it difficult to change”.

You can see this by analyzing intention manifestation, the law of attraction, metaphysics, and similar principles that publicly took off when the movie The Secret hit Oprah. According to these areas of study, if you continually reaffirm what you want and stay true to the universe, the universe will automatically manifest your dreams.

Believers of “the secret” are bogged in their way of seeing that anything contradictory to their belief system is either frowned upon, overlooked, or manipulated to affirm their beliefs. Sounds a lot like a cult.

The underlying structure of new age fields of thought ironically cause people to not change. If you truly believe something, you do not reaffirm it to yourself. You do not rise in the morning to spend 15 minutes chanting affirmations that the universe will give you want you want if you believe you’ll get it. The unconscious messages sent through willpower and positive-thinking say you will not change or find it difficult to change because you need to use techniques to manipulate your subconscious mind.

Dr. Maxwell Maltz in The New Psycho-cybernetics emphasizes that willpower does not create change. Techniques that consume willpower burn energy because we remain stuck in the destructive tension-resolution pattern. The internal friction consumes energy on fruitless efforts. We spin our wheels in a stationary position. Energy is wasted that could otherwise be put into tasks that move us toward our goals. You need to channel valuable willpower and determination into choices and decisions that take you to your desired future.

How to Create a Permanent Solution – The Secret to Lasting Change

A radical shift in choice towards fulfilling what you want leads to permanent change. In terms of managing anger, for example, if you make the fundamental choice that governs your behavior to be a calm person by safely expressing anger, you do not fight your anger by trying to resolve it; rather, you change the structure of your anger to create a new behavior that brings what you want. Situations that test your anger lead you to create results and processes aligned with your fundamental choice and desired outcome.

People subject themselves to their circumstances by living in a respond-react environment. Fritz put it nicely when he said problem solving “subjects you to the whims of circumstances” (seen in situations where people expect things to be a certain way in order to make them happy). In problem solving, you wander (and wonder) through life’s maze where your environment is the walls. Your environment dictates who you are and where you go.

Permanent change in human behavior does not arise from problem solving where you rest at the helm of life’s circumstances. Lasting change comes from a new underlying structure of your being that guides life. Instead of fighting change, you become the change because it is your new path of least resistance. It becomes easier for you to do what you want and move towards your goals than doing otherwise.

Until a fundamental choice of good health is made, one cannot be truly healthy. Individuals in psychotherapy who fail to make an authentic fundamental choice of good health do not change. They stick to old patterns of unhealthy behavior. Some are even addicted to their challenges – without their problems, their identity is void and people give them little attention. They may say they want to change, but deep down they want their challenges because it fulfills a need. They fail to choose the empowering vision or they try to solve a problem instead of changing the underlying structure of their life.

Fritz emphasizes that the real solution to change is knowing your present reality and possessing a clear vision of what you want. This means knowing exactly where you are and where you want to go without delusion. Once you define what you want and understand your present reality, you will feel freedom and be at ease with yourself. A new structure directs your energy to effortlessly create what you want.

The greatest problem people have when defining what they want is they define what they do not want. “I don’t want to be anger”, “I don’t want to blow up at my kids”, “I don’t want to lose my temper”, “I don’t want to be fat”, and “I don’t want to be unhealthy” are a few examples of defining what you do not want. Knowing you do not want to travel to New York for a holiday does not help you go on holidays. How are you suppose to arrive at your destination if it is unknown?

Artists are excellent models to follow because they create a solution and know the end result. An artist stares at a blank canvas ready to start a new project. If he paints without a vision of the end result, he will not know when the painting is complete. He will feel unfilled and demotivated as the painting continues because he responds and reacts to the present moment of painting. On the contrary, if he knows what he wants, he will paint to achieve his vision. He will create a painting that fulfills his desires – and he will know when the painting is complete. He does not seek external validation for his painting because the satisfaction comes internally from knowing the painting matches his vision.

People think artists are spontaneous, but creativity is not always analogous with spontaneity. The best way to create comes through knowing what you want. An awareness of what you want allows your creative mind to compose processes that manifest your desired solution.

Putting It All Together

I will give you a strong example in my life I struggled with that touches on everything discussed in this article. Though I learned communication skills for years and used some of the information, I never fully changed my behavior. I tried so desperately to communicate well by using willpower, positive-thinking, and determination, yet I reverted to old habits. My energy flowed along the path of least resistance of poor communication. It was harder for me to effectively communicate than poorly communicate.

Sometimes I would solve the problem, but I was merely making something go away; I was not creating what I wanted. What I wanted was being ignored in favor of removing what I did not want. Other times, the “change” was temporary. I tried to solve my problem of poor communication instead of changing my underlying structure that would create permanent change.

As I discuss in my communication secrets program, I was resisting what I did not want, which created a persistent problem. There was the tension-resolution dynamic. Sometimes I changed, which decreased the intensity of the problem, but then so did the tension and my effort to communicate well. My willpower was burned so I let problems be – after all, interpersonal problems began to resolve. Tension would eventually increase again as the cycle started over.

I solved this by analyzing my current reality, where I was in my communication, and its affects on me. Next, I developed a crystal clear vision of what I wanted, then I made the choice to have it. When I made the fundamental choice to be true to myself, to communicate effectively (not “to avoid bad communication”), permanent change took place. My identity and life orientation changed to be one who uses effective communication.

Today I do not exert willpower to communicate effectively – though I need to remember my vision and remind myself what I want. I use effective communication with minimal effort. My new structure has changed my life orientation. The processes I engage in effortlessly take me to a life of good communication.

You and I always gravitate to the processes aligned with our fundamental choices. You still need to learn the “how” of what you want, but that comes naturally once you follow this decision path.

I want you to analyze your current reality. Next, think of what you exactly want. Have a pure vision of your desired reality. Write it down on several sheets of paper. You can make what you want clear by writing it in detail on several pages (I have a 10 page document that describes my perfect day). Lastly, make the fundamental choice to get what you want – and mean it. These are the foundations of lasting change.

When you follow this plan to change your structure, you create permanent change. People, information, and other processes will seem to magically drop into place. It becomes easy for you to create what you want. Your energy flows along this new path of least resistance.

You are the creative force in your life. It’s time to live how you want.

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3. Just Be Yourself – Why It’s Bad Advice: Being Yourself is the Problem
4. Neuro-Linguistic Programming Presuppositions – 12 Rules to Change Your Reality
5. On Achieving Goals – Part 2: How to Be Self-Motivated

The skill that gives you these benefits is effective communication. Communication has too many benefits to list because the skill enhances many areas of one’s life. Any interaction with people or lack of it can improve with communication.

Rudyard Kipling said, “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” Kipling’s quote fails to fully describe communication because it is far more than words – it also incorporates nonverbal channels of communication. Imagine the powerful benefits of communication now.

Here are a list of communication benefits that tell you the what, why, and how this amazing skill will change your life:

Communication increases your happiness. You have probably heard money cannot buy happiness. You become happy by taking the right actions. Think about it. Happiness is at the core of your actions because happiness is not conditional. You don’t become happy by getting a certain object or person in your life. When you take action on learning communication, you empower yourself to be happy.

While developing your communication skills makes you happy, at the same time your happiness increases as you minimize situations like destructive conflict that make you stressed and unhappy. Effective communication skills makes you happier by helping you reduce the frequency and severity of verbal fights, manage anger, express yourself to “get things off your back”, and change other situations to increase positive feelings.

Communication determines your attractiveness. The law of attraction states that you are a living magnet. You attract the people and resources in your life based on your internal self. Get excited because you do have invisible forces that draw and repel people. This is not mystical mumbo-jumbo. If you want to attract a fun, loving, positive, and caring person, you have to become a fun, loving, positive, and caring person.

You can control many factors in personal development to attract people into your life. Some attractive qualities that communication can boost is your confidence, self-esteem, social life, and conversational skills. These are universally attractive qualities.

Without communication, attraction dies. Physical appearance can only get you so far. Communication makes you interesting, connects you with people, builds friendships, and attracts a partner. Pick-up artists use communication to build attraction and get physically intimate with women in hours and sometimes minutes.

Communication fires up intimacy. How do people become open in a relationship? Good communication, of course, because it is the only bridge between a relationship. Communication is the relationship. When communication dies, so does the relationship. It is only through good communication that two persons intimately connect with one another.

Communication increases love given and love received. This benefit of communication ties in with intimacy. Without good communication, love becomes a plant without water. You can love people more than you think by changing the way you talk and developing active listening skills – such skills show respect and love. Giving love is the best way to receive love.

Communication makes you more popular. Though I don’t have a primary goal when teaching you communication to make you the most liked person in school, town, or club, communication does make you more popular. Once you develop good conversational skills with a positive energy, your number of friends is only limited by the time you talk with people.

Communication increases your success. John Johanson and Carrie Fried did a 2002 study published in the Teaching of Psychology Journal where they asked graduates what skill contributed the most to their success. The number one answer was interpersonal skills. Drew Appleby in a well known psychology magazine “Eye on Psi Chi” asked 39 employers what job skills they want in job candidates. Interpersonal skills was number one again. World renowned personal business consultant Brian Tracy in Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life says the highest paid intelligence in the United States is interpersonal intelligence. A person with such intelligence understands people’s feelings and desires – and employers pay big bucks for someone with these skills.

Communication makes you relaxed. Stress relates to how we manage ourselves with the world. You can become more relaxed by assertively telling someone “no” if they ask you to do something you don’t want to do. You can relax and no longer worry about the world’s reactions if you respond from a powerful source of control within yourself. (Read this article to learn of effective stress management techniques in communication.)

Communication makes you more satisfied with life. You receive satisfaction when you fulfill a need or desire. To get what you want, either someone gives it to you or you get it yourself. You cannot control what someone gives you (although you can influence them), which means in order to be satisfied you must learn how to get what you want. You do this by improving your persuasion, negotiation, and influence skills. Develop these areas of communication to grow as a person so you fulfill your needs and desires for satisfaction.

Communication gives you self-control. We interact with people everyday and often do things we later regret. Communication skills can increase your self-control to help you manage impulsive behavior. Self-control is beyond not doing actions; it also involves doing the right things.

Communication helps you understand people. This occurs at two levels. Firstly, knowledge of good communication helps you understand human behavior in general. Secondly, it helps you directly understand people you talk with as you explore their emotions and what really matters to them.

Rarely do we understand people to the level they want. Effective communication helps you see someone’s emotions, understand their emotions, and communicate at the level of emotions to powerfully connect the two of you in a way people rarely experience.

Communication helps you understand yourself. Do you know why you respond negatively when someone gives you criticism? Why do you feel occasional surges of anger towards someone you love? How do you overcome fears that stop you from talking with that hot chick or guy?

If you’re like most people, you don’t understand your behavior and this hurts you everyday. Not even I fully understand myself in a way that lets me use my mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual resources to my potential. No one ever will. You will never have the complete answers to these questions, nor do you need them, but many problem behaviors solvable through communication no longer need to block your desired way of living.

This is a small list of the many benefits communication skills can give you. There is an abundance of additional benefits effective communication creates such as managed anger, increased likelihood of a job promotion, better teamwork, and effective leadership skills, but hopefully the list gives you a great idea of the impact this glorious skill can have on your life. Experience the power of communication and let it supercharge your life today by signing up to my free newsletter here.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Why People Remain Quiet, Shy, and Non-Assertive: The Benefits of Passive Behavior and Communication
2. Why Smart People Have Poor Communication Skills – and What to Do About It
3. The Complete Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Process for Compassion, Understanding, and Peace
4. The Greatest 15 Myths of Communication
5. How to Manage Stress in Relationship Communication: Keep Calm with Scientific Stress Management