Our real limits

Chapter 208

“I recognized the connection between my communication effectiveness and my success as a leader, I learned to slow down, focus and deliberately strive to succeed at every communication encounter.” Art Petty 

I grew up being taught that workers were workers, people who sweated from the intensity of their labors. Everything that was truly “work” resulted in back-breaking labor and sweat. What I was taught was accurate to one small segment of the 1960’s populations of the uneducated Deep South. I have done plenty of that kind of “work”. It is actually very satisfying if not very much intellectual stimulation.

But there are far more difficult types of work than the back-breaking sweating variety, even if my uneducated family and peers refuse to think of these other types of work, as any kind of work at all. Two of them are particularly challenging: thinking and communicating. Regardless of the vocation you have, you are most certainly confined and constrained by your abilities and capabilities with these two jobs.

Thinking is damn hard work, but mostly can be confined to what is going on between your ears, often can happen in solitary bliss, individually, privately, etc. etc. Communication never happens like that. Communication happens between more than one person or it is not communication, it is something else. It is public, and will be graded and assessed by all who come in contact with it. It has almost infinite nuance and grades and levels and sub-levels and approaches. It is the non-creative’s nightmare. It is the creative’s playground. 

How far we go in life will be determined largely by how well we communicate.

The impact we have on people is measured by our communication.

All our real limits are right here in communication ability or lack.