# Chapter 278

A bad day of communicating. Every single person got their wires crossed multiple times yesterday. Lack of sleep, meds, lack of listening carefully, not being able to decipher what is REALLY being said, unable to decode the body language, listening but not hearing, she is from Venus and I am from Mars, whatever the reason or the excuses or the problems, communication is hard on the best of days. Even when I am all here and listening until I hurt, I still get it wrong many days. None of us are as clear as we think we are either.

This became apparent to me first through transcribing lectures and sermons. When I saw what the transcriptionist typed up, I thought that there must be some mistake at first. There is no way on earth that this internationally well known speaker is saying “uh” and “yeah” that often, and leaving that sentence incomplete over and over, and breaking off in mid sentence and changing direction entirely! One of the “best” communicators on the planet and I paid bukoo bucks to go hear him and record his lectures! But when I saw the print version of his speaking!! Wow. We aren’t nearly as good at this as we think we are, and while what you said is super clear in your mind, that does not mean the receiver or listener, remotely heard what you think you said. Trust me on this one. If we transcribed every sound coming out of your mouth, you would be flabbergasted at how much you hem and haw, at how many incomplete sentences you start and never finish, at how many times you segue into a completely different direction in the middle of another subject!

So lower your expectations of what you think you said and communicated and raise your bar on how committed you are to getting the messages across to your listener. Everyone will benefit!