Communication to oneself: Why and How
We can not deny that people’s action is controlled by their emotion. What then is the factor to make people feel the way they are? Does this concern the environment, their parents, their spouse or their boss? No, it is not anyone of them. What people feel is determined by the way they communicate to themselves.
We automatically translate the communication to the meaning to ourselves. Before we feel anything about something we practically ask “what does this mean?” after that we start to feel happy, sad, excited, fear, loved, rejected..etc. The way we communicate comes normally in question form. We ask what, when, where, how and who to ourselves and get the answer and finally we ask what it means to me. In order to be successful in doing anything we need to learn how to communicate to ourselves. Learn how to not to ask a lousy question which will provide you a lousy answer. Then you will prepare to be in bad state and feel bad. After that we will not be able to fully gear toward any success since we are not ready. We can not give one hundred per cent of ourselves to make it happens.
What question to ask will be a major issue. We normally ask ourselves why does this happen? Why does he do this? Why do they do that? Do you know that the question starts with why has negative connotation in nature? I used to work being a volunteer in a non-profit organization. The organization works to prevent people commit suicide by giving them company when they feel in need of a friend. My job was to answer the phone calls from people who may or may not be suicidal. One of the lessons I learnt from their preparation class was that we never use the question “why” because it is negative in nature. People will feel automatically accused when they hear the question. Again, this is automatic and hidden under our subconscious mind.
Apart from that, the question “why” can lead to the answer that is preempted in your mind. This is the same way as when you rationalize thing. You already want that answer and then you quickly find the reasons to match that answer. And those reasons are normally good and sound to you. In addition, the question “why” normally does not lead to proper action. In stead, “why” will lead you to a feeling state, normally a negative one.
Ironically, the question “why” is important on one occasion. This is when you set up your major goal in your life. We need to have some firm reasons why we decide to have that goal and why we need to achieve them. This is the only time when we use the question “why”.
On the contrary, the question “how” is more constructive and can lead to future actions. However, we need to use it in the right way or else we will not get what we want. How are we going to ask proper “how”? That is easy. We ask the question “how” in relation to our goals. When something happens, we do not ask why it happens but instead we ask how we can make use of it to help us achieve our goals. When we get negative outcome or feedback from our deed, we ask ourselves “how can I make this better so that I can achieve what I want in this area?” This simple step has been overlooked by millions of people and it makes people suffered from their poor feeling which comes from the wrong communication technique.
Another tip to talk to ourselves when things go wrong, instead of asking “why does this happen?” “why god does this to me?” “why am I so stupid?” etc. We may want to ask the question to deviate our focus on the poor result. We may want to eliminate those poor questions by instead ask “what else could it mean?” By asking this question, we will feel better by getting more proper questions than what we normally asked when things went wrong.
People’s performance is controlled by their actions. People’s actions are controlled by their emotion. Their emotion is controlled by the way they communicate to themselves. In this short lesson, we learn how to effective ask ourselves good questions so that we feel the way we will act effectively. We need to learn how to use the question start with “how “ and “why” so that we can master our self-communication.
Monday, April 30th, 2007



