You give away all your secrets in every communication.

I believe the secret formula for Coke will remain safe, but the part of you that you may be trying to hide from people is stark naked at the party.

We communicate on so many levels and we generally only pay attention to one - the surface level.

The surface level will get you facts and figures that you will painstakingly mull over and then come to a conclusion. There is a part of you that already has the answer with no effort. It just hasn't surfaced yet.

There is a new TV show on called "Lie to Me." It's based on hired sleuths who are adept in reading body language. They are hired to find out who is telling the truth or not.

The truth is that you don't need all their learned skills to arrive at an accurate conclusion - you already have it. It just hasn't surfaced yet.

To solve a jigsaw puzzle, you need all the pieces. To solve a situation, you only need one piece of learning. Did you ever notice that learning happens in the blink of an eye? It was already there, it just needed a certain amount of eye blinks to surface.

It's foundational to know that you already know, and it's just as important to know that everyone else does to, at some level.

What customer doesn't know when a commissioned salesperson needs the sale? They may have an electric smile and miles of manufactured confidence, but you know they need the dough. They communicate it and you get it, at some level - an odd sensation you can't explain.

Your stated reason for not buying from them may contain a host of logic, but it came from the feeling you got from their communication. Your body said, "No." The reasons you generate after feeling your body's response, are surface puzzle pieces you arrange to form a picture of understanding. You may never truly understand your response, because putting feelings into words is a horribly unreliable practice.

Anytime you enter a communication with a tit-for-tat plan of how it will, should, ought to, or must transpire, you contaminate and retard that communication. You are attempting to bend the steel rod of reality with your bare hands.

You also tip your hand.

Everyone knows about you, and you know about everyone you communicate with; we just don't intellectually know we know.

What woman on a first date can't sense if her date has an "agenda?" By the way, if you know any women who can't, I know some guys who would like their phone numbers.

When I first began the practice of entering communications with no agenda, it was very scary and difficult for me. My mind kept wandering back to my purpose for interacting with this person and assessing which of my tools of persuasion I should be using. I also spent unnecessary energy wanting to cover my shortcomings from their view. It took awhile for me to trust having no preconditions and to let the conversation develop a life of its own.

There was a lot of discovery that came out of this process. I discovered that peoples' secrets and agendas became known to me. For a people helper like me, this is very useful. Using this method, I oftentimes get to zero right in on the area that needs addressing and save lots of time by not having to piece it all together.

To get some practice with this process, enter some low risk communications without an agenda being top of mind. What you'll find is that you're engaging in a process of discovery that delivers unexpected benefits. By communicating without agenda, you'll find out useful things quite quickly - things that you may have never discovered by using your normal rehearsed tactics.

If communication isn't a discovery process, you'll waste lots of time saying nothing.

Does this mean that you can't desire something from someone? No. We get most of what we want and need from other people. It's like I wrote in my blog post call SCHEMING, "Set an intention and stop scheming."

The blog goes on to say, "That's a polite way to say, 'Get out of the way.' There may be something waiting for you that's 'way better' than what you doggedly want. You just have to clear a space for it. That simply means, letting go of what you know."

 

Your communication maneuvers are transparent even though you think they're invisible. Yes, you'll fool your share of people with your tactics, but you'll miss the learning that every communication offers.

Reminds me of a story . . .

This past weekend, I was speaking on the phone with a customer service representative of a computer company. I was simply seeking some overview information about their product. I left my bag of tricks at the door and entered the communication ready for discovery. I found out quite a bit about the person I was talking with and about the product I was interested in. She also found out quite a bit about me. There was a bond formed. The conversation was every bit enjoyable and informative.

I wound up buying the product but the communication didn't end with me giving her my credit card information. She discovered that I did seminars during our chat. After the deal was already closed, the price agreed on and us ready to hang up, she, in a spontaneous moment of discovery, determined that I was a teacher and was entitled to a sizeable discount.

She got an unplanned sale and I got an unexpected discount. Quite possibly "Discovery" is the best way to stimulate the economy.

You can easily tell when someone is distracted in a conversation. There may be a visual or auditory clue that gives you an uneasy feeling. In a very similar way, you detract from the process of discovery anytime you distract yourself by keeping an agenda in mind while involved in conversation. Very little is getting communicated; even less is being discovered.

Productive communication really comes down to trusting in your ability to discover. You start the discovery process by leaving your agenda at the door. If you bring it in with you, it will be sensed at some level and gum up most communications.

If you begin approaching communications with an appetite for discovery, you'll drop your guard and enjoy the process more. Your openness and trust allow you to flow with whatever develops. The result is that you will discover much more in much quicker fashion and wind up with more than your share of pleasant surprises.

 

All the best,

John