Happy New Year!  May 2013 be peaceful, safe, healthy, joyful and prosperous!

Our lives find meaning, purpose and fullest expression through connection with other human beings.  Here at The Brain Alchemist, we promise to help you make your communication in 2013 brain-friendly and heart-full so that you can nurture and grow relationships that matter. The following 12 principles can be your guide to deeper connectivity, self-expression and peace in 2013.  Perhaps, you can choose one principle for each month to explore, practice and apply in your daily interactions and watch your relationships transform.

Video link: http://youtu.be/eKua9A1PQxo

• Before you speak your mind, listen with your heart. You can’t be heard if you don’t know how to listen.
• Pack perspectives,  unpack assumptions. Whenever possible, assume positive intent in words and actions.
• Don’t sugarcoat problems. It won’t solve them, but it will make them sticky.
• To have cool conversations, learn to control your hot buttons.
• Choose the surprise of a genuine human connection over the safety of posturing.
• Embrace uncertainty. Unlikely things happen all the time, both good and bad.  It’s our likely expectations that are often the problem.
• Ask powerful questions. The answers will always be closer than you think.
• Speak in kindness. Those who spit out toxic words are the first to taste the poison.
• Be guided by curiosity, not judgment. Don’t judge others unless you are prepared to live their lives.
• Look for ambiguity because it tickles the mind.  Be concise and precise because it sharpens the thought.
• Extract your message from the rubble of doubt, shame, failures, and misfortunes. The reward of digging deep is finding your true voice.
• Be compassionate but don’t take responsibility for other people’s feelings. When we doubt our ability to cope with feelings, we deny ourselves the richness and fullness of life. Speak and act from the heart, with empathy and respect, but let others feel what they need to feel and trust they can handle it.

The topic of today’s Communication Lab experiment is Sweet & Sour.  You may have tasted a sweet and sour sauce, often used in Chinese cuisine to go with fish or meat.  The intriguing part about Sweet & Sour is that it combines very different and somewhat opposing flavors to create a new, balanced flavor.  We are going to take this concept of Sweet & Sour and apply it to our communication.

Video link: http://youtu.be/pWPw7jbUk9I

Have you ever felt stuck or pulled in different directions by an internal struggle because you had conflicting thoughts in your head?  Today we will learn about integrative thinking, which is similar to the concept of Sweet & Sour. You will pick up a communication technique that will help you transform conflicting ideas into creative solutions.

In his book “The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking,” Roger Martin defines integrative thinking as:

“The ability to face constructively the tension of opposing ideas and, instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each.”

The expression that often indicates the presence of conflicting thoughts is “Yes… but…” . For example, you know you should do something, but you can see many obstacles on your way that keep you stuck.  Instead of a clear “No, nope, nowhere, nohow,’” you offer a tacit “YOPE’” – “yes” and “nope” in one.  This “YOPE” thinking is a protective strategy to minimize uncertainty or the risk of failure. YOPE gives no hope.  

Turn “Yes… but…” into “Yes…and…so…”

Instead, let’s  play a language game to get at the core of the issues.

Example: A client of mine may say, “I need to give this person an honest feedback, but she will get upset and won’t listen.”

This is the cautious YOPE response that doesn’t encourage action.

The trick is to change the ‘yes…but…’ response to ‘yes…and…so…’.

Example: “I need to give this person an honest feedback, and she will get upset and won’t listen, so…”

After ‘so’ is where the secret Sweet & Sour sauce comes in. The person has to come up with the next proposition, assuming the first two are true. This can either boost some creative thinking or reveal limiting beliefs and barriers.

Examples:
“I need to give this person an honest feedback, and she will get upset and won’t listen, so…”

• “I have to prepare for this conversation more deliberately”
• “I have to control my own responses better”
• “we have to choose the best time and place possible for this conversation”
• “I need to acknowledge how she feels first”
• “I have to avoid making the issue personal and give a lot of support”
• “we should brainstorm solutions together”

When you play with the language like that, it may illuminate some fallacies and inconsistencies in your thinking and prompt more creative responses.