Week 9...Communication and Problem Solving

This week we talked a lot about communication and the effect it has on our relationships.  One of the ideas that I really liked was that “you can never NOT communicate”.  I feel that this is absolutely true. We communicate in many ways.  Verbal or words, as well as non-verbal and the tone we use.  Each of these adds to the overall message that we send and how it is decoded and understood.  We talked about one study that found that 14% of the message we get comes from the words that are used, 35% from the tone and that 51% of the message is portrayed through non-verbal communication. This to me was an ah-ha moment!  This helps me to understand how important my non-verbal expressions and the tone of my voice are. I can see how this has played into communication break downs in my own life and I think that if I make a concerted effort to be aware of this in the future I can make progress in some of my relationship’s communications.

Another topic that we discussed was that of problem solving and decision-making.  This is something that we all do but that we may not necessarily be aware of how we do it.  We discussed the decision-making and problem solving process that the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve use in their weekly meetings and how we can follow their example in our own decision-making efforts.  Some of the steps that they use that are important include meeting at a sacred place and time, expressing love an appreciation prior to the meeting, and starting with prayer. Next they discuss matters to the point of consensus and with the Lords will as the ultimate end goal.  I feel that these are steps that are very important for each of us in our own problem solving ventures. I really like the idea that they set aside a specific time to make these decisions.  Often in our own lives we make decisions or solve problems in the heat of the moment.  We may feel that something needs to be decided NOW, when really the only purpose of making a quick decision is to get it off our minds or have it “out of the way”. At times I have found that if I were a bit more patient and took time to come back to a problem after I had stepped away from it for a while, I may have made a different and often better decision.