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For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
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Stephen Hawking
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When it comes to meditation, one minute is better than zero. Something is an improvement from nothing.
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Milan Kordestani (I'm Just Saying: A Guide to Maintaining Civil Discourse in an Increasingly Divided World)
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I think we both need to work on our communication skills. (Kiara)
I tried that once. (Nykyrian)
And? (Kiara)
Darling told me that I could never hold a job as a suicide counselor or hostage negotiator. He said my failure rate would become the stuff of legends. (Nykyrian)
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Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of the Night (The League, #1))
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When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other.
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Jean-Luc Godard
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The art has to make it on its own, without explanations, and it’s the same for poetry. If the poem or the painting has to be explained, then it’s a failure in communication.
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this.
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Stephen Hawking
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If you want to have an effective ad, you need to work on communicating your message in the most effective way. Keep it clear, concise and non-confusing.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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A steep hierarchy level can even lead to miscommunication or loss of information.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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A successful organization will always have an effective two-way communication system where information can easily flow from one level to another.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Effective two-way communication is responsible for building the trust in a company and keeping the employees happy.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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The most important task of marketing is to communicate the value of your product to your audience.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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When a value is communicated well, it gives your potential customers an option to choose you over others and to stick to your brand.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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We all struggle with our failure to communicate and our failure to reach beyond fear to love people.
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Mira Sorvino
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I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it. But this separation of consciousness is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is to believe in an undivided being between us.
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty (The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy))
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The key to happiness, she said, is tolerance of those who do not do as you do.' `What if those who do not do as you do are gunning you down?' I said.... Alaska frowned. `Guns are intolerant. Guns are a failure of communication.
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Jeanette Winterson (The Stone Gods)
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If communication cannot achieve consensus, we must live with the broken pieces of unfulfilled expectations and recognize the failure of dialogue, trust, and reciprocity. In the meantime, let us identify the cracks and breaches in the blurred mirror of the past and build a new canvas of hope and clarity. ("Poste Restante")
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Erik Pevernagie
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What we have here is a failure to communicate.
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Cherise Sinclair (Make Me, Sir (Masters of the Shadowlands, #5))
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Speech failures, communication breakdowns, misunderstandings, mishearings, episodes of muteness, stuttering and stammering, word forgetfulness, even the inability to grasp a joke: all these things invoke loneliness, forcing a reminder of the precarious, imperfect means by which we express our interiors to others. They undermine our footing in the social, casting us as outsiders, poor or non-participants.
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Olivia Laing (The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone)
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One of the failures of cellular communication is that tiredness often comes across as sadness.
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Rachel Cohn (Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily, #1))
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The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel and misrepresentation.
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C. Northcote Parkinson
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As for the story itself, it was entitled "The Dancing Fool." Like so many Trout stories, it was about a tragic failure to communicate. Here was the plot: A flying saucer creature named Zog arrived on Earth to explain how wars could be prevented and how cancer could be cured. He brought the information from Margo, a planet where the natives conversed by means of farts and tap dancing. Zog landed at night in Connecticut. He had no sooner touched down than he saw a house on fire. He rushed into the house, farting and tap dancing, warning the people about the terrible danger they were in. The head of the house brained Zog with a golfclub.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Breakfast of Champions)
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It's not hard to fail...it's hard to accept you failed...but once that's out of the way, it's pretty smooth sailing
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Josh Stern (And That’s Why I’m Single)
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Noise is any pattern we don't understand. [...] If we perceive something as noise, it's most likely a failure of ourselves, not a failure of the universe.
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Raph Koster (A Theory Of Fun For Game Design)
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During deep NREM sleep specifically, the brain communicates a calming signal to the fight-or-flight sympathetic branch of the body’s nervous system, and does so for long durations of the night. As a result, deep sleep prevents an escalation of this physiological stress that is synonymous with increased blood pressure, heart attack, heart failure, and stroke.
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Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
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Setting aside its failure to win over most people, the Bible can’t even communicate clearly to the people who already cherish it deeply and believe in it with all their heart.
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Guy P. Harrison (50 Simple Questions for Every Christian (50 Series))
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Going to a country where you don't speak the language is like wading into the sea when you can't swim - it's intimidating at first, not impossible, and ultimately manageable.
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Stewart Stafford
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Your career is your business. You are its CEO. Complacency breeds failure. As the CEO of your career, you must continually improve your skills, especially the art of communication.
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Carmine Gallo (Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get From Good to Great)
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Open up. Ask for help. Accept help. Accept yourself. Be completely honest. Take a daily inventory. Whenever you are in the wrong, make amends. Face reality. Reach out. Communicate. Show kindness. Share your concerns and your worries with another human being. Help another human being, on a daily basis. Count your blessings, not your failures. Don’t live in regret or in yesterday. Don’t project your fears into tomorrow. Take action, when action is needed. Deal with your feelings if and when they arise. Don’t sit on them.
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Sally Brampton (Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression)
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Responding to a moderator at the Sydney Writers Festival in 2008 (video), about the Spanish words in his book:
When all of us are communicating and talking when we’re out in the world, we’ll be lucky if we can understand 20 percent of what people say to us. A whole range of clues, of words, of languages escape us. I mean we’re not perfect, we’re not gods. But on top of that people mis-speak, sometimes you mis-hear, sometimes you don’t have attention, sometimes people use words you don’t know. Sometimes people use languages you don’t know. On a daily basis, human beings are very comfortable with a large component of communication, which is incomprehensibility, incomprehension. We tend to be comfortable with it. But for an immigrant, it becomes very different. What most of us consider normative comprehension an immigrant fears that they’re not getting it because of their lack of mastery in the language.
And what’s a normal component in communication, incomprehension, in some ways for an immigrant becomes a source of deep anxiety because you’re not sure if it’s just incomprehension or your own failures. My sense of writing a book where there is an enormous amount of language that perhaps everyone doesn’t have access to was less to communicate the experience of the immigrant than to communicate the experience that for an immigrant causes much discomfort but that is normative for people. which is that we tend to not understand, not grasp a large part of the language around us. What’s funny is, will Ramona accept incomprehension in our everyday lives and will greet that in a book with enormous fury. In other words what we’re comfortable with out in the outside world, we do not want to encounter in our books.
So I’m constantly, people have come to me and asked me… is this, are you trying to lock out your non-Dominican reader, you know? And I’m like, no? I assume any gaps in a story and words people don’t understand, whether it’s the nerdish stuff, whether it’s the Elvish, whether it’s the character going on about Dungeons and Dragons, whether it’s the Dominican Spanish, whether it’s the sort of high level graduate language, I assume if people don’t get it that this is not an attempt for the writer to be aggressive. This is an attempt for the writer to encourage the reader to build community, to go out and ask somebody else. For me, words that you can’t understand in a book aren’t there to torture or remind people that they don’t know. I always felt they were to remind people that part of the experience of reading has always been collective. You learn to read with someone else. Yeah you may currently practice it in a solitary fashion, but reading is a collective enterprise. And what the unintelligible in a book does is to remind you how our whole, lives we’ve always needed someone else to help us with reading.
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Junot Díaz
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In 2011, an interesting milestone in human history was passed. For the first time, more people globally died from non-communicable diseases like heart failure, stroke and diabetes than from all infectious diseases combined.1 We live in an age in which we are killed, more often than not, by lifestyle. We are in effect choosing how we shall die, albeit without much reflection or insight.
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Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
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That’s the thing about the collapse of civilization, Blake. It never happens according to plan – there’s no slavering horde of zombies. No actinic flash of thermonuclear war. No Earth-shuddering asteroid. The end comes in unforeseen ways; the stock market collapses, and then the banks, and then there is no food in the supermarkets, or the communications system goes down completely and inevitably, and previously amiable co-workers find themselves wrestling over the last remaining cookie that someone brought in before all the madness began.
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Mark A. Rayner (The Fridgularity)
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We think of ourselves as failures, rather than renounce our belief in the possibility of perfection. We hang on to the hope of eternal love by denying even its temporary validity. It´s less painful to think 'I'm shallow', 'She's self centred', 'We couldn't communicate', 'It was all just physical', than to accept the simple fact that love is a passing sensation, for reasons beyond our control and even beyond our personalities. But who can reassure himself with his own rationalizations? No argument can fill the void of a dead feeling -- that reminder of the ultimate void, our final inconstancy. We're untrue even to life.
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Stephen Vizinczey (In Praise of Older Women: The Amorous Recollections of András Vajda)
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If humans are "intelligent," so is the rest of Nature. Native peoples have always said this. The human species shows its decreasing ability to communicate--both internally and externally--by its failure to recognize this intelligence. In this sense, our immune failures are one more example of not having ears (receptors) to hear the voice of Nature with compassion.
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Neil Douglas-Klotz
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We teach our children to study hard, to strive to succeed but do we teach them that it's okay to fail? That life is about accepting yourself? That there is no stigma in seeking help? Our Indian culture is based on worshipping our parents. We grow up listening to words like respect, obedience and tradition. Can we not add the words communication, unconditional love and support to this list?
I look at the WHO research. The highest rate of suicide in India is among the age group of 15 to 29. Do we even talk to our teens about this?
That evening, I am standing in the balcony, sipping some coffee and looking at the sunset. The children have taken the dogs and gone down to play on the beach. I spot my son. He is standing on the sand, right at the edge of the ocean and is flying a blue kite.
The kite goes high and then swings low till it almost seems to fall into the water and all I want to say to him is that soon he will see that life is just like flying a kite. Sometimes you have to leave it loose, sometimes you have to hold on tight, sometimes your kite will fly effortlessly, sometimes you will not be able to control it and even when you are struggling to keep it afloat and the string is cutting into your hand, don't let go.
The wind will change in your favour once again, my son. Just don't let go..
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Twinkle Khanna (Mrs Funnybones)
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If this constant sliding and hiding of meaning were true of conscious life, then we would of course never be able to speak coherently at all. If the whole of language were present to me when I spoke, then I would not be able to articulate anything at all. The ego, or consciousness, can therefore only work by repressing this turbulent activity, provisionally nailing down words on to meanings. Every now and then a word from the unconscious which I do not want insinuates itself into my discourse, and this is the famous Freudian slip of the tongue or parapraxis. But for Lacan all our discourse is in a sense a slip of the tongue: if the process of language is as slippery and ambiguous as he suggests, we can never mean precisely what we say and never say precisely what we mean. Meaning is always in some sense an approximation, a near-miss, a part-failure, mixing non-sense and non-communication into sense and dialogue.
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Terry Eagleton (Literary Theory: An Introduction)
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The social invisibility of women's experience is not "a failure of human communication." It is a socially arranged bias persisted in long after the information about women's experience is available (sometimes even publicly insisted upon).
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Joanna Russ
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What we've got here is a failure to communicate.
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Strother Martin
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Emotionally intelligent people hold themselves accountable for their behavior, failures, decisions, and successes.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Preparation: 8 Ways to Plan with Purpose & Intention for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #2))
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I believe the impulse to write comes out of a failure to communicate by any other means.
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Lionel Shriver
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One of the failures of cellular communication is that tiredness often comes across as sadness. But I appreciate your concern.
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Rachel Cohn (Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily, #1))
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All communication is a sign of failure. If everybody is pleased with the situation, then there is no need for communication.
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Peter Gärdenfors
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In the classic Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel’s teacher urged him always to take his next shot unburdened by previous failures to hit the target; as he improved, his teacher urged him not to be influenced by his successes either, to stay in the present moment.
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Alex Soojung-Kim Pang (The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul)
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Don’t lecture. Children, and particularly adolescents, will tune out the moment you start. Take it from a teacher. If your communication style tends toward the lecture, you are going to have to change your style, because you won’t be able to force your child to start listening.
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Jessica Lahey (The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed)
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My poetry is often criticized for a failure to communicate, but I take issue with this; my intention is to communicate and my feeling is that a poem that communicates something that's already known by the reader is not really communicating anything to him and in fact shows a lack of respect for him.
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John Ashbery
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If the mystery can be reduced to one solution, it lies in a simple coincidence: Rimbaud's interest in his own work had survived the realization that the world would not be changed by verbal innovation. It did not survive the failure of all his adult relationships. He had always treated poems as a form of private communication. He gave his songs to chansonniers, his satires to satirists. Without a constant companion, he was writing in a void.
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Graham Robb (Rimbaud: A Biography)
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Many people associate resolutions with failure because they’ve broken promises to themselves so many times before. They don’t want to fail again, and as a result, they avoid setting goals. For the wise people who do set resolutions, research has shown you are ten times more likely to improve your life when you do. What are you willing to do to make your dreams come true?
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Susan C. Young
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The idea that language is a game at which some players are more skilled than others has a bearing on the vexed relationship between loneliness and speech. Speech failures, communication breakdowns, misunderstandings, mishearings, episodes of muteness, stuttering and stammering, word forgetfulness, even the inability to grasp a joke: all these things invoke loneliness, forcing a reminder of the precarious, imperfect means by which we express our interiors to others. They undermine our footing in the social, casting us as outsiders, poor or non-participants.
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Olivia Laing (The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone)
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Shulman argues that work that is valued is work that is presented to colleagues. The failure to make this kind of wider connection weakens the sense of community. This happens in scholarly life when such essential functions as professional service or teaching do not get discussed openly or often enough.
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Charles E. Glassick (Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate)
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These groups [of disaffected youth] are not small, and they will grow larger. Certainly they are suffering. Demonstrably they are not getting enough out of our wealth and civilization. They are failing to assimilate much of the culture. As was predictable, most of the authorities and all of the public spokesmen explain it by saying there has been a failure of socialization. They say that the background conditions have interrupted socialization and must be improved. And, not enough effort has been made to guarantee belonging, there must be better bait or punishment.
But perhaps there has not been a failure to communicate. Perhaps the social message has been communicated clearly to the young men and is unacceptable.
In this book I shall therefore take the opposite tack and ask, 'Socialization to what? to what dominant society and available culture?' And if this question is asked, we must at once ask the other question, 'Is the harmonious organization to which the young are inadequately socialized, perhaps against human nature, or not worthy of human nature, and therefore there is difficulty in growing up?' If this is so, the disaffection of the young is profound and it will not be finally remediable by better techniques of socializing. Instead, there will have to be changes in our society and its culture, so as to meet the appetites and capacities of human nature, in order to grow up.
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Paul Goodman (Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized System)
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With families, I stopped creating encyclopedias of data about all their issues and began to search instead for the member with the greatest capacity to be a leader as I have defined it. That person generally turned out to be the one who could express himself or herself with the least amount of blaming and the one who had the greatest capacity to take responsibility for his or her own emotional being and destiny. I began to coach the “leader” alone, letting the rest of the family drop out and stay home. I stopped trying to get people to “communicate” or find better ways of managing their issues. Instead, I began to concentrate on helping the leader to become better defined and to learn how to deal adroitly with the sabotage that almost invariably followed any success in this endeavor. Soon I found that the rest of the family was “in therapy” whether or not they came into my office.
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Edwin H. Friedman (A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix)
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All power lies in free expression.
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Krishna Sagar (Summit Your Everest: Your Coach For Obstacle & Failure Management)
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The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel, and misrepresentation.
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Kenneth H. Blanchard (Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy called ''Don't Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A'' (Leading at a Higher Level))
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The biggest cause of serious error in this business is a failure of communication,
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Atul Gawande (The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right)
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I’ve learned that if you want people to be impressed, you can talk about your successes; but if you want people to identify with you, it’s better to talk about your failures.
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John C. Maxwell (Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently)
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the failure of communication is more often existential than merely lingual. Is there anything more miraculous than the unsimple event of words becoming
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Arnold Weinstein (The Lives of Literature: Reading, Teaching, Knowing)
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An adult mind that is brimming with chunks is a powerful engine of reason, but it comes with a cost: a failure to communicate with other minds that have not mastered the same chunks.
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Steven Pinker (The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century)
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Have you ever experienced a shattering in your own personal life? Where death, divorce, financial loss, failure, or disaster changed your world to such an extent that you weren’t sure how to rebuild again? Clearing the debris from the aftermath is a great first step. It enables you to start with a clean slate so you can rebuild exactly what you desire. Where can you begin?
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Susan C. Young
“
In 1983 Colonel Burns wrote a poem in which he envisioned how his fledgling communications network might one day influence the world.
Imagine the emergence of a new meta-culture.
Imagine all kinds of people everywhere
getting committed to human excellence,
getting committed to closing the gap
between the human condition
and the human potential...
And imagine all of us hooked up
with a common high tech communications system.
That's a vision that brings tears to the eyes.
Human excellence is an ideal
that we can embed
into every formal human structure
on our planet.
And that's really why we're going to do this.
And that's also why
The Meta Network is a creation
we can love.
Notwithstanding Colonel Burns's failure to foresee that people would use the Internet mostly to access porn and look themselves up on Google, his prescience was admirable.
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Jon Ronson (The Men Who Stare at Goats)
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And because evil wants what evil gets. If you're alone in this world, mercurial loudmouth or free spirit, you will make enemies. To you, the dwindling, grinding, maddening work that will kill you if you let it. The rewards are few and more often than not thankless. Do not quit. It is more necessary than ever to have stories that invite us into other worlds, to communicate profoundly. Do not harbor any delusions that failure is not worth the effort.
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Manuel Marrero (Thousands of Lies)
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The things you say, the things you don't say, the things you do, or the things you don't do are always sending a loud message to those around you. What kind of a message are you sending? Is it a true reflection of who you are?
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Lindsey Rietzsch (Successful Failures: Recognizing the Divine Role That Opposition Plays in Life's Quest for Success)
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The neurotypical public needs to know that the failure of people with autism to communicate doesn’t stem from inner self-imprisonment: it stems from a failure of others to see that we are open and receptive. To venture out into the world requires help from other people.
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Naoki Higashida (Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8: A Young Man's Voice from the Silence of Autism)
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Every time we put something into words, we simultaneously pronounce a declaration fo faith in the power of language to re-create and communicate our experience of the world, and our admission of its shortcomings to name this experience fully... All our libraries are the glorious record of that failure.
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Alberto Manguel
“
Speech failures, communication breakdowns, misunderstandings, mishearings, episodes of muteness, stuttering and stammering, word forgetfulness, even the inability to grasp a joke: all these things invoke loneliness, forcing a reminder of the precarious, imperfect means by which we express our interiors to others.
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Olivia Laing (The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone)
“
it’s important to note that not all of the seven elements should be used evenly in your communication. Think of the StoryBrand Framework as a recipe for a loaf of bread. Failure is like salt: use too much and you’ll ruin the flavor; leave it out and the recipe will taste bland. Regardless, the point is this: your story needs stakes.
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Donald Miller (Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen)
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I do not know which impulse was stronger in me when I began to think: the original thirst for knowledge or the urge to communicate with man. Knowledge attains its full meaning only through the bond that unites men; however, the urge to achieve agreement with another human being was so hard to satisfy. I was shocked by the lack of understanding, paralyzed, as it were, by every reconciliation in which what had gone before was not fully cleared up. Early in my life and then later again and again I was perplexed by people’s rigid inaccessibility and their failure to listen to reasons, their disregard of facts, their indifference which prohibited discussion, their defensive attitude which kept you at a distance and at the decisive moment buried any possibility of a close approach, and finally their shamelessness, that bares its own soul without reserve, as though no one were present. When ready assent occurred I remained unsatisfied, because it was not based on true insight but on yielding to persuasion; because it was the consequence of friendly cooperation, not a meeting of two selves. True, I knew the glory of friendship (in common studies, in the cordial atmosphere of home or countryside). But then came the moments of strangeness, as if human beings lived in different worlds. Steadily the consciousness of loneliness grew upon me in my youth, yet nothing seemed more pernicious to me than loneliness, especially the loneliness in the midst of social intercourse that deceives itself in a multitude of friendships. No urge seemed stronger to me than that for communication with others. If the never-completed movement of communication succeeds with but a single human being, everything is achieved. It is a criterion of this success that there be a readiness to communicate with every human being encountered and that grief is felt whenever communication fails. Not merely an exchange of words, nor friendliness and sociability, but only the constant urge towards total revelation reaches the path of communication.
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Karl Jaspers
“
As the years go by, he returns to this invisible world rather than to earth for peace and solace. There also he finds a profound enchantment, although he can seldom describe it. He can discuss it with others of his kind, and because they too know and feel its power they understand. But his attempts to communicate his feelings to his wife or other earthly confidants invariably end in failure. Flying is hypnotic and all pilots are willing victims to the spell. Their world is like a magic island in which the factors of life and death assume their proper values. Thinking becomes clear because there are no earthly foibles or embellishments to confuse it. Professional pilots are, of necessity, uncomplicated, simple men. Their thinking must remain straightforward, or they die—violently.
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Ernest K. Gann (Island in the Sky)
“
Although a poem arises when there's nothing else to be done, although a poem is a last attempt at order when one can't stand the disorder any longer,
although poets are most needed when freedom, vitamin C, communications, laws and hypertension therapy are also most needed,
although to be an artist is to fail and art is fidelity to failure, as Samuel Beckett says,
a poem is not one of the last but of the first things of man.
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Miroslav Holub (Although)
“
I do not know how much money Britney Spears earned last year.. However, I do know that it's not enough for me to want her life, were I given the option to have it. Every day, random people use Britney's existence as currency; they talk about her public failures and her lack of talent as a way to fill the emptiness of their own normalcy. She — alone with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton and all those androids from The Hills — are the unifying entities within this meta era. In a splintered society, they are the means through which people devoid of creativity communicate with each other. THey allow Americans to understand who they are and who they are not; they allow Americans to unilaterally agree on something they never needed to consciously consider. A person like Britney Spears surrenders her privacy and her integrity and the rights to her own persona, and in exchange we give her huge sums of money. But she still doesn't earn a fraction of what she warrants in free-trade economy. If Britney Spears were paid $1 every time a self-loathing stranger used her as a surrogate for his own failure, she would out earn Warren Buffet in three months. This is why entertainers (and athletes) make so much revenue but are still wildly underpaid: We use them for things that are worth more than money. It's a new kind of dehumanizing slavery — not as awful as the literal variety, but dehumanizing nonetheless.
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Chuck Klosterman (Bending Spoons with Britney Spears: An Essay from Chuck Klosterman IV)
“
What we feel and how we feel is far more important than what we think and how we think. Feeling is the stuff of which our consciousness is made, the atmosphere in which all our thinking and all our conduct is bathed. All the motives which govern and drive our lives are emotional. Love and hate, anger and fear, curiosity and joy are the springs of all that is most noble and most detestable in the history of men and nations.
The opening sentence of a sermon is an opportunity. A good introduction arrests me. It handcuffs me and drags me before the sermon, where I stand and hear a Word that makes me both tremble and rejoice. The best sermon introductions also engage the listener immediately. It’s a rare sermon, however, that suffers because of a good introduction.
Mysteries beg for answers. People’s natural curiosity will entice them to stay tuned until the puzzle is solved. Any sentence that points out incongruity, contradiction, paradox, or irony will do.
Talk about what people care about. Begin writing an introduction by asking, “Will my listeners care about this?” (Not, “Why should they care about this?”)
Stepping into the pulpit calmly and scanning the congregation to the count of five can have a remarkable effect on preacher and congregation alike. It is as if you are saying, “I’m about to preach the Word of God. I want all of you settled. I’m not going to begin, in fact, until I have your complete attention.”
No sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as crystal. The getting of that sentence is the hardest, most exacting, and most fruitful labor of study.
We tend to use generalities for compelling reasons. Specifics often take research and extra thought, precious commodities to a pastor. Generalities are safe. We can’t help but use generalities when we can’t remember details of a story or when we want anonymity for someone. Still, the more specific their language, the better speakers communicate.
I used to balk at spending a large amount of time on a story, because I wanted to get to the point. Now I realize the story gets the point across better than my declarative statements.
Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. Limits—that is, form—challenge the mind, forcing creativity.
Needless words weaken our offense. Listening to some speakers, you have to sift hundreds of gallons of water to get one speck of gold.
If the sermon is so complicated that it needs a summary, its problems run deeper than the conclusion. The last sentence of a sermon already has authority; when the last sentence is Scripture, this is even more true.
No matter what our tone or approach, we are wise to craft the conclusion carefully. In fact, given the crisis and opportunity that the conclusion presents—remember, it will likely be people’s lasting memory of the message—it’s probably a good practice to write out the conclusion, regardless of how much of the rest of the sermon is written.
It is you who preaches Christ. And you will preach Christ a little differently than any other preacher. Not to do so is to deny your God-given uniqueness.
Aim for clarity first. Beauty and eloquence should be added to make things even more clear, not more impressive.
I’ll have not praise nor time for those who suppose that writing comes by some divine gift, some madness, some overflow of feeling. I’m especially grim on Christians who enter the field blithely unprepared and literarily innocent of any hard work—as though the substance of their message forgives the failure of its form.
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Mark Galli (Preaching that Connects)
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Language... is a highly ambiguous business. So often, below the word spoken, is the thing known and unspoken... You and I, the characters which grow on a page, most of the time we're inexpressive, giving little away, unreliable, elusive, obstructive, unwilling. But it's out of these attributes that a language arises. A language, I repeat, where under what is said, another thing is being said...
There are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a torrent of language is being employed. The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smokescreen. When true silence falls, we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.
We have heard many times that tired, grimy phrase, "failure of communication", and this phrase has been fixed to my work quite consistently. I believe the contrary. I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility.
I am not suggesting that no character in a play can ever say what he in fact means. Not at all. I have found that there invariably does come a moment when this happens, when he says something, perhaps, which he has never said before. And where this happens, what he says is irrevocable, and can never be taken back.
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Harold Pinter (Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics)
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THE TEN MOST COMMON PROBLEMS Here are the ten most common problems in communications. Read the list. If any of them apply to you, the principles in this book will help you solve them. 1. Lack of initial rapport with listeners 2. Stiffness or woodenness in use of body 3. Presentation of material is intellectually oriented; speaker forgets to involve the audience emotionally 4. Speaker seems uncomfortable because of fear of failure 5. Poor use of eye contact and facial expression 6. Lack of humor 7. Speech direction and intent unclear due to improper preparation 8. Inability to use silence for impact 9. Lack of energy, causing inappropriate pitch pattern, speech rate, and volume 10. Use of boring language and lack of interesting material Various polls show that the ability to communicate well is ranked the number-one key to success by leaders in business, politics, and the professions. If you don’t communicate effectively, you may not die, like some POWs or neglected babies we mentioned earlier, but you also won’t live as fully as you should, nor will you achieve personal goals. This was a lesson drummed into me at a very early age.
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Roger Ailes (You Are the Message: Getting What You Want by Being Who You Are)
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The Dancing Fool.” Like so many Trout stories, it was about a tragic failure to communicate. Here was the plot: A flying saucer creature named Zog arrived on Earth to explain how wars could be prevented and how cancer could be cured. He brought the information from Margo, a planet where the natives conversed by means of farts and tap dancing. Zog landed at night in Connecticut. He had no sooner touched down than he saw a house on fire. He rushed into the house, farting and tap dancing, warning the people about the terrible danger they were in. The head of the house brained Zog with a golfclub.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Breakfast of Champions)
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Ours is the age of atomic power but also of nuclear proliferation, of globalized trade but also worldwide terrorism, of instant communication but also fragmented communities, of free association but also marital failure, of limitless mobility but also homogenized destinations, of open borders but also confused identities, of astounding medical advances but also greater worries about health, of longer and more vigorous lives but also protracted and more miserable deaths, of unprecedented freedom and prosperity but also remarkable anxiety about our future, both personal and national. In our age of heightened expectations
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Leon R. Kass (Leading a Worthy Life: Finding Meaning in Modern Times)
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Pay attention to everything the dying person says. You might want to keep pens and a spiral notebook beside the bed so that anyone can jot down notes about gestures, conversations, or anything out of the ordinary said by the dying person. Talk with one another about these comments and gestures. • Remember that there may be important messages in any communication, however vague or garbled. Not every statement made by a dying person has significance, but heed them all so as not to miss the ones that do. • Watch for key signs: a glassy-eyed look; the appearance of staring through you; distractedness or secretiveness; seemingly inappropriate smiles or gestures, such as pointing, reaching toward someone or something unseen, or waving when no one is there; efforts to pick at the covers or get out of bed for no apparent reason; agitation or distress at your inability to comprehend something the dying person has tried to say. • Respond to anything you don’t understand with gentle inquiries. “Can you tell me what’s happening?” is sometimes a helpful way to initiate this kind of conversation. You might also try saying, “You seem different today. Can you tell me why?” • Pose questions in open-ended, encouraging terms. For example, if a dying person whose mother is long dead says, “My mother’s waiting for me,” turn that comment into a question: “Mother’s waiting for you?” or “I’m so glad she’s close to you. Can you tell me about it?” • Accept and validate what the dying person tells you. If he says, “I see a beautiful place!” say, “That’s wonderful! Can you tell me more about it?” or “I’m so pleased. I can see that it makes you happy,” or “I’m so glad you’re telling me this. I really want to understand what’s happening to you. Can you tell me more?” • Don’t argue or challenge. By saying something like “You couldn’t possibly have seen Mother, she’s been dead for ten years,” you could increase the dying person’s frustration and isolation, and run the risk of putting an end to further attempts at communicating. • Remember that a dying person may employ images from life experiences like work or hobbies. A pilot may talk about getting ready to go for a flight; carry the metaphor forward: “Do you know when it leaves?” or “Is there anyone on the plane you know?” or “Is there anything I can do to help you get ready for takeoff?” • Be honest about having trouble understanding. One way is to say, “I think you’re trying to tell me something important and I’m trying very hard, but I’m just not getting it. I’ll keep on trying. Please don’t give up on me.” • Don’t push. Let the dying control the breadth and depth of the conversation—they may not be able to put their experiences into words; insisting on more talk may frustrate or overwhelm them. • Avoid instilling a sense of failure in the dying person. If the information is garbled or the delivery impossibly vague, show that you appreciate the effort by saying, “I can see that this is hard for you; I appreciate your trying to share it with me,” or “I can see you’re getting tired/angry/frustrated. Would it be easier if we talked about this later?” or “Don’t worry. We’ll keep trying and maybe it will come.” • If you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything. Sometimes the best response is simply to touch the dying person’s hand, or smile and stroke his or her forehead. Touching gives the very important message “I’m with you.” Or you could say, “That’s interesting, let me think about it.” • Remember that sometimes the one dying picks an unlikely confidant. Dying people often try to communicate important information to someone who makes them feel safe—who won’t get upset or be taken aback by such confidences. If you’re an outsider chosen for this role, share the information as gently and completely as possible with the appropriate family members or friends. They may be more familiar with innuendos in a message because they know the person well.
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Maggie Callanan (Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Co)
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I can't tell you how many times in my life I have been told that I have “control issues”. Historically, this statement has brought me annoyance—the kind of irritation that can only be described as a self-protective reaction to having my behaviours labelled for exactly what they were. Needless to say, these accusations would make me defensive. I'd pull my armour tighter and get out my weapons—anything to protect myself from the truth.
I realized, one day, that there were only a few things I could control, and a whole lot of things that I couldn't. I realized that trying to control everything around me was a recipe for failure, because it simply wasn't possible.
I wish I could tell you that I "let go" then—that it was a lovely, beautiful spiritual moment, and now I'm all better. But that isn't true. Because, for me, seeking to control things which can't be controlled isn't a random tick or flaw. It's a stage of communication in the language of my own mind. If I don't listen to the first whispers that tell me I've repressed some emotion or neglected to process some event—then, stage two starts. Every piece of dirt on the floor, every chewing noise, every unexpected obstacle... they all become intolerable.
So, I have two choices when this happens. I can allow my desire to control the outside world to turn into trying to control it. Or, I can allow myself to hear what is being said to me—to interpret this strange language that I speak to myself in and respond with compassion.
Do I consistently do the wise thing first? No. I forget. And then I remember, somewhere in the middle of neurotically scrubbing a wall. But I remember faster now than I did before, and sometimes I really am able to respond quickly.
It's a journey. I'm not perfect. But I am doing the right thing, and I get better at it every time I have the chance to practice. That's what learning and letting go really is—a practice. It's never over. And it never is, and never will be, perfect.
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Vironika Tugaleva
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...if love...is a function of man's sadness, friendship is a function of his cowardice; and if neither can be realised because of the impenetrability (isolation) of all that is not 'cosa mentale,' at least the failure to possess may have the nobility of that which is tragic, whereas the attempt to communicate where no communication is possible is merely a simian vulgarity, or horribly comic, like the madness that holds a conversation with the furniture. - For an artist therefore, the only possible spiritual development is in the sense of depth. The artistic tendency is not expansive, but a contraction. And art is the apotheosis of solitude. There is no communication because there are no vehicles of communication.
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Martin Esslin (The Theater of the Absurd)
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Trust at the interpersonal level. Trustworthiness is the foundation of trust. Trust is the emotional bank account between two people that enables them to have a win-win performance agreement. If two people trust each other, based on the trustworthiness of each other, they can then enjoy clear communication, empathy, synergy, and productive interdependency. If one is incompetent, training and development can help. But if one has a character flaw, he or she must make and keep promises to increase internal security, improve skills, and rebuild relationships of trust. Trust—or the lack of it—is at the root of success or failure in relationships and in the bottom-line results of business, industry, education, and government.
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Stephen R. Covey (Principle-Centered Leadership)
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Technology managers, like so many other well-meaning managers, often try to fix the person while ignoring the work environment, even though changing the environment is far more vital for long-term success. Managers who want to avert employee burnout should concentrate their attention and efforts on: Fostering a respectful, supportive work environment that emphasizes learning from failures rather than blaming Communicating a strong sense of purpose Investing in employee development Asking employees what is preventing them from achieving their objectives and then fixing those things Giving employees time, space, and resources to experiment and learn Last but not least, employees must be given the authority to make decisions that affect their work and their jobs, particularly in areas where they are responsible for the outcomes.
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Nicole Forsgren (Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations)
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But overprotection is just one part of a larger trend that we call problems of progress. This term refers to bad consequences produced by otherwise good social changes. It’s great that our economic system produces an abundance of food at low prices, but the flip side is an epidemic of obesity. It’s great that we can connect and communicate with people instantly and for free, but this hyperconnection may be damaging the mental health of young people. It’s great that we have refrigerators, antidepressants, air conditioning, hot and cold running water, and the ability to escape from most of the physical hardships that were woven into the daily lives of our ancestors back to the dawn of our species. Comfort and physical safety are boons to humanity, but they bring some costs, too. We adapt to our new and improved circumstances and then lower the bar for what we count as intolerable levels of discomfort and risk. By the standards of our great-grandparents, nearly all of us are coddled. Each generation tends to see the one after it as weak, whiny, and lacking in resilience. Those older generations may have a point, even though these generational changes reflect real and positive progress. To repeat, we are not saying that the problems facing students, and young people more generally, are minor or “all in their heads.” We are saying that what people choose to do in their heads will determine how those real problems affect them. Our argument is ultimately pragmatic, not moralistic: Whatever your identity, background, or political ideology, you will be happier, healthier, stronger, and more likely to succeed in pursuing your own goals if you do the opposite of what Misoponos advised.
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Greg Lukianoff (The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure)
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To those who are fighting depression or deal with anxiety. Here is something to think about... When you're fighting depression or have anxiety, it is like being scared and tired at the same time. The fear of failure, but no urge to be productive. It's wanting friends but hate socializing. You want to be alone, but not feel lonely. I want you to know that it's okay to stumble and fall. But you need to pick yourself up. Keep fighting the good fight and understand, you're not alone. You are carrying undeniable strength and will make it through. Ever ask yourself, are you exhausted by fighting with the thoughts in your head telling you, you won't be anything? Stop now and rehab! Communication is important and quit pushing others away that are willing to help you. And most importantly, start helping yourself. The biggest enemy is YOU. The biggest critic is YOURSELF.
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Lorenzo Dozier (31 Days to Live)
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The Bible is in the end a single, great story that comes to a climax in Jesus Christ. God created the world and created us to serve and enjoy him and the world he had made. But human beings turned away from serving him; they sinned and marred themselves and the creation. Nevertheless, God promised to not abandon them (though it was his perfect right) but to rescue them, despite the guilt and condemnation they were under and despite their inveterately flawed hearts and character. To do this, first God called out one family in the world to know him and serve him. Then he grew that family into a nation; entered into a binding, personal covenant relationship with them; and gave them his law to guide their lives, the promise of blessing if they obeyed it, and a system of offerings and sacrifices to deal with their sins and failures. However, human nature is so disordered and sinful that, despite all these privileges and centuries of God’s patience, even his covenant people—who had received the law, promises, and sacrifices—turned away from him. It looked hopeless for the human race. But God became flesh and entered the world of time, space, and history. He lived a perfect life, but then he went to the cross to die. When he was raised from the dead, it was revealed that he had come to fulfill the law with his perfect life, to offer the final sacrifice, taking the curse that we deserved and thereby securing the promised blessings for us by free grace. Now those who believe in him are united with God despite our sin, and this changes the people of God from a single nation-state into a new international, multiethnic fellowship of believers in every nation and culture. We now serve him and our neighbor as we wait in hope for Jesus to return and renew all creation, sweeping away death and all suffering.
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Timothy J. Keller (Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism)
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Likewise, any action we take gambles the limited time we have on earth. We wager all other possible actions by choosing one. Whenever we choose a medical treatment or a school for our kids or a career path, we risk something—being wrong, failure, regret, time, poverty, and so on. Whenever we sin, we wager offense against God and the possibility of uncontainable harm to others (sin is never containable). Whenever, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we turn from sin and choose to honor God and love our neighbor, we wager our fleshly desires. Like Paul, it costs us to obey. To deny sin is to die to self. And that, too, testifies to those watching. It is precisely because our actions are wagers that they communicate something about us and our understanding of the world. They may communicate our trust in the medical community or our trust in public schools or the moral imperative of pursuing our dream jobs. But our actions always speak.
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Alan Noble (On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living)
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The disaster at the Chernobyl plant, along with the war in Afghanistan and the cruise-missile question, is generally seen today as the start of the decline of the Soviet Union. Just as the great famine of 1891 had mercilessly laid bare the failure of czarism, almost a century later Chernobyl clearly showed how divided, rigid and rotten the Soviet regime had become. The principal policy instruments, secrecy and repression, no longer worked in a modern world with its accompanying means of communication. The credibility of the party leadership sank to the point at which it could sink no further. In the early hours of 26 April, 1986, two explosions took place in one of the four reactors at the giant nuclear complex. It was an accident of the kind scientists and environmental activists had been warning about for years, particularly because of its effects: a monstrous emission of iodine-131 and caesium-137. Huge radioactive clouds drifted across half of Europe:
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Geert Mak (In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century)
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Qualities such as honesty, determination, and a cheerful acceptance of stress, which can all be identified through probing questionnaires and interviews, may be more important to the company in the long run than one's college grade-point average or years of "related experience."
Every business is only as good as the people it brings into the organization. The corporate trainer should feel his job is the most important in the company, because it is.
Exalt seniority-publicly, shamelessly, and with enough fanfare to raise goosebumps on the flesh of the most cynical spectator. And, after the ceremony, there should be some sort of permanent display so that employees passing by are continuously reminded of their own achievements and the achievements of others.
The manager must freely share his expertise-not only about company procedures and products and services but also with regard to the supervisory skills he has worked so hard to acquire. If his attitude is, "Let them go out and get their own MBAs," the personnel under his authority will never have the full benefit of his experience. Without it, they will perform at a lower standard than is possible, jeopardizing the manager's own success.
Should a CEO proclaim that there is no higher calling than being an employee of his organization? Perhaps not-for fear of being misunderstood-but it's certainly all right to think it. In fact, a CEO who does not feel this way should look for another company to manage-one that actually does contribute toward a better life for all.
Every corporate leader should communicate to his workforce that its efforts are important and that employees should be very proud of what they do-for the company, for themselves, and, literally, for the world. If any employee is embarrassed to tell his friends what he does for a living, there has been a failure of leadership at his workplace.
Loyalty is not demanded; it is created.
Why can't a CEO put out his own suggested reading list to reinforce the corporate vision and core values? An attractive display at every employee lounge of books to be freely borrowed, or purchased, will generate interest and participation. Of course, the program has to be purely voluntary, but many employees will wish to be conversant with the material others are talking about. The books will be another point of contact between individuals, who might find themselves conversing on topics other than the weekend football games. By simply distributing the list and displaying the books prominently, the CEO will set into motion a chain of events that can greatly benefit the workplace. For a very cost-effective investment, management will have yet another way to strengthen the corporate message.
The very existence of many companies hangs not on the decisions of their visionary CEOs and energetic managers but on the behavior of its receptionists, retail clerks, delivery drivers, and service personnel.
The manager must put himself and his people through progressively challenging courage-building experiences. He must make these a mandatory group experience, and he must lead the way.
People who have confronted the fear of public speaking, and have learned to master it, find that their new confidence manifests itself in every other facet of the professional and personal lives. Managers who hold weekly meetings in which everyone takes on progressively more difficult speaking or presentation assignments will see personalities revolutionized before their eyes.
Command from a forward position, which means from the thick of it. No soldier will ever be inspired to advance into a hail of bullets by orders phoned in on the radio from the safety of a remote command post; he is inspired to follow the officer in front of him. It is much more effective to get your personnel to follow you than to push them forward from behind a desk.
The more important the mission, the more important it is to be at the front.
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Dan Carrison (Semper Fi: Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way)
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Leadership is about having clear & grand vision, taking initiatives, possessing courage to question the status quo, ability to set large goals, consistently inspire self & others towards those goals, being self motivated and capability to motivate others, being spirited & strong to surmount any obstacle on the path, humility & openness to listen and learn from others, strength to stand for what he believes is right, while being flexible enough to revisit & review his beliefs, ability to organize & shift paradigms of his own & others, ability to attract, retain, develop & work with bigger leaders than himself, ability to trust others & being trust worthy , to think big & not petty, being above self, kind & giving, ability to sacrifice for others and to be bereft of insecurities & suspicion, ability to take risks, learn from both success & failure, being able to forget & forgive mistakes and mishaps of others, being focused, patient & persistent, to possess an amazing ability to be simple & easy to understand, to communicate & express with clarity and above all, being human.
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Krishna Saagar
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His mouth, his tongue, his voice box, seem to be working separately at first. His Adam's apple shivers, the skulls vibrate, his voice quakes. What's going on? It is as if a different Romeo is speaking, an interior Romeo. This unknown alternate Romeo has staged a coup. This Romeo Two has infiltrated his communication infrastructure. Are the drugs betraying him? What did he take again? What shape of pill? Romeo thinks it was a big white oval but there also were some smaller yellow articles. Perhaps crisscrossing side affects. Romeo is startled to silence even as Romeo Two becomes voluble, moved to unload certain acts undertaken for certain reasons. Romeo Two's mouth claptraps, his voice shifts gear, high and higher, until Romeo One understands in despair that Romeo Two has frog-leaped all the way to that holy step somewhere beyond three, maybe four, five, where you tell God and another human the exact nature of your wrongs. Talk about combined side effects. Where among the vertigo, gastric pain, incontinence, shortness of breath, and possible kidney failure was telling the truth?
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Louise Erdrich (LaRose)
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He seemed a little surprised that writers in America do not get together, do not associate with one another very much. In the Soviet Union writers are very important people. Stalin has said that writers are the architects of the human soul. We explained to him that writers in America have quite a different standing, that they are considered just below acrobats and just above seals. And in our opinion this is a very good thing. We believe that a writer, particularly a young writer, too much appreciated, is as likely to turn as heady as a motion-picture actress with good notices in the trade journals. And we believe that the rough-and-tumble critical life an American writer is subject to is very healthy for him in the long run. It seems to us that one of the deepest divisions between the Russians and the Americans or British, is in their feeling toward their governments. The Russians are taught, and trained, and encouraged to believe that their government is good, that every part of it is good, and that their job is to carry it forward, to back it up in all ways. On the other hand, the deep emotional feeling among Americans and British is that all government is somehow dangerous, that there should be as little government as possible, that any increase in the power of government is bad, and that existing government must be watched constantly, watched and criticized to keep it sharp and on its toes. And later, on the farms, when we sat at table with farming men, and they asked how our government operated, we would try to explain that such was our fear of power invested in one man, or in one group of men, that our government was made up of a series of checks and balances, designed to keep power from falling into any one person’s hands. We tried to explain that the people who made our government, and those who continue it, are so in fear of power that they would willingly cut off a good leader rather than permit a precedent of leadership. I do not think we were thoroughly understood in this, since the training of the people of the Soviet Union is that the leader is good and the leadership is good. There is no successful argument here, it is just the failure of two systems to communicate one with the other.
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John Steinbeck (A Russian Journal)
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The cartoonist Jules Feiffer, contemplating the communication problem in a nonindustrial context, has said, “Actually, the breakdown is between the person and himself. If you’re not able to communicate successfully between yourself and yourself, how are you supposed to make it with the strangers outside?” Suppose, purely as a hypothesis, that the owner of a company who orders his subordinates to obey the antitrust laws has such poor communication with himself that he does not really know whether he wants the order to be complied with or not. If his order is disobeyed, the resulting price-fixing may benefit his company’s coffers; if it is obeyed, then he has done the right thing. In the first instance, he is not personally implicated in any wrongdoing, while in the second he is positively involved in right doing. What, after all, can he lose? It is perhaps reasonable to suppose that such an executive might communicate his uncertainty more forcefully than his order. Possibly yet another foundation grantee should have a look at the reverse of communication failure, where he might discover that messages the sender does not even realize he is sending sometimes turn out to have got across only too effectively.
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John Brooks (Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street)
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Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm—to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. The price must be paid and the process followed. You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut. This principle is also true, ultimately, in human behavior, in human relationships. They, too, are natural systems based on the law of the harvest. In the short run, in an artificial social system such as school, you may be able to get by if you learn how to manipulate the man-made rules, to “play the game.” In most one-shot or short-lived human interactions, you can use the Personality Ethic to get by and to make favorable impressions through charm and skill and pretending to be interested in other people’s hobbies. You can pick up quick, easy techniques that may work in short-term situations. But secondary traits alone have no permanent worth in long-term relationships. Eventually, if there isn’t deep integrity and fundamental character strength, the challenges of life will cause true motives to surface and human relationship failure will replace short-term success. Many people with secondary greatness—that is, social recognition for their talents—lack primary greatness or goodness in their character. Sooner or later, you’ll see this in every long-term relationship they have, whether it is with a business associate, a spouse, a friend, or a teenage child going through an identity crisis. It is character that communicates most eloquently. As Emerson once put it, “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.” There are, of course, situations where people have character strength but they lack communication skills, and that undoubtedly affects the quality of relationships as well. But the effects are still secondary. In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. We all know it. There are people we trust absolutely because we know their character. Whether they’re eloquent or not, whether they have the human relations techniques or not, we trust them, and we work successfully with them. In the words of William George Jordan, “Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil—the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.
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Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
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J. R. R. Tolkien’s famous essay, “On Fairy-Stories,” in Tree and Leaf (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 1–82. The consolation . . . the joy of the happy ending . . . the sudden joyous ‘turn’ . . . this joy which . . . stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially ‘escapist’ nor ‘fugitive.’ . . . It is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure. Indeed, the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. Rather, it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat, and thus is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. It is the mark of a good story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give . . . when the ‘turn’ comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality. In . . . the ‘turn’ . . . we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.” Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” pp. 68–69. Later Tolkien argues that the ultimate story—the gospel—is the essence of all other stories with the joy-giving happy ending. “This ‘joy’ . . . merits more consideration. The peculiar quality of the ‘joy’ in a successful Fantasy can . . . be explained as a sudden glimpse of an underlying . . . Reality. . . . The Gospels contain . . . a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain . . . the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered history and the primary world. . . . The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story ends in joy. . . . There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. . . . [T]his story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.” Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” pp. 71–73.
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Timothy J. Keller (Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism)
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WHY THE ADMIRALTY would seek to assign fault to Turner defies ready explanation, given that isolating Germany as the sole offender would do far more to engender global sympathy for Britain and cement animosity toward Germany. By blaming Turner, however, the Admiralty hoped to divert attention from its own failure to safeguard the Lusitania. (Questioned on the matter in the House of Commons on May 10, 1915, Churchill had replied, rather coolly, “Merchant traffic must look after itself.”) But there were other secrets to protect, not just from domestic scrutiny, but also from German watchers—namely the fact that the Admiralty, through Room 40, had known so much about U-20’s travels leading up to the attack. One way to defend those secrets was to draw attention elsewhere. The Admiralty found added motivation to do so when, on May 12, wireless stations in Britain’s listening network intercepted a series of messages from the then homebound U-20, which upon entering the North Sea had resumed communication with its base at Emden. At the Admiralty these messages drew an unusual degree of attention. Room 40 asked all the stations that had intercepted them to confirm that they had transcribed them correctly and to provide signed and certified copies.
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Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
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To speak of a communication failure implies a breakdown of some sort. Yet this does not accurately portray what occurs. In truth, communication difficulties arise not from breakdown but from the characteristics of the system itself. Despite promising beginnings in our intimate relationships, we tend over time to evolve a system of communication that suppresses rather than reveals information. Life is complicated, and confirming or disconfirming the well-being of a relationship takes effort. Once we are comfortably coupled, the intense, energy-consuming monitoring of courtship days is replaced by a simpler, more efficient method. Unable to witness our partners’ every activity or verify every nuance of meaning, we evolve a communication system based on trust. We gradually cease our attentive probing, relying instead on familiar cues and signals to stand as testament to the strength of the bond: the words “I love you,” holidays with the family, good sex, special times with shared friends, the routine exchange, “How was your day?” We take these signals as representative of the relationship and turn our monitoring energies elsewhere.
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Not only do the initiator’s negative signals tend to become incorporated into the existing routine, but, paradoxically, the initiator actively contributes to the impression that life goes on as usual. Even as they express their unhappiness, initiators work at emphasizing and maintaining the routine aspects of life with the other person, simultaneously giving signals that all is well. Unwilling to leave the relationship yet, they need to privately explore and evaluate the situation. The initiator thus contrives an appearance of participation,7 creating a protective cover that allows them to “return” if their alternative resources do not work out.
Our ability to do this—to perform a role we are no longer enthusiastically committed to—is one of our acquired talents. In all our encounters, we present ourselves to others in much the same way as actors do, tailoring our performance to the role we are assigned in a particular setting.8 Thus, communication is always distorted. We only give up fragments of what really occurs within us during that specific moment of communication.9 Such fragments are always selected and arranged so that there is seldom a faithful presentation of our inner reality. It is transformed, reduced, redirected, recomposed.10 Once we get the role perfected, we are able to play it whether we are in the mood to go on stage or not, simply by reproducing the signals.
What is true of all our encounters is, of course, true of intimate relationships. The nature of the intimate bond is especially hard to confirm or disconfirm.11 The signals produced by each partner, while acting out the partner role, tend to be interpreted by the other as the relationship.12 Because the costs of constantly checking out what the other person is feeling and doing are high, each partner is in a position to be duped and misled by the other.13 Thus, the initiator is able to keep up appearances that all is well by falsifying, tailoring, and manipulating signals to that effect. The normal routine can be used to attest to the presence of something that is not there. For example, initiators can continue the habit of saying, “I love you,” though the passion is gone. They can say, “I love you” and cover the fact that they feel disappointment or anger, or that they feel nothing at all. Or, they can say, “I love you” and mean, “I like you,” or, “We have been through a lot together,” or even “Today was a good day.
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Diane Vaughan (Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships)
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By the end of the year 2000, Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza numbered 225,000. The best offer to the Palestinians—by Clinton, not Barak—had been to withdraw 20 percent of the settlers, leaving more than 180,000 in 209 settlements, covering about 10 percent of the occupied land, including land to be “leased” and portions of the Jordan River valley and East Jerusalem. The percentage figure is misleading, since it usually includes only the actual footprints of the settlements. There is a zone with a radius of about four hundred meters around each settlement within which Palestinians cannot enter. In addition, there are other large areas that would have been taken or earmarked to be used exclusively by Israel, roadways that connect the settlements to one another and to Jerusalem, and “life arteries” that provide the settlers with water, sewage, electricity, and communications. These range in width from five hundred to four thousand meters, and Palestinians cannot use or cross many of these connecting links. This honeycomb of settlements and their interconnecting conduits effectively divide the West Bank into at least two noncontiguous areas and multiple fragments, often uninhabitable or even unreachable, and control of the Jordan River valley denies Palestinians any direct access eastward into Jordan. About one hundred military checkpoints completely surround Palestine and block routes going into or between Palestinian communities, combined with an uncountable number of other roads that are permanently closed with large concrete cubes or mounds of earth and rocks. There was no possibility that any Palestinian leader could accept such terms and survive, but official statements from Washington and Jerusalem were successful in placing the entire onus for the failure on Yasir Arafat. Violence in the Holy Land continued.
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Jimmy Carter (Palestine Peace Not Apartheid)
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Washington University found that adding a single extra gene dramatically boosted a mouse’s memory and ability. These “smart mice” could navigate mazes faster, remember events better, and outperform other mice in a wide variety of tests. They were dubbed “Doogie mice,” after the precocious character on the TV show Doogie Howser, M.D. Dr. Tsien began by analyzing the gene NR2B, which acts like a switch controlling the brain’s ability to associate one event with another. (Scientists know this because when the gene is silenced or rendered inactive, mice lose this ability.) All learning depends on NR2B, because it controls the communication between memory cells of the hippocampus. First Dr. Tsien created a strain of mice that lacked NR2B, and they showed impaired memory and learning disabilities. Then he created a strain of mice that had more copies of NR2B than normal, and found that the new mice had superior mental capabilities. Placed in a shallow pan of water and forced to swim, normal mice would swim randomly about. They had forgotten from just a few days before that there was a hidden underwater platform. The smart mice, however, went straight to the hidden platform on the first try. Since then, researchers have been able to confirm these results in other labs and create even smarter strains of mice. In 2009, Dr. Tsien published a paper announcing yet another strain of smart mice, dubbed “Hobbie-J” (named after a character in Chinese cartoons). Hobbie-J was able to remember novel facts (such as the location of toys) three times longer than the genetically modified strain of mouse previously thought to be the smartest. “This adds to the notion that NR2B is a universal switch for memory formation,” remarked Dr. Tsien. “It’s like taking Michael Jordon and making him a super Michael Jordan,” said graduate student Deheng Wang. There are limits, however, even to this new mice strain. When these mice were given a choice to take a left or right turn to get a chocolate reward, Hobbie-J was able to remember the correct path for much longer than the normal mice, but after five minutes he, too, forgot. “We can never turn it into a mathematician. They are rats, after all,” says Dr. Tsien. It should also be pointed out that some of the strains of smart mice were exceptionally timid compared to normal mice. Some suspect that, if your memory becomes too great, you also remember all the failures and hurts as well, perhaps making you hesitant. So there is also a potential downside to remembering too much.
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Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
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Ultimately then, as one gets ready for kundalini awakening, the goal is to help those chakras clear, open, and align. Kundalini will respond with the greatest ease of motion accomplished and will demonstrate how well it knows what to do. As you begin to work through these chakras blockages or energetic reversals, you may find that those struggles look something like this. Blockages for the root chakra may look like low energy, general fear, persistent exhaustion, identity crisis, feeling isolated from the environment, eating disorders, general lack or erratic appetite, blatant materialism, difficulty saving money, or overall constant health problems. For the sacral chakra, blockages or reversals may look like lack of creativity, lack of inspiration, low or no motivation, low or no sexual appetite, feelings of insignificance, feelings of being unloved, feelings of being unaccepted, feelings of being outcasted, inability to care for oneself or persistent and recurrent problems of relationship with one's intimate partners. Blockages may look like identity crises or deficits for the solar plexus chakra, low self-esteem, low or no self-esteem, digestive problems, food intolerance, poor motivation, persistent weakness, constant nausea, anxiety disorders, liver disorder or disease, repeated illnesses, loss of core strength, lack of overall energy, recurrent depression with little relief, feelings of betrayal, For the chakra of the heart, reversals and blockages may seem like the inability to love oneself or others, the inability to put others first, the inability to put oneself first, the inability to overcome a problem ex, constant grudges, confidence issues, social anxiety or intense shyness, the failure to express emotions in a healthy way, problems of commitment, constant procrastination, intense anxiety For the throat chakra, blockages might seem like oversharing, inability to speak truthfully, failure to communicate with others, severe laryngitis, sore throats, respiratory or airway constraints, asthma, anemia, excessive exhaustion, inability to find the right words, paralyzing fear of confusion, nervousness in public situations, sometimes extreme dizziness, physical submissiveness, verba. For the third eye chakra, blockages or reversals might seem like a lack of direction in life, increasingly intense feelings of boredom or stagnation, migraines, insomnia, eye or vision problems, depression, high blood pressure, inability to remember one's dreams, constant and jarring flashbacks, closed-mindedness, fear, history of mental disorders, and history of addiction. For the crown chakra, blockages may look like feelings of envy, extreme sadness, need for superiority over others, self-destructive behaviors, history of addiction, generally harmful habits, dissociations from the physical plane, inability to make even the easiest decisions, persistent exhaustion, terrible migraines, hair loss, anemia, cerebral confusion, poor mental control, lack of intellect.
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Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
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Now, with all seven of these chakras revolving in the right direction with no blockages whatsoever, your kundalini would not be able to help itself from rising into that state of bliss, which it perceives above. Ultimately then, as one gets ready for kundalini awakening, the goal is to help those chakras clear, open, and align. Kundalini will respond with the greatest ease of motion accomplished and will demonstrate how well it knows what to do. As you begin to work through these chakras blockages or energetic reversals, you may find that those struggles look something like this. Blockages for the root chakra may look like low energy, general fear, persistent exhaustion, identity crisis, feeling isolated from the environment, eating disorders, general lack or erratic appetite, blatant materialism, difficulty saving money, or overall constant health problems. For the sacral chakra, blockages or reversals may look like lack of creativity, lack of inspiration, low or no motivation, low or no sexual appetite, feelings of insignificance, feelings of being unloved, feelings of being unaccepted, feelings of being outcasted, inability to care for oneself or persistent and recurrent problems of relationship with one's intimate partners. Blockages may look like identity crises or deficits for the solar plexus chakra, low self-esteem, low or no self-esteem, digestive problems, food intolerance, poor motivation, persistent weakness, constant nausea, anxiety disorders, liver disorder or disease, repeated illnesses, loss of core strength, lack of overall energy, recurrent depression with little relief, feelings of betrayal, For the chakra of the heart, reversals and blockages may seem like the inability to love oneself or others, the inability to put others first, the inability to put oneself first, the inability to overcome a problem ex, constant grudges, confidence issues, social anxiety or intense shyness, the failure to express emotions in a healthy way, problems of commitment, constant procrastination, intense anxiety For the throat chakra, blockages might seem like oversharing, inability to speak truthfully, failure to communicate with others, severe laryngitis, sore throats, respiratory or airway constraints, asthma, anemia, excessive exhaustion, inability to find the right words, paralyzing fear of confusion, nervousness in public situations, sometimes extreme dizziness, physical submissiveness, verba. For the third eye chakra, blockages or reversals might seem like a lack of direction in life, increasingly intense feelings of boredom or stagnation, migraines, insomnia, eye or vision problems, depression, high blood pressure, inability to remember one's dreams, constant and jarring flashbacks, closed-mindedness, fear, history of mental disorders, and history of addiction. For the crown chakra, blockages may look like feelings of envy, extreme sadness, need for superiority over others, self-destructive behaviors, history of addiction, generally harmful habits, dissociations from the physical plane, inability to make even the easiest decisions, persistent exhaustion, terrible migraines, hair loss, anemia, cerebral confusion, poor mental control, lack of intellect.
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Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
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Well before the end of the 20th century however print had lost its former dominance. This resulted in, among other things, a different kind of person getting elected as leader. One who can present himself and his programs in a polished way, as Lee Quan Yu you observed in 2000, adding, “Satellite television has allowed me to follow the American presidential campaign. I am amazed at the way media professionals can give a candidate a new image and transform him, at least superficially, into a different personality. Winning an election becomes, in large measure, a contest in packaging and advertising. Just as the benefits of the printed era were inextricable from its costs, so it is with the visual age. With screens in every home entertainment is omnipresent and boredom a rarity. More substantively, injustice visualized is more visceral than injustice described. Television played a crucial role in the American Civil rights movement, yet the costs of television are substantial, privileging emotional display over self-command, changing the kinds of people and arguments that are taken seriously in public life. The shift from print to visual culture continues with the contemporary entrenchment of the Internet and social media, which bring with them four biases that make it more difficult for leaders to develop their capabilities than in the age of print. These are immediacy, intensity, polarity, and conformity. Although the Internet makes news and data more immediately accessible than ever, this surfeit of information has hardly made us individually more knowledgeable, let alone wiser, as the cost of accessing information becomes negligible, as with the Internet, the incentives to remember it seem to weaken. While forgetting anyone fact may not matter, the systematic failure to internalize information brings about a change in perception, and a weakening of analytical ability. Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance and interpretation depend on context and relevance. For information to be transmuted into something approaching wisdom it must be placed within a broader context of history and experience. As a general rule, images speak at a more emotional register of intensity than do words. Television and social media rely on images that inflamed the passions, threatening to overwhelm leadership with the combination of personal and mass emotion. Social media, in particular, have encouraged users to become image conscious spin doctors. All this engenders a more populist politics that celebrates utterances perceived to be authentic over the polished sound bites of the television era, not to mention the more analytical output of print. The architects of the Internet thought of their invention as an ingenious means of connecting the world. In reality, it has also yielded a new way to divide humanity into warring tribes. Polarity and conformity rely upon, and reinforce, each other. One is shunted into a group, and then the group polices once thinking. Small wonder that on many contemporary social media platforms, users are divided into followers and influencers. There are no leaders. What are the consequences for leadership? In our present circumstances, Lee's gloomy assessment of visual media's effects is relevant. From such a process, I doubt if a Churchill or Roosevelt or a de Gaulle can emerge. It is not that changes in communications technology have made inspired leadership and deep thinking about world order impossible, but that in an age dominated by television and the Internet, thoughtful leaders must struggle against the tide.
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Henry Kissinger (Leadership : Six Studies in World Strategy)
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If we fail to cultivate grit, it is also because we often grant little importance to the practice of making and the process that it can teach us throughout our lives. Inventions come from those who can view a familiar set of variables from a radical perspective and see new possibilities. Creative practice is one of the most effective teachers of the spry movement of this perspective shift. It offers agency, required for supple, nimble endurance that helps us to sense when the bridge is about to collapse. It lets us shift our frame, like a painter who stared at a set of canvas stretcher bars for years and one day saw its potential to be an original communication device. And then persisted for decades to realize its full application for the world.
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Sarah Lewis (The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery)
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If you fail to understand the meaning of a word in a sentence, the essence of what is being communicated could be lost or distorted
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Sunday Adelaja (The Danger Of Monoculturalism In The XXI Century)
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The “love” of formerly abused children for their parents is not love. It is an attachment fraught with expectations, illusions, and denials, and it exacts a high price from all those involved in it. The price of this attachment is paid primarily by the next generation of children, who grow up in a spirit of mendacity because their parents automatically inflict on them the things they believe “did them good.” Young parents themselves also frequently pay for their denial with serious damage to their health because their “gratitude” stands in contradiction to the knowledge stored in their bodies. The frequent failure of therapy can be explained by the fact that most therapists are themselves caught up in the snare of traditional morality and attempt to drag their clients into the same kind of captivity because it is all they know. As soon as clients start to feel and become capable of roundly condemning the deeds, say, of an incestuous father, therapists will probably be assailed by fear of punishment at the hands of their own parents if they should dare to look their own truth in the face and express it for what it is. How else can we explain the fact that forgiveness is declared to be an instrument of healing? Therapists frequently propose this to reassure themselves, just as the parents did. But because it sounds very similar to the messages communicated to them in childhood by their parents, albeit expressed in a more friendly way, some patients may need some time to see through the pedagogic angle of it. And even once they finally have recognized it, they can hardly leave their therapist, especially if a new toxic attachment has already formed, if for them, the therapist has become like a mother who has helped them to a new birth (because in this new relationship they have started to feel). So they may continue to expect salvation from the therapist instead of listening to their body and accepting the aid its signals represent. Once clients, accompanied by an enlightened witness, have lived through and understood their fear of their parents (or parental figures), they can gradually start to break off destructive attachments. The positive reaction of the body will not be long in coming: its communications will become more and more comprehensible; it will cease to express itself in mysterious symptoms. Then clients will realize that their therapists have deceived them (frequently involuntarily) because forgiveness actually prevents the formation of scar tissue over the old wounds, not to speak of complete recovery. And it can never dispel the compulsion to repeat the same pattern over and over again. This is something we can all find out from our own experience.
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Alice Miller (The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting)