It amazed me when he said it. The power of it. The simplicity. My biopsychology lecturer in closing off our final lecture said to us:

The working of the human brain is dependant on communication.

In essence, his message is; communicate well to the human brain and that brain will process the information well. Communicate poorly and the receiving brain will process the information negatively.

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This message is oh so relevant in today’s world.

We live in an era of fast convenient communication. This works for speed. The flipside is it creates bad habits. We can think less about what we put into an e-mail that we’re ‘pinging’ off to someone, or a message that we’re ‘firing’ out to a group.

This increases the risk of communication landing poorly to one or more of the human brains receiving the information. Which can create the ripple effect of negative feeling and/or response. This is not good. Ever. However especially when it’s the human brain of someone important to you personally and/or professionally.

We also live in a world of exploding numbers of communication channels. We’re having to manage a much greater volume of communication. From which has emerged a worrying trend. That is slow, or more specifically, no response.

Whatever about poor communications creating a poor response in a human brain, no response is arguably generating a much deeper level of negative processing in human brains.

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At the heart of the existence of this world is people. And our co-existence in this world is facilitated by our communication with each other. Amidst all the uncertainty on this planet with Brexit, Climate Change etc. one thing is certain.

If we own our opportunity to create positive responses in human brains through our communications we can make a difference. And if we can create a movement towards a commitment to communication we can multiply the effect of this difference.

Here’s three ways to create a commitment to communication this week:

Pause then send:

Take a pause before you send a message or an e-mail. Read it back one more time and ask, is this going to create a positive response in the human brains receiving the information (even if the communication contains a difficult message)?

Get back:

At lunch and at the end of the working day ask yourself, ‘is there anyone I need to get back to?’. If there is, commit to a response right away or as soon as you can (I’m including a link to a song that could be a musical reminder to this action this week!).

Send a positive message:

Once a day this week take the time to send a positive message to someone. For no other reason than you’d like to create a positive response in the brain of a person that you like/love/respect.

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In a turbulent world communication can be the difference. I hope that you can help bring that difference to life this week.

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If you have any feedback on the post or if you’d like to learn more about Inspo, please contact john@inspo.ie.