This is a book review of Napoleon Hill’s all-time international classic Think and Grow Rich!. It is the original version, restored and revised by Ross Cornwell, and fully annotated and indexed.

A simple Google search with “Think and Grow Rich” shows millions of results. Since publishing the book in 1937, when the Great Depression was at its strongest, Napoleon Hill has impacted, or rather created, personal development as we know it today. That is why I am reviewing the book: because its teachings are powerfully fundamental to any type of personal development.

Think and Grow Rich! is an accumulation into Hill’s studies of 500 of the world’s most successful people over a 25 year period. Hill studied, and was fortunate enough to develop relationships with many of, the likes of Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Gandhi, William Wrigley, Wilbur Wright, Theodore Roosevelt, Elbert Hubbard, Franklin Woolworth, John Rockefeller, Charles Schwab, and Alexander Graham Bell. Such a powerful study alone should be enough reason to buy the book. To tap into the minds of men who pioneered many things we have today is an irresistible opportunity.

Hill’s book is similar to Dale Carnegie’s classic How to Win Friends and Influence People in that they both are classic books shaping many self help teachings today. These are books over 70 years old, that have been reshaped by the author’s family and other experts, which get mentioned in nearly any personal development book. If the book is not directly mentioned, its principles are mostly likely discussed in an indirect manner.

The most mysterious thing about the book is what Hill calls “the secret”. The secret was revealed to him by Andrew Carnegie who gave the secret very subtly without giving it a name. Hill provides half of the secret, but tells the reader it is up to them to figure it out. In the author’s preface, Hill says:

“The secret to which I refer is mentioned no fewer than a hundred times throughout this book. It has not been directly named, for it seems to work more successfully when it is merely uncovered and left in sight, where THOSE WHO ARE READY and SEARCHING FOR IT may pick it up… If you are READY to put it to use, you will recognize this secret at least once in every chapter. I wish I might feel privileged to tell you how you will know if you are ready, but that would deprive you of much of the benefit you will receive when you make the discovery in your own way.

There is a real interesting seven minute video on YouTube I recommend you go watch where Napoleon Hill discusses the secret. The video captures rare footage of Hill, someone who has shaped personal development today, so I do recommend you watch it, if not to learn about the secret, then to just see Hill.

What is fascinating about the secret is that some people cannot discover it – even after reading Think and Grow Rich! 15 times. This is not a problem on the person’s part, it is merely an indication that they are not ready. As Hill says, the secret is obvious to you when you are ready.

The secret reflects Think and Grow Rich! principles: you can read the book and overlook powerful lessons because your awareness is not ready to gather such lessons. Like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, by reading the book one time every year you experience powerful new realizations because your awareness and experience you have at the present time is not enough to completely grasp the principles in these classic books.

The 13 steps to riches, which form the books chapters and most of its contents, are as follows:

1. Desire
2. Faith
3. Autosuggestion
4. Specialized Knowledge
5. Imagination
6. Organized Planning
7. Decision
8. Persistence
9. Power of the Master Mind
10. The Mystery of Sex Transmutation
11. The Subconscious Mind
12. The Brain
13. The Sixth Sense

The chapters on desire and the master mind were the most compelling to me. The master mind section is about gathering a group of like-minded people together. Wealthy individuals often thank Hill for bringing this success principle to their mind because even though you may not have the knowledge or expertise in an area, the master mind gives you connections with like-minded people to gather the information you need for success.

There are a lot of Think and Grow Rich! versions out there, so why should you get this version by Ross Cornwell? Simply put, from my experience and many other people’s experience, this is the best version out there. Ross Cornwell has included a lot of useful material that other versions released after 1960 exclude. In the back of the book is Bruce Lee’s application of Hill’s “Definite Chief Aim” where you write down your goals using the self-confidence formula. Lee’s definite chief aim was found in Hollywood and later matched his success of being the highest paid Oriental star in the United States. As the book’s front page states: “The version of TGR! that makes all others obsolete.”

Go to the following link I’m about to give to you, and take a few minutes to read some people’s life-changing stories. Because the book was released many decades ago, there are people who share their story on how exactly Think and Grow Rich! changed their life. The 13 steps to riches given to you by Hill have great power in changing you to be who you want to be. If you do not already have a copy of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich!, you must grab your copy now from Amazon by clicking here.

This is a book review of Dale Carnegie’s The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking.

Dale Carnegie’s name is synonymous with How to Win Friends and Influence People. He is said to be a contributor to the start of self-improvement. Though The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking is not as popular Carnegie’s all-time classic, possibly because of its narrower market in public speaking skills, I believe it lives up to the author’s name. (If you have not read Dale Carnegie’s all-time classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, with over 16 million sales, you are missing out.)

Originally called Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business in 1931, Dale’s wife, Dorothy Carnegie, revised the book, and renamed it The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking, in 1962 with Dale’s notes and suggestions before he passed away. With many improvements made possible from the couple’s speaking experiences and the Dale Carnegie Organization, this book is a great primer in public speaking.

Having taught public speaking for 40 years, Dale Carnegie has transformed public speaking into a skill anyone can develop. He has seen what works, what doesn’t work, and what works brilliantly. He has helped thousands of people overcome the fear of public speaking and present exciting speeches that hook the audience’s attention.

The book has 5 parts with 14 chapters and starts out with the basics of public speaking. You learn how to choose a topic, express yourself with excitement, and improve your speaking skills. Other bits of advice to improve your speaking skills include how to: let others know your thoughts, cut-down the number of points in your speech, and sincerely appreciate your audience.

The most repeated point made in the book is to choose a topic that interests you and get excited about it. Convince yourself that what you have is worth sharing and you will convince the crowd to listen attentively to you. Choosing a topic that excites you will make you talk with interest, vocal variety, and good body language because 93% of our communication comes from nonverbal communication when we discuss our likes or dislikes. This could very well be the secret to effective public speaking.

This book has the same style of writing as How to Win Friends and Influence People. There is many stories, easy-to-read language, clear advice, and most importantly is the practical simplicity of the advice. While it takes time to develop public speaking skills, the advice given is the easy way to effective speaking because it leverages our natural abilities and knowledge.

A brief review of the table of contents is below for your convenience:

I have left out in-depth detail of parts 2, 3, 4, and 5 because there is too many points to list here. It would take-up too much room. A full summary of each part can be found conveniently at the end of each part for quick reference so you can revise and easily memorize what you have learned.

In my opinion, the advice offered on how to give an impromptu speech (a speech where you are given the topic on the spot) is the best part about the book. I have always struggled to think quickly on my feet by speaking smoothly on a topic I was just given, and the advice given is powerful. I am quickly improving, becoming more confident, and talking longer – and these improvements will continue because you learn how to continually improve your speaking skills.

I highly recommend you get this book to improve not just your public speaking skills, but to also improve your conversational skills, remove self-consciousness, and boost confidence. Public speaking has the effect. If you have not already got yourself a copy of Dale Carnegie’s The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking, you need to go grab your copy now from Amazon by clicking here.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou, poet and actress

“Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.” - Mark Twain, highly quoted writer

“You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.” - Anonymous

“I am involved in all of mankind.” - John Donne, 16th century poet

One midnight, I had just finished another shift at a job I didn’t like so I was alive with energy. I smiled, my eyes were open, I felt good about myself. I said my usual goodbyes to a friend and sprung into my car. My friend reversed his car just before I had the chance to leave my car park so he had beaten me this time – it was an unspoken game that took place each time we left from work. I waited for him to get out of the way before I reversed to make my way home.

As I was leaving, the open car park gave me an invitation to have a little fun with my car. If landscapes could talk, this one was whispering into my ear that I should spin the wheels. “Besides, it’s late at night. No one is around and you’re feeling great. It’s an open car park with no danger. Do it!” said the persuasive voice. Like a vulnerable teenager succumbing to peer pressure, I accepted the invitation.

The car became an extension of my body as it began to mimic my ecstatic mood. I put my foot down hard on the accelerator as I spun the wheel left around the first corner. As the rear tires lost their stability and the car went side-ways, I entered the next turn and spun the wheel right. The sound of screeching tires was like water fertilizing my increasing smile. Smoke filled the rims of my tires and a shot of adrenaline filled my body.

Following the consecutive drifts, I straightened the car and approached a set of traffic lights on the main road that would take me home. Had this been during the daytime, about seven cars would be in front of me before the upcoming traffic lights. I decided to keep complying with the road’s persuasive voice as it told me to “be a little adventurous” so I decided, or rather I let the road decide for me, that I should turn left instead of my usual right turn. Not exactly an Indiana Jones adventure, but it was different.

My friend who had left before me had just gone through the traffic lights a few seconds before me so the lights were still green. Keeping in the mood, I put my foot down on the accelerator to catch the green light. I would make it. I turned around the corner with a soft screech of the tires and there, 20 meters in front of me, on the side of the road were two police officers beside their vehicle.

They pulled me over. Opposite to what you might be thinking, I was not concerned. I was still in my elevated state. I wound down my window and an angry officer came charging at me, yelling, “What the hell are you thinking? What the hell is going through your mind?” I paused momentarily, unaffected by his aggressive state. I said smilingly, “I’m just happy, I guess”. Not a smart response.

It just hit me that I was out of it. I knew I should have said something else. I gulped. My mind rushed to think of some communication techniques I could use as a life boat to save me from drowning in the conversation. The moment was intense and all that came to mind were some techniques on getting out of a speeding-ticket. I thought to myself that I’ll give the techniques a shot. After all, I had annoyed the officer enough already.

As I was thinking how to approach this difficult situation, I was still happy of course. My happy mood seemed to pour fuel on his already raging fire. “Bloody hell mate! I could just give you a ticket right now!” My smile began to lower. I no longer made eye contact with the officer. The officer’s raging mood began to infect me and cause me to feel angry. It was as if my body had been overcome by an emotional virus the officer had given me.

I thought of the techniques to get out of a speeding-ticket and realized I was already beginning to use them. Well, it was too late to make the officer feel safe as he approached the car, but I needed to no longer act oblivious to my mistake. I needed to show respect as officers are in a clear position of authority and often experience disrespect throughout their day that only makes them more determined to convict guilty citizens. “You’re right.” I replied. “I was stupid and careless.”

The officer was still enraged and continued to threaten me with a ticket. I knew he could easily write me a ticket, but he wasn’t writing one possibly because officers hate the paperwork created from citizens breaking the law. I kept myself aligned with the officer’s reality by remaining in a “Yes I’m wrong, stupid, and shouldn’t have done that” mood. I continued to play psychological judo, and match my mood with his own, until two minutes later he said to drive off. And oh, I got no ticket!

I drove off – though feeling pleased I had beaten a reckless driving ticket – in an irritated state. The officer had destroyed my happy mood. It took two minutes of talking with the officer to completely transform my happy state into a joyless, gloomy mood. All it took was two minutes to convert my mood and there I was, in an unhappy state for the remaining two hours until I went to bed.

The story I just described is probably a perfect depiction of your reality with emotions. Everyday you are interacting with people at different mood levels. Sometimes you’re happier than people you are talking to, other times they are happier than you. Whatever the case maybe, emotions are being transferred to various people. This is a fascinating peculiarity with emotions. Have you ever noticed how we feel in our interactions is not just dependent on our internal state?

• How did you feel when someone really annoyed began talking to you? You became more annoyed.
• How did you feel when someone unhappy began talking to you? You began to be unhappy.
• How did you feel when a charismatic person talked to you? You felt his energy and you began to feel happier.

Psychologists call this phenomena “emotional contagion”. It is a psychological and physiological process – a transference of emotion that can occur from mimicking body language. Elaine Hatfield, a professor at the University of Hawaii, in a study with John Carlson and Christopher Hsee had college students watch a videotape of a man describing two very emotional experiences: his life’s happiest and saddest events. While the college students watched the tape, they were taped so the researchers could record the students’ emotional responses. The students were also asked what feelings they experienced for each story at the end of the video. The researchers found that students showed and expressed the recorded person’s emotions. The student’s felt happy when they watched the person describe his happiest event and sad when they watched the person describe his saddest event.

Hatfield and her two colleagues, John Cacioppo and Richard Rapson, in their co-authored book Emotional Contagion, say the psychophysiological phenomena occurs from automatically matching facial expressions, vocalics, postures, and movements. Hatfield says, “People tend to experience emotions consistent with the facial, vocal, and postural expressions they adopt.”

When you are empathetically listening to a friend, true empathy puts you in their shoes so you experience the events they are talking about. The friend describes the argument with their ex-partner, the yelling, the misunderstandings that took place. You can vividly see what your friend is talking about. From this experience you come to feel how your friend feels. As you empathetically listen to a friend discuss a painful event, you will experience a similar pain. Well-known psychologist Albert Bandura says the shared experience results in a shared feeling. That is the price of listening: not only can you catch a cold, but you can catch an emotional cold.

Mirror Neurons: The Mind’s Mirror

There is a scientific explanation behind how our emotions – an experience of mind and body – transfer over to somebody else. In 1980s, three Italian researchers made what is said to be one of the greatest neuroscience breakthroughs in recent times: discovering the mirror neuron. In an experiment, the three researchers had electrodes attached to a macaque monkey’s brain which enabled the researchers to determine what movements caused the neurons to light-up. As the monkey reached for food, the researchers took note of single neurons being fired. When the researchers were handing the monkey some food, they unexpectedly saw the monkey’s neurons fire. By accident, the researchers discovered that when they picked-up a piece of food, the monkey had the same neurons light-up as if it were picking-up the food. They came to name these neurons “mirror neurons” because they were like the mind’s mirror.

Mirror neurons get triggered from an action or observation of someone who is doing the same action. It may not appear as a significant finding, yet the breakthrough discovery has lead to a better understanding of autism, empathy, altruism, and general learning because the mirror neurons are responsible for tuning-in to another person’s behavior. The neurons are responsible for an awareness and shared-feeling between two people. One neuron is responsible for the significant role of learning, understanding, and feeling.

An amazing, almost mystical link, takes place to connect the brains. A signal sent from either individual in the psychological connection travels via the link to similarly affect the recipient. Hatfield says, “We reflect what they feel.” Smile at a baby, or almost anyone for that matter, and the baby’s mirror neurons will be fired to trigger an automatic smile. That is why the age-old saying, “smiling causes the whole world to smile with you”, is true. Not only is emotional contagion a replication of another’s emotions, but it is a biological dance – a shared physical connection. It is an interlinking of mind and body.

The biological dance is an important part in group dynamics. Janice Kelly, a professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University, says emotional contagion causes people to converge into an affective homogeneous group. In other words, group members begin to experience the same emotions overtime as their fellow members. Kelly says that people with highly expressive body language are more able to impose their emotions on others. The distinctive nonverbal signs allows individuals to pick-up on the person’s emotions and become infected by their emotional state. Here we see another age-old saying, “Monkey see, monkey do.” is real.

Another age-old theory of staying away from toxic people – because they will pull you down with them – is now a physiological and psychological fact. Being around suppressing or uplifting people directly affects your body and mind. We were born for interaction and connection with one another. We are a social animal.

You’ve heard that you should make friends with wealthy people if you want to be wealthy because the technique works. If you want to be happy, you make friends with happy people. If you want to be confident, you make friends with confident people. If you want to be funny, you make friends with funny people. Being around people you want to be like is a secret of self-transformation to stimulate that emotional desire needed for growth. Athletes are able to play their sport better upon watching superior athletes excel in their sport through the magic of transference. Observance creates transference. You come to pick-up the characteristics you see in others because they infect you with their style, knowledge, and emotions.

Whether you intend to be infected by someone or not is irrelevant because mirror neurons are responsible for imitating other people. You don’t make a choice as to what you are exposed to that causes your mirror neurons to fire; it’s an automatic process. Our parents told us to avoid hanging out with the wrong people for a reason. “People are like dirt.” said the classical Greek philosopher Plato. “They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.” It is reality that you come to absorb the characteristics of people you observe.

Put yourself in a group where the individuals are depressed and you will become depressed. Put yourself in a group where the individuals blame others and you will come to blame others. Put yourself in a group where the individuals are prejudice against blacks, and you will come to be prejudice against blacks. Or in my case: do something stupid on the road in front of a police officer to make him angry so that you become angry.

Mirror neurons are not all bad news. Mirror neurons do not have to be the only source of influence on your mood or way of thinking. You can still be with depressed, blame-filled, or prejudiced individuals without taking on their characteristics. Therapists, social workers, and doctors are just a few people who need to work with people in the “don’t infect me with your emotional disease” category. Even so, people in such professions and positions will have a harder time in making themselves immune from emotional diseases because mirror neurons are a part of the brain every moment of our lives.

Even though you and I will always be around less-than-optimal people, we need to put ourselves around people who have the characteristics and emotions we want to take on. We naturally gravitate towards these people. They have a set of likable characteristics that draw us into them to bring out the best in ourselves. As Mark Twain said, “Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

The Brain’s Low Road and High Road

While emotional contagion is an important part in transforming yourself to who you want to be, it is important that you don’t rely on other people to make you feel good. Letting the emotional parts of your brain – mostly the almond-shaped amygdala, which is located near both sides of your temples – roam like a child on the streets is dangerous. Neuroscientists say that you can control emotional responses – to a certain extent.

When our ancestors were faced with a dangerous predator, they had to make a quick decision, an emotional response void of time-consuming rationalization that puts the person’s life at risk. Their eyes would widen and pupils dilate to visually take-in more information. They receive a shot of adrenaline to increase the supply of oxygen and glucose to muscles for strength and speed. Unnecessary bodily functions like digestion becomes suppressed. Additionally, the brain detours the slow responding high road – taking the low road to produce a quick response. Going straight to the more primitive amygdala produces reflexive, unconscious decisions. It is these primitive parts of the brain that neuroscientists say is difficult to change.

One low road response could be your reaction to a loud bang. The loud sound causes all the adrenaline responses mentioned earlier – such as widened eyes, dilated pupils, increased supply of oxygen – in the first few milliseconds you hear the sound. You quickly look towards the sound to rapidly figure out if the sound is a signal of danger. If you can’t see the sound, you rely on social proof as you look at people’s faces to see their reactions and how you should respond.

In a low road response, the sensory signals bypass the cortex and go straight to the amygdala to produce a reflexive response. If your brain puts too much emphasis on the low road in everyday living, you would live spontaneously and quickly destroy your life from poor decision-making. If you screamed and sprinted away each time you heard a loud bang, you would be an emotional wreak. This is where the high road, a neurological path in your the brain, comes in to better control your emotional responses.

As the first few seconds – or even less – pass after hearing the loud bang, you transition over to the high road as you begin to analyze the situation. While the low road is responsible for reflexive decisions beyond your control, the high road can jam a cognitive wedge in the low road to better adapt and survive.

The high road is a slower response path that uses parts of the brain like the frontal cortex and the hippocampus (your memory) to respond appropriately to stimulus. These parts of the brain are vulnerable to neuroplasticity, physical changes of the brain. Over time your brain physically shapes itself as it learns that all loud bangs are not dangerous. A cooking saucepan dropping on the hard kitchen floor doesn’t automatically make you run to the neighbors for help. (I recommend you grab Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence to better understand the neuroscience behind emotions).

Shaping Your Emotional Responses

While some neuroscientists say it is impossible to control all emotional responses, due to the brain’s low road producing a quick response for survival, you can better utilize the high road. Thinking about an emotional response uses the prefrontal cortex of the brain to override the signals received by the amygdala. This is where neuroscience meets personal development. One of my favorite techniques to do this is reframing. In reframing you are changing your initial interpretation, often a quick-response, in a situation to produce a response that is beneficial to you and your relationships.

One of the most powerful reframes I describe in the second edition of my communication secrets of making people like you program is positive intention framing. In positive intention framing, you identify the positive intention relevant to the limiting situation. Let’s say you are in a serious argument with your spouse. Most people in such an argument let: 1) the low road control the argument as they react impulsively and later regret the things they said during the heated disagreement, and 2) emotional contagion infect themselves with a negative mood for hours following the argument. You can have a degree of control over impulsiveness and emotional infections by reframing.

A positive intention reframe could identify your spouse’s yelling at you as their need to be heard, understood, and received; instead of a personal attack. Alternatively, you could positively reframe your spouse’s yelling as a welcomed release of their frustration so you can listen to what concerns him or her. The purpose of this type of reframing is to help you better utilize your mental resources without having them work against you. The reframing helps you use your prefrontal cortex to take the high road and interpret the situation in a way that lets you act in a resourceful manner. Because of this, reframing is proven by research to be one of the most effective anger management techniques.

Happy people are the experts of reframing. They may not have learned reframing techniques from a book or online article, but I guarantee you they use the technique. Happy people are logical people. They are logical in the sense they reframe, interpret, and use their prefrontal cortex to take the brain’s high road – and live a more fulfilling life. What happens outside of them does not matter as their mental attitude is what matters. “Happiness doesn’t depend on any external conditions,” said Dale Carnegie, “it is governed by our mental attitude.”

Let’s say an aggressive person is talking to someone with effective communication skills. The effective communicator is able to defuse the aggression through their communication style even though the emotional aggression is still received. A good communicator feels the aggression, but they reframe their response which enables them to control their emotional contagion and destructive low road reaction. They see it in frames such as, “Oh, he’s just trying to get me to understand him.” or “I enjoy the problem coming to surface instead of it remaining hidden where it eats away the relationship.” From these frames the effective communicator is able to use his or her own mental resources very efficiently.

When you express anger, you give it a pathway to infect your relationships and escalate the emotional infection. Expressing your anger gives it to someone who gives it back to you in a greater quantity. Happy people get angry; but their anger is a momentary feeling, a function of the low road which is later controlled by the high road. Happy people reframe their anger instead of expressing it and letting it grow.

In terms of depression, emotional contagion and reframing is no different. Depressed individuals seek isolation to feel better about themselves. The isolation compounds their depression – an ironic effect. Those with depression are better off forcing themselves to interact with other people who are more happier than they are in order to beat depression. They need to reframe their negative states to put themselves into an empowering state. Similarly, they should make mirror neurons benefit themselves by smiling – even if it feels artificial – as it forces the person’s body to feel happy. Emotional contagion can work for you or against you if you let it.

Shaping People’s Emotional Responses: The Emotional-Leveling Technique

We see that reframing controls our responses to the situation, but what about other people’s responses? Are we suppose to let other people react in whatever way they happen to react? Is there a technique we can use to uplift other people and have emotional contagion help our relationships?

Generally, you do not need to worry about people’s responses because your response is what matters. Worrying is a powerless concern for the future. That isn’t to say that people’s responses and emotional states are irrelevant; because they are vital as you will soon see. You need to observe people’s emotional states and adjust yourself accordingly instead of worrying about people’s behaviors that are beyond your control.

How do you shape a person’s emotional response? You maybe thinking that if negative emotions can be injected into people to spread into further harmfulness, is it just a matter of being positive to decontaminate individuals from negative emotions?

In many cases, positiveness and forcing your emotions on an unhappy, negative, or angry individual is more counter-productive than useful. When I was happy and smiling to the angry police officer, he became more infuriated. Seldom does positiveness alone overrule negative emotions. The next time someone around you is angry, look them in the eye, smile, and tell them what a beautiful day it is. Their anger will be overpowering to your mood – making the technique unsuccessful and possibly increasing their anger. They will likely become more angry saying something like, “It’s a disgusting day”, with an even unhappier face.

Other times your happy attitude may change their unhappy perspective, but the technique does not create a reliable solution that you can depend on because anger builds on itself. Anger is like a good investment that builds on itself, though of course, it’s a harmful emotion. What is an effective communicator to do when emotional contagion is working against him or her?

Let’s review what occurs during emotional contagion so we can convert it for our own benefit. Emotionally destructive conversations all start out with one person injecting a state into their conversational partner. When the conversational partner is a poor communicator who reacts impulsively, letting his mirror neurons mimic the person’s harmful state, the two individuals experience intensified emotions. The newly infected person becomes a carrier, reciprocating the infection to the original carrier who’s emotional disease worsens. Once the emotional infection has become too much for the individuals, they leave the conversation only to contaminate other people. A simple disagreement escalates into a large – sometimes life-threatening – conflict with innocent people. An emotional infection outbreaks.

You can probably think of other scenarios in your relationships where one person injects a bad emotion into the relationship. The partner becomes infected and the relationship goes downhill. It’s a downward spiraling cycle that damages relationships. On one level you need to prevent yourself from becoming a carrier, while on the other level you need to prevent other people from becoming carriers. Doing these two things will control emotional contagion to build happiness, power, and healthy relationships.

When talking to a friend in need, on one hand you are faced with the challenge of empathizing with your friend’s pain. This involves drawing yourself into your friend’s struggle, feeling the same pain, and allowing yourself to be infected by their emotional state. Other times, you will need to shape your friend’s pain into an emotionally empowering state. You will need to emotionally lift-up another person from their destructive state. Being focused on personal development and bringing out the best in yourself everyday, means you are faced with these mood challenges.

Reframing minimizes the likelihood of becoming a carrier of a dangerous emotional virus, while a technique I call “emotional-leveling” helps you to prevent people from remaining carriers of destructive emotions. The emotional-leveling technique firstly adjusts your emotions to reflect the other person’s harmful emotions, followed by slowly raising your emotions – and simultaneously their emotions – until the person reaches your desired level.

To decontaminate harmful emotions in other people with the emotional-leveling technique, you firstly connect at their level. This is opposite to immediately imposing a positive state on someone in a negative state. If the person is aggressive or depressed, you should not reciprocate their aggression or depression, but have a lower emotional level to build empathy and help them feel more understood. Verbally fighting back at a person isn’t going to do anyone any good.

For an aggressive person, if they are walking around, you should also be walking around. If they are talking fast, you should also talk at a fast rate. For a depressed person, you can show you are also feeling depressed without really developing depression. Be slower in your movements, speak softer, and have similar facial expressions as the person. Your goal is to enter their state without escalating the problem.

Once you have connected at the person’s level, begin to raise your emotional state. Make a joke or use a reframe on the situation. Because you are in the person’s emotional state, your reframe will not be rejected! If you were happy and told an unhappy person who recently experienced a break-up that they should lighten-up because their break-up is not that serious, they will reject your reframe and hate you. On the other hand – and this is where the power of emotional-leveling comes in – if you are also unhappy after talking with and listening to the person such that the person knows you share the same emotional state with them, they will accept a reframe like, “I see now that break-ups are a part of life. It’s not like everyone stays with one partner for their entire life.”

Being at a person’s destructive emotional level allows you to bring them out of their emotional hole. Instead of reaching down to pull them out of their emotional hole – only to have them reject your assistance – you are jumping in the hole and letting them stand on your shoulders to climb out.

Combining the reframing technique and the emotional-leveling technique will have you in control of your own emotions and thoughts, as well as helping other people get in control of their emotions and thoughts. These two techniques are great for bringing out the best in people, but they should only be a sample of an array of conflict management techniques in your communication bag. Having these skills will help you remove emotions you do not want infecting your relationships.

Knowing how to decontaminate poor emotions in your relationships will give pathway to positive emotions. Effective communication skills will present you with a profound ability to further destroy poor emotions in your relationships. Adjusting your body language and words to empathize with the other person and using other effective communication techniques is a great way to improve the emotional outbreaks that damage your relationships.

Emotional contagion is a fascinating topic. You can make it work for you instead of being a victim of it everyday. Interact with people that you want to be like. Make other people’s mirror neurons come to mimic your rising state and their biology will force them to become like you. Do the same for yourself and you’ll be more happier. Once you know how to adjust yourself to fit the person’s state and use powerful reframes, you’ll be well on your way to mastering emotions for better relationships and happiness. When you do this, you’ll be amazed at your control over emotions and thoughts. It will seem like magic.

This is a review of Carol Fleming’s The Sound of Your Voice, an audio program created to improve your voice.

What better way to improve the quality of your voice than to listen to a speech expert teach the skills she has learned for several decades. Since 1968, Carol Fleming as ran her private speech communication consultancy in the San Francisco Bay Area. Having earned her doctorate in communication disorders from Northwestern University, she has made her vocal techniques available in her entertaining audio program.

You can buy books on improving your voice, such as Renee Grant-Williams’ Voice Power, but until you hear a good voice and are able to break it down into specific reasons why it is good, you will be speaking in hope that your technique is correct. Understanding what is a good voice, the qualities of a good voice, and being able to transfer this understanding into your voice through practical exercises is vital – all things covered in The Sound of Your Voice.

The program isn’t a boring dictation of a book. It is an entertaining, well produced, free-flowing program. Fleming is the primary speaker accompanied by Wesley, a Brit with a soothing accent. I’m not particularly fond of British accents, having an Australian one myself “mate”, yet it is enjoyable to hear the two talk about speaking. Moreover, the program is not two people conversing about talking – it is a well produced program that contains real-life examples, entertaining sounds, and many speakers with diverse voice qualities that Fleming dissects. It is a lively program.

You won’t be caught up in technicalities when doing the program. It is a simple, effective, and teaches what Fleming has studied, practised, and taught for many years. The program will show you:

• How to add vocal vitality to your voice so you are not boring. Men especially struggle to remove their monotone voice and speak with vitality.
• How to speak in a powerful, mature manner. While men struggle with a monotone voice, women sometimes struggle to convey power in their voice.
• How to eliminate or change your accent.
• Breathing exercises to support your voice.
• How to removing annoying content from your speech like filler words and superlatives.
• How to speak clearly and smoothly articulate each word.
• What to do to get your voice ready for speaking.
• And plenty more.

The vocal exercises in the program is what took my voice to the next level. I have always struggled to understand resonance and getting my voice to vibrate clearly from the front of mouth for better articulation, and a simple exercise has helped me to do just that.

If you want to improve your voice, Carol Fleming’s The Sound of Your Voice is the way to go. It is the best voice program I have come across. You can grab your copy from Amazon by clicking here today.

This is a review of Renee Grant-Williams’ Voice Power: Using Your Voice to Captivate, Persuade, and Command Attention.

Have you ever wondered why some people can grab people’s attention and make them listen to their every word? If your voice isn’t as powerful as you want it to be, you can learn to make it resonate with a powerful clarity. Renee Grant-Williams will show you how in Voice Power.

Having worked with celebrities and singers such as Garth Brooks, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, and The Dixie Chicks, Grant-Williams has established herself as an authority on improving the human voice. You don’t need to be a singer or even a public speaker to improve your voice - having a better voice will help you whenever you say a word. Whether you’re disciplining children, motivating employees, seducing a partner, or teaching a workshop, a better voice helps get your point across and make it stick.

Voice Power isn’t about getting you to speak loudly. In fact, volume was mentioned rarely in the book. It is more about creating the support and resonance for a commanding voice that comes with little effort. The basis behind the book is good breathing. When we were babies, we naturally breathed well. We lost good breathing habits when we were taught to puff-out our chest and hold our heads high – two techniques that bring tension into a voice. The breathing techniques will have you relaxing, improving your balance, reducing stress, minimizing muscular tension, and improving your voice.

Using powerful consonants where you elongate important consonants is yet another powerful piece of advice that goes against common knowledge of elongating vowels. Saying “Ssstop it nnnowww” is more powerful than “Stooop it nooow”. I think you’ll find many things clicking in your mind, that previously didn’t make sense or proves other advice wrong, with the author’s simple and effective teachings in the book.

Other central techniques in the book include silence, rhythm, and volume. Grant-Williams describes a musical beat to speaking that is extremely valuable – especially for when you prepare a speech. Elvis Presley’s singing technique, posture, and body positioning is used to demonstrate and breakdown a beautiful sounding voice.

The last section in the book deals with voice care. Getting enough water, eating well, exercising, using a humidifier to keep the air moist are a few of the tips shared by the author. The author also discusses some common problems with unhealthy voices such as reflux and nodes to ensure you don’t have a health ailment limiting your speaking abilities.

Overall, it is a great book on powering-up your voice and making it sound richer. I found myself pulling many pieces of advice and techniques from it. Make your voice count because it has so much power in making a good impression on others. Make your voice an asset that shows you’re a confident and powerful by getting a copy of Voice Power. You can grab your copy from Amazon by clicking here today.

This is a book review of Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships.

Neuroscience is quickly discovering that humans are wired to connect. Goleman in his groundbreaking books says that the neural linkages between humans influences the brain, and hence the body. These invisible bridges give us the ability to change people’s moods, emotions, and health, as these people can do to us. Relationships not only shape emotional states and general psychological experience, but also the very physiological matter that makes our body. Our interactions with people influences our immune system, circulation, hormones, and breathing for example.

Our ability to connect with fellow humans influences us in deep and immediate ways. Unlike emotional intelligence, social intelligence focuses on this intimate connection between two human minds. Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence focuses on skills and capabilities within the individual. It deals with self-motivation, self-awareness, handling anxiety, and reading social cues. Social Intelligence expands from the one-person psychology within an individual to a two-person psychology that looks at the connection shared between individuals. More specifically, Goleman defines social intelligence as: 1) social awareness, which comprises of primal empathy, attunement, empathic accuracy, and social cognition, and 2) social facility, which includes synchrony, self-presentation, influence, and concern.

Goleman says many theories of social intelligence are narrowly defined to a cognitive context. Social intelligence tests ask participants what they would do in specific situations – a process that uses the brain’s high road, cognitive functions within our awareness. Goleman’s model of social intelligence seeks to include the brain’s low-road, the neural circuitry hidden from consciousness that functions at incredible speeds, because awareness of what people are thinking or feeling does not equate to healthy conversations. Social intelligence is really beyond the intelligence quotient (I.Q.) and emotional intelligence.

Drawing on hundreds of studies, Social Intelligence looks into altruism, primal empathy, attachment, rapport, and compassion to name a few topics that are emerging from this new field of study. From the amygdala and prefrontal cortex to spindle cells and mirror neurons, like Emotional Intelligence, Goleman once again digs deep into neuroscience and vast numbers of studies. Again, he provides plenty of interesting anecdotes to demonstrate his principles in action, which to me gives the book more power for its application.

Chapter one reveals the emotional economy, a term that describes the give-take process of emotions. It discusses how a smile makes you happy, a worried looking face makes you unsure, and the biological process of how emotions transmit through people like a virus. Emotional contagion is an example of a low-road functioning beyond our awareness that can contaminate people’s state.

The fourth chapter looks at the human instinct for altruism. While it touches on worldly altruistic behaviors seen through people like Mother Teresa, it focuses on empathy in small-scale relationships. Like animals that have instinctive compassion to assist a fellow member of its species in trouble, we have instinctive compassion to help people in our relationships. It is through attention and empathy that we are able to bring forth this innate characteristic of love.

The last chapter I would like to mention in hope of motivating you to buy the book is chapter fifteen which looks at the male and female brain, and the connection they share. The research in this chapter, like all chapters, is amazing and provides insight into attraction, sexual desire, libido, narcissism, and more intimate – or not so intimate – topics. You’re sure to gain a lot of advice about the opposite sex, as well as your own gender.

Without the jargon all too common in professors’ books and within emerging fields of study, Social Intelligence is a free-flowing read made easy by Goleman’s enjoyable writing style. Just like my review of Emotional Intelligence, I recommend you read Social Intelligence if you are after a book that provides very interesting research and insights into human interactions; not if you are after vast skills to use in your interactions. It is a book Goleman says that aims to lead social intelligence and its understanding. Nonetheless, the emerging field of social intelligence has amazing dynamics and is definitely worth learning more about. You can grab your copy of Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence from Amazon by clicking here today.

Videos

Goleman discusses his book, the foundations of social intelligence, and a few discoveries social neuroscientists have made in finding that we are wired to connect.

Poor email etiquette. You’ve been a victim of it and perhaps you’re even a guilty criminal. From unknown abbreviations, forwarded chain emails, and unwanted messages, we’re all bound to be affected from bad email etiquette both socially and in the workplace. You can’t reach through your computer cables to retrieve a sent email, so you need to follow good email etiquette, commonly known as “netiquette”.

A USA Today article in April, 2008, reveals that Microsoft has 256.2 million users with Yahoo! not to far behind with a total of 254.6 million users. Additionally, with Google having 91.6 million users and AOL having 48.9 million users, it’s obvious the majority of people with Internet access use email as a way to communicate. Now for the real shocker: Tim Sanders, former Chief Solutions Officer of Yahoo!, estimates that 90% of business communication is email based and that 10% of email users receive adequate training. So chances are, your workplace and business is suffering from poor email etiquette.

While I never try to be overly professional in emails, because too much formality and jargon can destroy good communication, there are some rules and tips you need to use. These tips for good email etiquette are not limited to business and the workplace, but the majority of tips apply to general everyday emails. Following the rules I’m about to give you will ensure you benefit from clearer communication and your emails get the proper understanding they deserve. From sitting down to sending an email, here’s the most important netiquette rules you need to follow:

1. Emotional emails. Don’t send an email when you are angry. Not only will you say things you later regret, but the receiver of your little outburst will be able to keep a record of your emotionally-filled email. Too many careers have been destroyed from angry emails. In fact, I recommend you reread your email to check for sentences, phrases, and words that can be possibly interpreted another way than what you intended. A simple joke that you think is funny may be offensive to someone else simply because they misinterpreted the joke. The lack of nonverbal communication in email makes it a poor medium for communicating emotions.

2. Unnecessary information. Most people waste too much time browsing their inbox the way it is without having to read long messages. Do people a favor and keep your emails short. Provide the necessary facts. The less you say, the better. Having said that, you still need to provide all the information upfront if you can. It’s frustrating and time-consuming to have to email back asking questions for information that should have been provided in the initial email.

3. HTML. You don’t need to know what exactly HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is, but basically it is used to make websites look pretty. Making text bold in email uses HTML. When you copy and paste emails from websites, you may also unknowingly copy the HTML code across. The HTML in the email you send does not always look like the email someone receives. Funnily, the message sent is not the message received. Some email programs are not HTML compatible so when they receive HTML emails, weird HTML code might show and other formatting issues may occur.

Simply provide a website link if you’re going to copy an entire web page. If you want to copy snippets of information, not only do you risk breaking copyright laws, but at your discretion you can copy the text across to a text file program (such as Notepad, not Microsoft Word) and then copy the text from there into your email program. Copying the text to a text file program, such as Notepad, removes HTML and prevents weird formatting issues.

4. Reply to all. It’s frustrating receiving emails from group members who simply say “Yes, I can come.” or “No.” when you do not need to receive them. Stop being lazy. Please take the small amount of time to address your email to the specific people you’re email is intended for.

5. Forwarding to all. I’m a big victim of this email mistake! When subscribing to my newsletter, I advise the person to add me to their address book or whitelist to ensure my emails reach them. Having an email list that contains tens of thousands of people, I’m in many people’s address book. Often, subscribers receive an email and forward it to everyone in their address book. The result for me is a daily cleanup of forwarded emails, which often contain attachments that clog data efficiency. Chain emails are so annoying! The next time you get an email with a poem, story, or series of images you love, keep them to yourself. A story about patience that you think is lovely, and end-up forwarding to your friends may infuriate them.

6. Making people’s email addresses known. It’s considered rude when you send out an email to several people making their email address visible in the “To” box. Unless the people know each other and are comfortable in sharing their email addresses, you need to avoid this bad mistake. You can use the Bcc (blind carbon copy) function of emails to hide recipients’ email addresses.

7. Removed message thread. Here’s another email etiquette mistake that I’m a victim of everyday: Not having the replied message in the sent message. Not having the replied message in the sent message is almost the face-to-face conversational equivalent of being bashed across the head and forgetting what was discussed in the conversation. Based on the hundreds of emails I receive everyday, I’d estimate 10% of people do not ensure the message they are replying to is attached. As someone who can have discussions going on with many people at the same time, I don’t always remember what was sent in an email someone has replied to.

Make it easy for people to know what you are talking about by ensuring their message you are replying to is attached. Google’s email service, Gmail, is great at keeping track of past messages. Be sure to change your email settings so that messages you reply to get included in your reply.

8. Use of abbreviations. Friend to friend or family member to family member, abbreviations can be fine. It’s entirely up to you. But problems arise when abbreviation usage in emails carries over into the workplace and other areas where professionalism is needed. Here’s a useful video on email etiquette that I thought you might find interesting:

A three minute Fox Providence presentation discussing email etiquette. It focuses on professionalism by avoiding abbreviations.

9. Unknown abbreviations. AFAIK 404 but I’ll POAHF because I TILII. Don’t know what that means? Very few people do. It means: As far as I know I have no clue, but I’ll put on a happy face because I tell it like it is.

Good email etiquette involves avoiding the use of unknown abbreviations. Though you can get away with abbreviations when emailing friends for example, because it is an efficient technique after all, communication problems occur when the receiver doesn’t know the abbreviation! What may seem apparent to you is not necessarily apparent to someone else. How would you like it if a friend sent you an email with ADO, YOOAD, WWMT, and other weird abbreviations? (I just made up those last few ) You’d feel annoyed at having to clarify something the person should realize in the first place.

10. Poor subject heading. Leaving the subject field empty or simply putting “Re:” is avoiding an important function of email communication. When someone receives an email, they usually quickly scan the subject heading of each email to see what emails need to be firstly addressed. Your goal in personal emails isn’t to write the most captivating subject heading so people open your email. Write an honest and specific subject heading that reflects your email message. Instead of writing “HELP!!” to your telecommunications company, you could write “Help Needed With Phone Wires”. Sometimes, if I think a subject heading is important for personal emails, I can take up to a minute to come up with a good subject.

11. Poor sent time. Be weary of the time you send your email. This mistake is dependent on a few things. Firstly, with the worldwide connectivity and never-ending discussion available over the Internet, it doesn’t matter what time you send an email to someone living in a different time zone. Secondly, some people just don’t care what time you sent your email as they only care about reading what you have to say. You do however, need to be careful of the time you send emails to some people such as coworkers, managers, and clients for example. A job candidate’s email containing a resume sent to the human resources department at 3am will not look good as it sits in the inbox. It may possibly jeopardize the job candidate’s chances of working with the company. Send an email at another time if you think the recipient will judge you poorly based on the time you send it.

12. Excessive Capitalization. IT’S CONSIDERED RUDE TO TYPE IN CAPITALS. Typing in capitals is the digital equivalent of yelling in someone’s face. Hopefully, you wouldn’t yell in someone’s face so don’t do it digitally. On the other end of the spectrum, don’t type all your text in lower case. It’s simple grammar.

13. No spell checking. I’ve been guilty of this a few times and have been pulled-up by the grammar police for teaching communication and misspelling words (apparently I’m not allowed to misspell words!). For the more formal type of email, it helps to spell check your email. Most popular email providers should provide the option of spell checking.

14. Poor use of attachments. Any email attachment over one mega byte (approximately 1000KB) is pushing email etiquette rules. Not everyone has broadband or cable, and these people do not want to spend 5 minutes downloading an unnecessary file. For large attachments, you’re better of using file upload services such as Mega File Upload and 2shared. Another rule for email attachments is considering the format of your attachment. Not everyone will be able to make use of a file that has a .odt extension.

15. Requesting delivery and read receipts. For me personally, there are two people that come to mind who always use this option. Perhaps you know a few individuals who always request a delivery and read receipt? This is an unreliable and annoying way of checking to see if someone has received your email. If you need to check whether your email was received or not, ask the person in your email to reply saying that they got your message. If your message is really that important, which it rarely is over email, you should phone the person. Don’t blame the recipient of your email for a problem you can control.

16. Write. Send. Edit. That’s in the wrong order if you are using good email etiquette. Obviously. We sometimes think about editing our email once we’ve sent it. Get this common email mistake in the right order: 1) Write, 2) Edit, and 3) Send. Wow! Submit. Done.

This is a book review of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.

I purchased the 10th anniversary edition of this “groundbreaking book that redefines what it means to be smart”. 10 years following the release of his book, Goleman’s development and popularisation of emotional intelligence (EQ or EI) has sprouted a new field of study that assists parenting, teaching, managing people, personal success, and general well-being. If you are at all interested in your own emotions and the emotions of those around you, then Emotional Intelligence is what you are after.

Emotional intelligence is a broad subject incorporating how you manage yourself and other people’s emotions. There is the self component and relationship component. Emotional skills directly relating to the self include, but not limited to: self-awareness, impulse control, handling stress and anxiety, self-motivation, and coping skills; while emotional skills relating to relationships include, but not limited to: reading social and emotional cues, awareness of others’ perspectives, sociability, motivating people, managing conflict, and listening. Nearly all of these skills play a powerful role in personal living and business success.

Long gone are the days of a person’s intelligence quotient (IQ) being the primary determinant of his or her success. Research has found IQ to contribute only 20% of one’s success in life with the remaining majority of one’s success being accounted for by emotional and social intelligence. Due to our everyday interaction with others and the strong need to successfully manage one’s own emotions, emotional intelligence is likely to determine how far you go in your personal relationship and career. Book after book is now emphasising the importance of managing your own emotions and knowing how to work with other people’s emotions.

Having reported on the brain and human behavior at the New York Times for twelve years and receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard, Goleman’s eye-opening book is jammed with research and hundreds of studies relating to emotional skills. From the beginning of the book Goleman provides insight into the emotional and rational parts of the brain. In this section he explains the neurology behind emotions, along with their evolutionary use, which acts as a foundation for the remainder of the book. He does mention that the technicalities of this section can be skipped as it isn’t necessary to understood. Though I know some people have found this section on neurology fascinating nonetheless.

The following section defines the nature of emotional intelligence. In this section are discussions on: when smart is dumb, the development of empathy, depression, anger, happiness, optimism, focus, and much more. The third section titled “Emotional Intelligence Applied” deals with emotions in marriage, families, trauma, business teams, and the human body. The eleventh chapter, “Mind and Medicine”, will blow you away with the latest findings on how emotions affect various parts of the human body like the central nervous system, the immune system, and the heart.

The remaining chapters of Emotional Intelligence focuses on how parents can teach their children, and teachers educate their students, on emotional skills. Any principal, teacher, parent, or person involved in a child’s life is guaranteed to find the book’s research and insights on childrens’ emotional intelligence as shockingly real. From guaranteed ways to predict a child’s future temperament to the development of abusive, unsociable, and delinquent children, you will discover emotional insights into children. Additionally, the research on empathy and emotional development in babies is amazing. The stories of babies and toddlers empathizing with other young children, by sharing blankets or comforting to name a few skills, will have you hooked.

Overall, if you’re after a book that explains how you can develop emotional skills, I wouldn’t strongly advise you this book. Though there are plenty of skills buried in Goleman’s classic, I say the book is more about understanding the role emotions play in our personal lives and relationships than it is about developing emotional skills. With about 300 citations of mostly research from academic journals, Emotional Intelligence bridges the impact emotions have in our everyday lives from academic studies to the general public.

Lastly, I really hope for emotional intelligence to continue broadening into people’s lives. It is a field of study that has monumental potential in shaping social and worldly issues. I really recommend you learn more about it. After reading the book I have absolute confidence that you will understand the importance emotions play in our lives, as well as seeing the need for schools to teach children emotional skills.

With emotional intelligence being a large determinant in your personal happiness, confidence, success, and relationships, you’re sure to get a lot of powerful information on emotions in this well-written book. The book flows smoothly and should have your life doing the same. You can grab your copy of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence from Amazon by clicking here today.

“Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.” - Karl Ludwig Borne (1786-1837)

“Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.” - David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930), English writer who often criticized modern living’s negative influence on humans

“Few people have the imagination for reality.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), famous German writer

The truth is harsh. Lies, deception, misunderstandings, illusions, distortions, and deceit is much easier for our minds to accept than the truth due to its cushioning effect on the problems we ignore. It is easy-going, versatile, and satisfying to believe myths. Other times we accept myths over truth because we don’t know the difference. Moreover, a relationship expert, counselor, or psychologist may have mislead you in believing a myth is truth. Whatever the case maybe, this article is sure to shake up your communication belief and shock you into reality – allowing you to communicate more effectively.

Originally I was struggling to complete 10 myths for this article, but after brainstorming, researching, observing people communicate, coaching people on their communication skills, asking tens of thousands of subscribers on communication myths, and picking out myths from my buried notes, 15 myths fitted surprisingly snug. I believe all these myths need to be revealed, cleared, and truth be told so we are better empowered to improve our personalities and relationships.

The greatest myths of communication are arranged in order depending on their frequency and strength in people’s minds. From lies, illusions, flawed teaching, and misunderstandings, it’s time to debunk the top 15 all-time myths of communication:

#15 Myth: Logic makes communication effective

Logic destroys relationships. The next time you see two people in an argument, watch them focus on the logical level. Each person will give facts of which the other doesn’t care about. The content and logical focus of a conversation has been the demise of many relationships.

When bland words and facts are focused upon, causing emotions to be overlooked, the relationship suffers. Intelligence, reasoning, and rationality are fine. Problems can arise when logic gets center of attention in a conversion, especially during conflict. No one cares about who did what right and who did what wrong. We don’t have relationships because of a person’s logic.

Stop focusing on the content of conversations. Look beyond the words to see emotion. Start caring about people’s emotions towards the content of conversations because relationships are fueled by emotion. Even in business communications you need to focus on emotion. We want others to understand how we feel instead of pointing out the facts. When you understand humans are creatures of emotion, and that we are predictably irrational, you enable yourself to have great charisma and persuasive power. I recommend you read chapter 10 of my communication secrets for full details on how to communicate emotions.

#14 Myth: Effective communication is about telling the truth

I know this myth will be interpreted by readers in a different way than how I had intended it to be interpreted, so I’ve done my best to explain the myth. A person who always tells the blunt truth is disliked by those who always get told the truth. Truth-tellers use the excuse of “I tell it how it is.” and “If people can’t deal with reality, it’s their problem.” They may even see their need to tell the truth as a virtue.

The truth we tell others often manifests itself into harsh criticism that gets thrown back into our faces and results in nothing productive. When you reveal the truth, people may respond by becoming overly emotional, defensive, or argumentative. Therefore, not telling the truth can lead to more effective communication. I’m not advocating you to give people enormous amounts of praise when they sucked at something or to live a deceptive life. The purpose in lying is to help you and those who you lie to.

Leil Lowndes in How to Talk to Anyone advises people to lie when giving immediate feedback following a person who finishes a critical performance. She advises people to compliment someone on a public speech for example, when they performed poorly. Don’t go overboard with your lie by giving excessive praise; rather, tell a little lie, a temporary light sprinkle of sugar, to sweeten the situation. “Big Winners realize that sensitivity to an insecure performer’s ego takes momentary precedence over their deep commitment to the truth.” says Lowndes. “They also know, when sanity returns to the recipient and they suspect they screwed up, it won’t matter.”

Good people skills involve empathy and lying at appropriate times. The art of empathy, a skill where you feel what other people feel and communicate the feeling, involves lying. You can lie when it is more helpful for the truth to be ignored than if it were given. A few hours or days following the lie may be more appropriate to tell the truth should you think the truth needs to be told. By telling the truth at a later time, you provide the person with feedback that you feel is beneficial.

Lying serves its purpose in maintaining a healthy relationship under the conditions I’ve given. Please don’t misinterpret my recommendation to occasionally lie as an excuse for hiding the truth when truth should be told.

#13 Myth: Communication solves everything

As someone who teaches communication skills, this myth is something I’d like to believe! Unfortunately, communication does not solve all conflict and relationship problems. Sometimes the greatest charismatically persuasive communication cannot solve relationship issues.

Marina Benjamen, Ph.D. of Psych Central sees a frequent scenario in couples counseling. Couples have no “serious” problem. Both partners can vouch for no drinking, abuse, or infidelity. The problem? They just don’t communicate. A lack of communication can happen for many reasons, but by itself it rarely leads to relationship resolutions. “Good communication exposes conflict that when effectively dealt with,” says Benjamen, “can promote a more open and intimate connection.”

I’ve come to notice a transition point in people who adopt this myth of communication solving everything. The general public are vaguely advised that “communication is important in relationships”. Few people, like yourself, who go one step further by learning conflict management, emotional mastery, and self awareness for example, come to realize how communication greatly benefits their lives. The more we learn and develop ourselves, the more emphasis we place on communication. Eventually, we come to believe that any argument, relationship break-up, or person who doesn’t like us comes from poor communication.

Think of a worldly issue, like abortion or the death penalty, that you have a strong stance on. Do you think someone with opposing views who communicates well would change your mind? If you really believe in your stance on the issue, then communication isn’t going to change your mind. You and I have religious, political, and personal values that disallows communication to solve everything.

Communication forms the bridge in a relationship so it makes sense to assume the problems coming and going must exist on the bridge. Communication is a way of building bridges. If either side has a serious enough foundational problem, the strongest bridge is not going to last.

People ask, “What things can I say and do to make people like me?” This is the wrong type of thinking! Most effective communication is doomed before you even open your mouth. Becoming charismatic and persuasive starts from within you. Changing people’s behavior starts from within you. And having intimate, sharing, and loving relationships starts within you. Change your life by changing your thinking. Good relationships happen by developing yourself and not just by having good communication.

I steer my focus away from telling people to say rehashed lines in certain situations because no magical line can effectively work when you are incongruent with your words. You can say one brilliant communication line; but how you feel and think is a more powerful influence in your life. My communication secrets of making people like you program gets you deeply understanding yourself and other people so that you can begin communicating more intimately, powerfully, persuasively, and charismatically.

#12 Myth: Learning communication makes you a better communicator

We are at a global health crisis. Doctors have repeatedly said that the large percentage of health problems in Western countries comes from choices controllable by those who suffer such health ailments. We are in control of drinking, eating, smoking, stressing, and exercising. The global health crisis is not occurring because we haven’t learned the implications of the evil five of health – we all know what happens when ignoring these – but the problem comes from our inability to change. Like communication, learning about a health problem doesn’t automatically make you better.

Learning communication only makes you a better communicator when the learning is based on behavioral change. Even failing at a new skill makes you a better communicator because you went out and did something. Stop trying to intellectualize everything and just give it a go. You’ll become a better communicator when you just do it.

#11 Myth: Communication is one-way

Radios, televisions, and many electrical devices in the home communicate a message that sends one-way messages. Unfortunately, it seems our relationships are often the same. At times it appears other people, and ourselves, talk in a way that ignores others. However, there is still two-way communication – just not good two-way communication.

Communication in human relationships is two-way. Even “one-way communication” like public speaking is two-way. We have eyes and ears that absorb people’s communication. Whether you choose to do something with this gathered information to improve your relationships, increase your charisma, or boost your persuasion is up to you. It is up to you if you choose to empathize, laugh at, pay attention to, or ignore another person’s communication, but their communication still exists. Several other myths, as you will soon discover, nicely tie into this myth.

#10 Myth: Intellectual intelligence equates to good communication

Emotionally intelligent people are often good communicators, but they are not necessarily intellectually smart. Daniel Goleman in his groundbreaking book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ says, “IQ and emotional intelligence are not opposing competencies, but rather separate ones.” A person with a high IQ doesn’t automatically get high emotional intelligence and good communication skills. Someone with a low IQ can have just as good communication skills as someone with a high IQ.

In one of my popular articles titled “Why Smart People Have Poor Communication Skills”, I say that smart people do not necessarily have poor communication skills. However, smart people do tend to have poor communication skills because of certain habits, traits, and thoughts. A few of these problems include: the need to criticize, a tendency to find faults, use of complex words, and a proof of intellectual intelligence by sharing knowledge.

Amazingly, some of the most empathic, caring, understanding, attentively good conversationalists that I’ve met were in mental institutions. They weren’t psychologists, therapists, or receptionists, but they were patients these professionals were looking after. The seemingly incompetent that we dub as dumb can be smart communicators.

#9 Myth: The message sent is the message received

This myth may hurt your relationships every single day. Thinking that the message you send is the message people receive makes you vulnerable to fighting with people who are important to you. There’s one word that explains this ugly problem: Interpretation.

How we interpret a person’s message depends on many human characteristics like memory, beliefs, and values. Your mother sees your child hurt his knee so she tells you, “You need to look after your kids.” Though your mother was expressing a concern for any child’s safety, you become offended because you interpret it as, “I’m failing to look after my kids.” As another example, a guy playfully tells a girl who looks at him, “Hey, stop checking me out.” The girl may interpret the guy’s message as, “He’s confident, playful, and challenging.” while an onlooker may interpret the guy’s message as being rude.

The next time you talk to someone, stop assuming the message you send is the message someone receives. You can improve your communication skills by being conscious of the fact that people will interpret your message the way you didn’t intend for it be understood. Asking a person for their understanding is a good way to ensure the two of you share an accurate understanding. Additionally, you can tell people you talk to your understanding of what they say.

#8 Myth: Adapting to people is necessary for good communication

Robert Greene in The 48 Laws of Power teaches to “assume formlessness”. He advises people to adapt to other’s individuality and rely less on past experiences to interact with the present. What skill you’ve successfully used on someone won’t necessarily work on someone else. Adaptability is the key to surviving and thriving. I back Robert Greene’s 48th law and teach such things myself.

Adaptablity is an important part in healthy relationships. A failure to adjust your mood to a person’s mood can result in severe conflict. Generally, fine-tuning your body language and words to a person’s emotional needs boosts your social perforamnce. However, adaptability can be beneficial and harmful to your communication.

When you overlook your own needs or feelings to adapt to social situations, a trade-off often takes place: People who make good impressions, while overlooking their own needs or feelings, suffer from poor, unstable relationships. The everyday social implication of adaptability is a superficial attitude. Dr. Brian Spitzberg, a professor at the School of Communication in San Diego State University and co-editor of The Dark Side of Close Relationships, says the myth of adaptability hurts people’s communication skills. “If everyone is adapting to everyone else’s adaptations, people become chameleons in a paisley room, disabled by the shifting pattern of their social context.” says Dr. Spitzberg. “Adaptable people can come across like a chameleon as they change their ‘face’ for each person with whom they interact.”

#7 Myth: Communicating a hidden problem worsens the problem

Ah, the dreaded fear of talking about a tough issue. Fear’s purpose is to protect us from danger, but it too often stops us from building intimacy and having happiness. The excuse of “communicating a hidden problem worsens the problem” is an excuse to avoid the uncomfortable. We fabricate reasons to procrastinate on important conversations that will change our life.

Ask anyone who has regrettably divorced and they’ll tell you their disappointment in not having addressed one or two minor issues that went ignored for years to ultimately destroy the relationship. By having the thought that communicating a hidden problem worsens the problem, you waste time, energy, money, and emotion in delaying the difficult conversation. Susan Scott in her bestselling Fierce Conversations encourages us to “come out from behind ourselves into the conversation and make it real.” “Being real is not the risk.” says Scott. “The real risk is that: I will be known, I will be seen, and I will be changed.”

#6 Myth: You cannot communicate

Another common communication misconception, and a reason nonverbal communication is very powerful, is you cannot not communicate. In other words, it is impossible to avoid communicating. You can try all you want to ignore someone, but you’re still communicating.

People think that ignoring someone is avoiding communication with the person. If you choose to completely ignore someone, then you are communicating ignorance to that person through your body language and unwillingness to talk. Shy people who avoid conversations and remain alone, communicate disinterest in people and a lack of self-love due to their willingness in inflicting social anxiety.

By telling someone “I’m not talking to you,” you already have lied because your body language will communicate a message to the person that you are ignorant. Additionally, your silence could communicate that you are a stubborn person. When someone gives you the “silent treatment,” do you interpret the messages that they are communicating to you? Yes! Perhaps they are communicating stubbornness, ignorance, rudeness, or cruelty through avoidance. It is impossible to avoid communication.

#5 Myth: Meaning is in words

Semantics is the study of meaning in language. It explains how two separate people searching Google for “hot looking person” are after completely different things. One person wants information on a good looking person while the other person wants information on global warming. Google invests billions of dollars into semantics for its search engine algorithms to accurately determine whether 12 year old John searching “hot looking person” wants good looking people or information for an environmental assignment. The implications of good semantics is huge. Without good semantics, search engines will die just like our personal relationships.

While meaning can be in words, a word is only a medium for understanding to travel, much like the air is a medium for light to travel. A black car may bring prestige, wealth, power, and speed into your mind’s eye. For someone else, a black car may mean sickness, death, and loss. When a black car comes to mind, we might see Donald Trump and prestige, but someone else might see the black limousine carrying their mother’s casket to her burial ground.

Words are representations of images, symbols, and events, and are not solely responsible for giving messages their meaning. The attachments we have to what we say and hear gives communication most of its meaning. You don’t react to a person’s words; you react to your meaning of a person’s words. Someone calling you “a loser with no life” won’t affect you when you give those words a meaning of, “he’s just angry” or “if he was aware of personal growth he wouldn’t call me names – whatever he calls me, doesn’t affect me”. Understanding this myth and using its truth in your life will take your communication and personality to a whole new level.

#4 Myth: Speaking talent is important for effective communication

Speaking with a good vocabulary, clarity, directness, and structure doesn’t equal effective communication; it equals nothing. Light travels through air like communication travels through speaking skills. Just because the path of flow is smooth and clear doesn’t mean the destination is right.

Most business communications seem determined to convert this myth into truth. Presentations, mission statements, and team leadership all seem to work around the principles of being clear, direct, and using a good vocabulary. What an awful way of communicating that makes employees not care about their work and discourage customers from buying the company’s products or services.

In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, co-author Chip Heath describes a major problem his students at Stanford University have when giving presentations. Being one of the world’s best universities, the students are intelligent and present their ideas with good speaking skills. Each year Heath gets his students to persuade fellow class members that nonviolent crime is a major issue in the United States.

Each student is given one minute to present their persuasive speech while the other students rate their speeches effectiveness. The highest rated students present statistics with poise, smoothness, and charisma – the typical understanding of effective communication in business. However, a few minutes following the presentations, Chip gets the students to remember any concept from any of the presentations. “When students are asked to recall the speeches, 64 percent remember the stories.” says Chip Heath. “Only 5 percent remember any individual statistic…. almost no correlation emerges between ’speaking talent’ and the ability to make ideas stick.” The foreign students with poor English speaking abilities are just as able to persuade native students.

Businesses are made up of individuals. A business is one entity that only represents the individuals within. Lose the idea that you need to “strive to become a leader in the industry while maintaining a key focus on adhering to superior customer service”. Reading such statements make me puke! Any business communication, whether your inspiring a team or persuading a CEO, do not get persuaded solely on statistics, structure, and effective speaking skills. They get persuaded from stories, emotion, analogies, self-interest, and a little bit of logic. Speaking talent is not as important as you think it is for effective communication.

#3 Myth: More communication is better

More money is better. More power is better. More friends is better. Thinking that having more of something good can be a problem. Give a poor man millions of dollars, a business, a great network of friends, and he may lose it all. The poor man may not have the knowledge to successfully manage such financial, capital, and human assets.

More of a bad thing only amplifies the problem. Spending more cash doesn’t resolve credit card debt. Eating more junk food isn’t going to fix your health. And fighting with your partner won’t get better if you keep poorly communicating.

Moreover, some issues are better left untouched. “It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.” said Rose Macaulay. It may seem that this myth is the opposite to the myth “communicating a hidden problem worsens the problem”, but each have their own uses in various situations. Much like laughing, there are good and bad times to use each communication myth.

Sometimes a person can be so emotionally closed-off, that they directly request you to keep quiet. What I do in this situation is use the technique of reflective responses to empathize with the person’s anger, frustration, or other intense emotion. I’ll say something along the lines of, “Seeing [whatever the issue is] makes you feel [feeling] because you need [whatever the need is].” However, sometimes their shields are too strong for any communication to get through. You just need to shut-up sometimes.

When there is less communication, there is more silence. And silence is powerful. Silence marinates the conversation into our minds. Silence is were change takes place. Change occurs in the mind; not in words. You can’t expect a person to fully comprehend what you are saying while they listen to your present words. Use silence to increase understanding and boost your persuasion abilities.

In addition to more communication: creating more poor communication, hurting some problems that are better left untouched, limiting the power of silence; less communication helps us understand. Conciseness can be better as short is memorable and impacting. Less is more.

#2 Myth: Nonverbal communication accounts for 93% of total communication.

The number two myth is a close contender for the greatest communication myth. Nonetheless, this myth is the most widespread communication lie, quickly spreading from many nonverbal communication articles and books that teach 93% of communication is nonverbal. Nearly every time nonverbal communication is discussed, you’ll hear this myth. The misunderstanding that nonverbal communication contributes 93% to all communication is the most quoted and misquoted piece of information in communication. Ever.

If 93% of communication is nonverbal, learning a new language would be a breeze. Should this second greatest myth of communication be true, we could easily talk in different languages because words would make up an insignificant amount of communication.

Here’s the truth about this myth. A study titled Inference of Attitudes from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels published in the Journal of Consulting Psychology by Albert Mehrabian, professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California in Los Angeles, and Susan Ferris, looked at the contribution of verbal and nonverbal signals to total communication. The two researchers had participants listen to prerecorded voices of single words such as “maybe” while looking at black and white photographs of facial expressions. The participants were told the voice’s tonality and facial expressions communicated either disliking, liking, or neutrality. They were then asked to choose between the three attitudes for each recording. The results show that facial expressions contribute 55% to communication while the vocalics contribute 38% (a 3:2 ratio).

Mehrabian later on in his book Silent Messages: Implicit Communication of Emotions and Attitudes referred to the findings from his study as the 7%-38%-55% rule, a rule defining what factors give meaning to our words. The rule states that 7% of meaning is in the spoken words, 38% of meaning is in how we say the words, and 55% of meaning is in body language. Mehrabian explicitly states in follow up discussions on his studies and book that the 93% of nonverbal contribution to communication applies only when someone is discussing their likes and dislikes. He says his findings were not intended to be applied to communication in general.

When a guy discusses his likes, you will see his energy rise. He will smile, talk more enthusiastically, show interest, vary his tonality, move around, and give off other nonverbal messages that the subject is his true like. Similarly, when he discusses his dislikes, you will see his drop in energy. He will frown, talk in a bitter manner, show disinterest, have a boring tonality, move less, and give off other nonverbal messages that he dislikes the subject. When listening to this guy talking about his likes and dislikes, 93% of your belief that he is telling the truth comes from nonverbal communication. If instead this guy frowned, talked in a bitter manner, and used boring vocalics when talking about his likes, you’d nearly be certain that he didn’t like what he was talking about.

#1 Myth: Good communication has taken place

While other communication myths can be shifted up or down a few spots amongst the top fifteen list, this myth remains concreted as the number one communication myth. The greatest myth you likely experience on a day-to-day basis is thinking that you have communicated with someone. George Bernard Shaw, recipient of the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

Communication is a buzzword that has been misused too often. You think you just experienced a great conversation, but all that took place was some talk and feel-good emotions. Forget thinking that good communication is: speaking with logic, telling the truth, expressing your intelligence, adapting to people’s communication styles, communicating as much as you can, making people feel good, making yourself feel good, keeping the two of you calm, or solving a problem. Good communication doesn’t take place when only these things have happened; rather, it is a point of open understanding where people walk away from the conversation feeling better. (The NVC process is one of the best techniques to build understanding for good communication.)

It is easy to blame other people on poor communication, but this is just another myth, a lie, to thwart the realization of change. You are responsible for the communication in your life. You are aware of the greatest 15 myths of communication; and other people in your life won’t be. It is up to you to bring the truth about these myths into your everyday conversations. I’ve spent the time giving them to you, now it’s time for you to destroy the top 15 myths of communication in your own life.

This is a book review of Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

Why is it that urban legends, conspiracy theories, and public health scares can reach the other side of the world; while most businesses, teachers, and public speakers cannot get their ideas to reach the very person they are talking to? The answer lies in Made to Stick.

Everyday we get pounded with information from people. Most of it slips straight off us like food sliding off Teflon. “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.” said Herbert Simon, winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics. “Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick teaches you more than how to grab people’s attention. It will provide you with an exact formula for getting your ideas in people’s minds and keeping them there. The two authors use their first of six principles, “Simplicity”, in their stickiness formula by making their six principles form an acronym SUCCESs:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories

Reading a book about sticky ideas makes you hope the authors’ make their own principles sticky – and Chip and Dan Heath make all their principles stick using exactly what they teach. Each principle contains many real-life, and not so real, examples of ideas that have stuck in people’s minds. The stories used are really entertaining, most notably is the urban legend of Kidney thieves where an attractive lady seduces and drugs men who later awaken to find their kidneys have been stolen.

While Chip Heath is a Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and Dan Heath has conducted research for Harvard Business School, they don’t throw technical information at you – that would break their principles. Their book embodies many entertaining stories that are very practical. They also give you several exercises, and allow you to compare your answers with their answers, to practice the principles.

Teachers, public speakers, market