One of biggest challenges to developing superior communication skills is that you already have your hands full in those situations where you need help. Take a typical scenario - meeting new people.If I give you tips for listening more effectively and you rush off to practice tips you may not get very far no matter how hard you try. Why? Because you are likely to be self conscious when you need to be other conscious. Standing in front of new people you want to meet you freeze and you feel so unsure of yourself that you cannot remember even one of listening tips.
You need ability to switch off self consciousness whenever you choose to do so. Sounds obvious only how can you do this? By switching your attention off of yourself and onto other person.
When you are feeling self conscious you will tend to pay too much attention to thoughts inside your head, how you are feeling and how you look.
Ironically, to develop great rapport you need to pay close attention to other person. How is she feeling? How does she look today? Is she relaxed or tense?
The Three Elements To Ridding Yourself Of Self Consciousness
1 Turn off inner dialogue that makes you feel self conscious
One way to do this is to touch roof of your mouth with your tongue when you are not talking. We tend to move our tongues when we engage in inner talk even if only very slightly. When you put tip of your tongue to roof of your mouth you interrupt negative inner talk pattern.
Sounds simple. It is! I could write more and more about this tip but it would not help you as much as just using it. I will leave it to you to test it for yourself.