How comfortable are you with feelings and your ability to monitor feelings in your communication?
What are some ways you or the person you are communicating with monitor feelings in a conversation?
What makes it easy or difficult for you and the person you communicate with to monitoring feelings during a conversation?
Why do you monitor feelings (or not) in your conversations with others?
You might find, as you engage in conversation, that the mood either starts to change or did completely change. And you might be aware that the mood started to change subtly or dramatically during the conversation.
You might be aware of why the mood changed and sometimes you’re not.
What happened?!
First, you and said person were having a nice conversation. Everything was going well, and then one of you said something. Either you did or said something, or the other person did or said something that suddenly seemed to change the mood of the conversation.
Now, at this point you might be aware of it, and the other person might or might not be depending upon how well you or the other person are good at monitoring these feelings in the conversation.
Usually if one of you is good at this and realized the exact point at which the mood changed and the reason for it, then you might be able to repair the breakdown. You or the other person might apologize for what was said or provide further explanation for better understanding.
If either of you are not good at monitoring feelings, then one of you will carry on as if nothing has happened while the other one gets more annoyed, angry, sad or embarrassed depending upon the conversational topic or situation.
Sometimes conversations that start out so well suddenly lead to an explosion or someone walking out.
What can you do to monitor feelings so that you can have a nice productive conversation and not end up with an explosive scenario?
Here are four tips that you can use that may help you to monitor feelings in your communication:
Tip #1 M – Movement (body movement/posture)
What is the body movement or posture of the person you’re talking with? Is it relaxed, opened, tensed, limited body movement, or is a body part crossed when it was initially uncrossed?
What are the person’s mannerisms? Are they the same or have they changed?
Tip #2 O – Oh, the look (eye contact/gaze)
What is the person’s eye contact like? Are their eyes relaxed, glaring at you or looking away?
Tip #3 O – Oh, the face (facial expression)
What is the person’s face like? Is it relaxed, tensed, eyebrows furrowing, tense mouth with or without the smile?
Tip #4 D – Declaration (tone of voice)
What is the declaration or the tone of voice the person is using? Does the tone sound different from being light and happy to tense, angry, annoyed, and so on?
The next time you are in a communication situation and want to be able to monitor feelings to have nice productive conversation, just remember MOOD (this acronym helped me and I think it will help you as well).
Movement
Oh, the look
Oh, the face
Declaration
If you are driven to communicate with confidence, have your messages, be heard and understood, and repair any communication breakdown in your personal communication relationship, then you should take a look at my ebook 5 Strategies For Effective Companion Communication! Grab your free copy by signing up below:
Warm regards,
Grace CW Liu
Communication Navigator
W: GraceSOULutions.com
ABOUT GRACE
Grace CW Liu believes there is a solution to every problem including communication and conversation problems. Everyone can find the solution they seek by using the guidance of grace that is in you, with the grace of spiritual support, and Grace –me– as your Communication Navigator and support system.
My passion is to help sensitive, conflict-phobic, and introverted women have effective communication so they feel valued and heard in any conversation.
Through studying and observations, I’ve realized why communication breakdown occurs and the solutions to solving those problems. I’ve presented these solutions so that communicative partners can achieve effective communication!
