Have you ever been attempting to communicate with someone and found yourself hitting your head against the wall with frustration?
Communication with other humans can do that to you, but there is a way to your goal.
A few years ago, I was invited to Las Vegas to speak to martial arts school owners. At the time, I was having success helping the schools grow through television commercials and infomercials. Over a thousand Black Belts crowded into the Hard Rock Hotel to hear what I had to say.
As I began, I explained that I have many rules for communicating successfully. One of them is to never use "inside language" when trying to get someone else to understand you. Whether it's technical mumbo-jumbo that nobody but you understands or the actual language you speak. If you want to get somebody's attention, you must speak their language. That was the problem the industry was having.
I asked everybody in the room to stand, and I called out a few, saying, "Stand up and introduce yourself, in your language, and tell us exactly how you help students in your school."
For the next few minutes, a dozen school owners spoke in English, Japanese, Koren, Chinese, and a few others, describing how their program was superior to all others. The only problem was, few in the room understood much of what they said.
As the room began to lose focus because they couldn't understand, I made my point,
"Everybody, please stand, and let's all count to ten together!"
The next few seconds were filled with a thousand voices, speaking dozens of languages, all trying to count to ten. When they finished, everybody broke out in laughter at the craziness.
That's when I said,
"How do you expect anybody to do business with you when they can't understand what you are saying?"
During the next hour, I taught them to consistently meet folks where they are, join the conversation they are having in their minds, and use words and phrases that mean something to them.
If you do that with every conversation you have in your life, today will be very motivating. For you and everybody else you meet.
Imagine how successful that is going to make you?