Watch what you say, the devil is listening. – The Black Keys.

The line from their song has been running through my head a lot lately.
A week ago I said something to my lovely and very patient Mister.

Suffice to say my flippant tone and words could have been our undoing if we both didn’t possess an important virtue – we’re talkers.

I’m not patient though, so waiting for him to be prepared to talk was a challenge I prefer not to face again.

But while I waited for him to give me the nod to broach the subject, I did a little self-talking about how often as a parent I say, “It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it,” to my children.

How I explain to them what I mean and then give them a verbal example saying the same sentence in three very different tones of voice.
http://www.wikihow.com/Develop-a-Friendly-Tone-of-Voice

And how quickly I ignore that lesson.

In my line of work, communication skills are pretty important. After a quick search on Google, the general consensus is that 93% of all communication is non-verbal cues. It breaks down into 55% body movement, such as facial expressions, 38% vocal, rhythm, pitch and volume and 7% verbal – that’d be the actual words, folks.

Seven per cent.

That’s what the Mister and I subsist on while he’s on the road. The latest stretch is clocking two-and-a-half months of not seeing his mug.
He’s promised to leave a mug in the kitchen next time he goes – he thinks he’s pretty funny.

Aside from the few times we are able to Skype, we rely heavily on the spoken or typed word.
We do pretty well not to argue, but there are days when my internal image of him is faded, making me more susceptible to misunderstandings.

I’m visually driven. Watching people, whether they are talking to me or I’m scoping out their life from afar, is how I get photographs or quotes from them.

When I started to read about how body language, and the interpretation of it, influences our perception of others, it made a lot of sense.
http://www.businessballs.com/body-language.htm

Those days of radio silence between the Mister and me gave me time to dissect how I communicate.

I’m sarcastic, quick to quip and tease, but sometimes I’d love to eat the words that tumbling from my lips with thoughtless abandon.

Five days worth of listening to myself speak – I mean actively listening – forced me to hear how I may be perceived, heard or read, as it were, by others.
I admit, some of it sucked.

But for a body conscious person like myself it was really helpful.

I know areas that I need to work on in order to get my message across and be more aware of how my body language influences the reception my actual words get.

Fortunately the Mister is an easygoing man who knows how to read me, often better than I am capable of reading him or myself, and he’s not quite finished the novel that is our lives together.

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