What is Conscious Communication?

Have you ever approached a conversation with the intention of listening to another person without just thinking about how you wanted to respond? Brought yourself to a calm state of mind before initiating a potentially uncomfortable conversation? Received another person’s feelings with curiosity instead of judgement? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then congratulations, you’ve exercised conscious communication!

When we use conscious communication, we bring to the forefront of our awareness what it is we truly want to accomplish. It is deciding on an objective and making an effort to stay on a conversational track that brings us to a resolution that includes respect and compassion.

For some of us, using conscious communication to lead our conversations can take a lot of work and practice. There are roadblocks that can often prevent us from reaching our conversational goals like impulsiveness, reactivity, and other behavioral patterns that are hard to break. 

The good news is that like most patterns and tendencies, we can train ourselves to consciously communicate so that overtime it is simply our go-to vehicle for approaching conflicts and conversations. 

When using conscious communication, the three main components are self-awareness, assertiveness and active listening.

Self-awareness

It should be no surprise that conscious communication requires a degree of self-awareness. When we use self- awareness, we objectively think about and identify what it is we want to communicate or discuss. By bring ourselves to a conscious headspace, before approaching or initiating the conversation, we eliminate the potential for that fluff that sometimes makes its way into a conversation and hijacks the whole thing with unrelated concepts like that time your partner didn’t do the dishes when your head was hurting. 

Tapping into our self-awareness before entering a difficult conversation grounds and calms us and activates our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that enables decision making and reasoning and guides our social behaviors. Child development specialist and co-author to “What Happened to You”, Bruce Perry uses the phrase “getting to the cortex” to describe the goal in helping individuals regulate enough to be able to talk about stressful or traumatic events. So get to your cortex by putting on your self-regulation vest and turning on your self-awareness. 

Assertiveness

The next thing you want to switch on is your assertiveness. When speaking assertively, we speak calmly, respectfully, honestly and directly. It’s kinda like our no-nonsense game face, or our let’s make this as peaceful as possible where no one gets hurt game face. Either way, it involves us speaking our mind, expressing our thoughts, or stating our opinion using a confident tone that says “I deserve to be respected and you deserve to be respected”. 

Studies show that interacting with someone who exudes confidence actually sets us at ease and influences us to feel safe and more relaxed. If we apply this concept to approaching a potentially upsetting or unpleasant conversation, it shows us how important it is to come in with assertiveness. It communicates that you’re in control (you’re not unhinged), you’re respectful (you’re not going to throw word daggers at me), and that you have good intentions (you’re not trying to sabotage my life).   

Active Listening

Finally, there is the glue that holds it all together: actively Listening. This is the point of the conversation where you’ve already put down what you’re hoping the other person is picking up and it’s their turn to put down. Only instead of picking up, you’re more of just holding what they’re putting down with the soft and gentle hands of a sweet grandmother. 

Active listening is when we patiently listen to another person speak, suspend our judgment, and switch on our curiosity to genuinely hear what they are saying. We demonstrate our actively listen through eye contact, validating words and body language that communicates that we are interested in what they are sharing and that we want to understand what they are saying. In a world with a million distractions at the tips of our fingers, active listening is more important than ever. It is one of the most simple ways to support another person and show your respect when interacting with them.

Regardless of what your ideal outcome of a conversation is, actively listening is crucial for the conversation to remain balanced and respectful where all parties have the opportunity to be and feel hard. Sometimes, you might even find that your end goal changes based on the information you received from the person you've chosen to listen to, in which case it could very well be a win-win for all parties. ;)

Being able to consciously communicate your thoughts and feelings is a powerful skill that can be helpful in every type of situation. From resolving a conflict between you and a co-worker, to explaining to your partner that you aren’t comfortable with them unexpectedly throwing your son into a pool to learn how to swim, it can help you speak with intention, learn about another person’s perspective, and reinforce that both what you say, and what they say matters.

For more guidance and opportunities to practice conscious communication, check out our fun-based communication strengthening programs below.