Conscious Communication
by Miles Sherts

How to Establish Healthy Relationships and Resolve Conflict Peacefully while Maintaining Independence

Relationship skills presented in a clear and detailed format that enables you to:

* Express your feelings and needs more effectively

* Listen to other's feelings and needs with empathy

* Establish and maintain healthy boundaries

* Make cooperative decisions that include both people's needs

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We humans spend a lot of time talking, and with cell phones and the internet our daily contacts with each other have exploded. Yet we rarely pay attention to how we communicate, and all this talk has not improved our relationships. Many of us don’t know how to share our feelings and needs without blame, or hear about another persons’ experience without judgment. And often we leave a conversation without a deeper sense of understanding or connection.

While we have made impressive advances in technology,
our way of relating to each other has not changed much since the Stone Age.

Most of us rely on our instincts of fight or flight when we feel threatened, even though it is evident that this approach doesn’t work. From an epidemic of divorce to perennial wars, conflict continues to destroy our families, fracture our communities, and undermine our security. With more than six billion of us on this small planet, tensions can only increase and our survival now depends on finding a more effective way to handle our differences.

Conscious Communication makes a remarkably simple observation about this seemingly hopeless problem – when we try to settle disagreements by deciding who is right and who is wrong, we unknowingly create more conflict. Instead of resolving issues, this reflex of judging each other increases opposition and perpetuates struggles between us that undermine our basic need for connection and support.

This book offers a new approach which leads to greater understanding instead of further division. Practical skills are presented that interrupt our judgments and encourage emotional honesty and compassion. These basic relationship tools enable us to stay connected while recognizing our differences, and see other people as allies instead of adversaries. As we let go of our impulse to be “right”, and focus instead on what we need to be happy, we see how joining with other people can dissolve our isolation and provide a real sense of belonging and security.

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