Sagar Agarwal’s Conscious Communication Day
My overall experience with my conscious communication day was very enjoyable and very knowledgeable. My major is business communication because I love socializing and communicating. I believe through the means of effective communication we can expand our networking, which will ultimately help us reach our goals and aspirations in life. I am an international student so sometimes it is harder for me to reach out to more people as I would in my country. Although with the help of communication classes, I could assess my skills and also develop essential skills required in the professional and non-professional fields of communication. This experience proved to be beneficial to me.
Avoid Mindless Communication
This part of the task was for me to refrain from answering questions in ritualistic, routine ways. Therefore I was not supposed to greet people the way I usually do. This exercise was challenging because I had to be different and seem unusual to the people around. A sense of formality enveloped me for the entire day. For example, I had to take a Lyft ride (taxi service) from my apartment to go to Tempe Market Place. On entering the Lyft driver’s car I introduced myself and instead of asking, “How have you been?”, I asked him, “Hello how was your day been? Hope it was not too difficult finding me.” Instead of just saying “Whatsup” or “What’s Good” to my friends, I would ask them, “How are you doing? How was lunch today?” or “How have your classes been?”
Connect with Each Person You Meet in a Sincere and Interested Way
For this area, I had to focus my mind and intent to the conversations I was involved in and make a special effort to not get distracted. For instance, today my roommates were talking about the Dodgers team and scores. Since I am from India, my knowledge regarding baseball is very minimal. Usually when my roommates are discussing this topic, I tend to zone out and look around or maybe think about my day’s plans. Instead, I decided to be a conscious communicator and felt that perhaps contributing to the conversation could help me develop a potential interest in the topic. I begun to ask my friends questions such as, “What does that mean?” and “Could you explain me the basic rules of baseball?” The conversation escalated me getting to see some videos and catching up on the sport, which both my roommates and I had a great time doing.
Communicate Ethically
In this exercise I was to refrain from telling “white lies” or lies that are simply said to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. In many instances in my life I have unnecessarily said white lies to get out of situations. For example, my girlfriend makes me food and usually if I don’t like it, I tend to still say it was good, just so I do not hurt her feelings. Today, she made me noodles that were not too appetizing. I decided to be ethical and let her know that they were too salty and could have more vegetables. By letting her know this, I avoided lying to her, and through my intentions I was not insulting her efforts but letting her know what she could do next time to make the meal perfect.
Ask for and Honestly Evaluate the Feedback You Receive
For this task I was to utilize feedback to determine how successful I was in accomplishing my purpose and how I could use my learning’s for future communication-related
