Interpersonal Communication

Lets face it, I love to give advice. I am always there to give my two cents to any problem regardless if I have prior experience with it or not. I never really paid much attention to that fact until we learned about interpersonal communication vs advice giving. After the lesson I noticed how often my friends would come to me with a problem and my first impulse was to tell them what to do. Since then I’ve tried to practice the new communication style and just led them through their problem solving. Sometimes it was really difficult for me since I just wanted to tell them what was what and be done. I think using the interpersonal skills has worked out well for those that were coming to me for advice even though it was killing me inside not to comment. I know that this isn’t an easy thing to learn nor deploy and I look forward to having more practice before next semester. My biggest hurtle for this is changing the way I think about problems. I know that when I go to someone for advice, mostly my mom, she pulls this type of style out and its always drove me nuts growing up. I never wanted to think it through and really dig deep into issues, I just wanted the quick and easy answer. I guess I should be grateful to my mom for never giving up on my insistence and letting me figure things out on my own but I think that my personal frustration with this style has led to some mental barriers to using it. The lesson really opened my eyes to the benefits of the style and I think that this technique will be a great skill to have in my arsenal for the rest of my life.