In this day and age, communication is a big deal. We have so many ways to communicate. We have emails, the good old fashioned “snail mail”, the telephone (interpreted as “cell phone” for the younger members of our audience), instant messaging, Skype, and internet forums. In this age of text based communication, we’ve developed an unprecedented level of non-verbal communication. For example, we’ve collectively decided that all capital letters means that you are yelling. “I WANT CAKE” has a slightly different tone than “I want cake”. Then we have our punctuation. How many times have we seen “!!!!!!!1111111”?
We’ve even developed a shorthand for our texts. “w8 4 me” we all know means “wait for me”. “…” means many things, depending on the context. It can mean “I’m not impressed”, or “I’m waiting”, or “whatever”. (Kind of reminds me of “hooah” in the Army. It has no meaning. It’s totally context based.) Simply putting “!?” means “I can’t believe that!”, or “What?!” The point is, we’ve come to recognize different things to communicate different messages based on context. And it’s amazing how well we can communicate without even seeing the other person, or hearing their voice. But how well are we actually communicating?
According to Dr. Albert Mehrabian, the author of “Silent Messages”, only 7% of our message is conveyed through our words. This means that we are only communicating at 7% efficiency with our emails and text messages. Another 38% of our message is received through different vocal elements. In our text based age, we’ve learned to read tonal inflection into messages. While useful, this can often be wrong. Think about your own text communications. How many times has “shock” translated into “anger”? For instance, “WHAT!?”.
So, with verbal components and words, we are still only communicating at 45% efficiency. The other 55% of our communication, according to Dr. Mehrabian, comes from nonverbal elements, such as facial expressions, gestures, and posture. A good example is the sentence, “You don’t want to do that.” If I’m yelling it as you’re about to step into traffic and I’m reaching for you, it’s a plea for you to think about what you’re doing. If I’m saying it calmly as you’re about to start a fight and I’ve stepped up in your face, it’s a thinly veiled threat. And you get that from my posture and tonal inflections.
Knowing this, how much have you communicated with your loved ones? 7%? 45%? With militaryfares.com, we can help you travel to your friends and family, and allow you to communicate with them at 100% efficiency. “I’ve missed you” is so much sweeter when you’re in your loved one’s embrace, than it is when it is sent over the phone via a text message. “Happy Birthday” means so much more to the recipient if you are there in person to deliver the message.
So, get to our main page and let militaryfares.com help you to start really communicating with those you love.
Robert J Presswood, Jr – SGT, USA (Ret)
