Do you ever get concerned about having one of those important discussions, those crucial conversations that can have a devastating impact on your life if not handled properly or if they don't go so well? Have you ever experienced how uncomfortable people can feel at the beginning of these conversations?  

Would you like to learn how to be more successful at having these discussions and also dramatically increase the possibility that everyone will be happy with the end results? Using the simple checklist offered here can help reduce your nervousness and make your crucial conversations much more satisfying.

Most of us lack effective communication skills. We don’t learn these skills in school, and we don’t learn these skills at home. This is unfortunate because, understanding these techniques for effective communication can be vital for having successful relationships in life.

Preparation for Effective Conversations  

We figured it would make life a lot easier if there was a formula for having a more satisfying outcome when it came to these difficult conversations. So, we’ve developed the following checklist to help you have successful conversation and learn more effective negotiation skills.  

Regardless of the situation, whenever you are faced with having a very important conversation, we promise it will go much more smoothly if you follow the tips in this checklist.    

The Crucial Conversations Checklist  

___ Create a Conscious Intention
Whether we are conscious of it or not, we all have intentions when it comes to having important conversations. It's difficult to disguise your intentions and others are often able to sense them, even if they are unspoken. This can affect the foundation of your conversations.  

Before beginning an important conversation, decide what your intention truly is. Create a clear understanding of what’s important you, and try to determine what values are represented by your intention.  

Ahead of the conversation, take a moment to remind yourself about your intention. This will help you stay focused on the true importance of the conversation and ultimately make the talk more satisfying for all parties.

___ Core Concerns
Reflect on any concerns you may hold about having the conversation.  You may be worried that the other person is unwilling to have this discussion, or making things worse by bringing up these issues. It is important to really examine your own underlying concerns.  

If your discussion is about conflict surrounding parenting styles, managing money, or decisions about where you will live, these can be difficult topics that need to be addressed honestly but carefully.

Many times, your fear can be interpreted as anger or irritation by the other person.  When you begin the conversation by talk about your fears and underlying apprehension, you can put the other person at ease by assuring they understand what your real concerns are. This can make the other person more willing to have these difficult discussions.

___ Get on the Same Page
At the very start of any important conversation, identify the underlying reason for the conversation. Outlining the specific outcomes you hope for can help keep the conversation on track and make it easier to resolve whatever issues you are addressing.  

Speak about actual events, rather than hypothetical situations or generalizations This is essential for effective communication.  

Both parties should always avoid judging the other person, name calling, or using negative labels to describe the other person.

___ Only as Many Words as You Need
During any conversation, it is critical to use enough words to be clear, but not so many words that they blur the lines and complicates the issues. Try to stick to one subject, or one aspect of the situation at a time until you‘re able to get some resolution. Only then is it time to move on to the next item.

Offer the other person a sketch rather than an oil painting. Let them ask you for more details as they need them. Too much talking can result in getting off-track and may prevent anything from getting accomplished.

___ More Intention
Somewhere early on in your conversation tell the other person the actual intention you identified by doing the item at the beginning of the checklist. This can help to clarify the issues and speed resolution.  

Remind the other person about your intention anytime that the conversation isn’t going the way you’d like or anyone starts feeling tense.

___Establish Understanding
Ask the other person what is important to them and what outcomes they hope for as a result of the discussion.  Helping them to identify their own intentions will help make your conversation more effective and more successful.  

Be sure to not push your own opinions into theirs, instead keep exploring what’s important to them and tell you can truly identify their intentions.

___Negotiating
Once the issues have been thoroughly discussed and you‘re confident you know each other’s intention and desired outcomes, only then is it time to brainstorm ideas that will help you both find resolution in the situation.  

Consider all points of view, and make sure that both parties have reached an agreement about solutions that won’t give anyone feeling resentful later on.

___Agreement Making
when you reach this point in the conversation, both parties need to decide who is prepared to take the specific actions needed to implement the strategies you have identified as solutions.  

Both parties need to be satisfied with the conclusions you’ve reached, the actions that need to be taken, and that the overall strategy will in fact provide and satisfactory solution to the issues at hand. Your agreements need to include a specific time frame about when the actions will be completed and who will complete them.

___Follow Up
Arrange a future time to follow up on the discussion. Make sure that you both check in to see how things are progressing.  

Wait until there is a problem and you’ve waited too long.  When you check in with each other, be sure to make any adjustments needed to keep your previous agreements on track.

More Applications for Using the Conversation Checklist  

At the end of any crucial conversation, make sure you take some time to reflect on how things went. If things went well, then relax and sit back, and celebrate your new communication skills.  

If things did not go so well, then this is the perfect time to identify what went wrong and what could be changed next time to eliminate the remaining barriers to effective communication.  

This is the perfect time to use this checklist for this review. Did you include each item on the lists in your conversation? Think about any points you may have missed, or those points that perhaps could have used some more attention.

Please understand, effective communication is as much art as it is science.  Practice makes perfect, and everyone could stand to use a little more practice at improving their communication skills.

If you practice using the Crucial Conversations Checklist before each of your important conversations, we guarantee you’ll experience greater success in creating the results you want.

Learn More  

Understanding how to have satisfying conversations is only one part of having healthy relationships. If you are ready to address other areas of your relationship and discover more tips for tackling difficult topics and developing happy
healthy  relationships in all areas of your life, subscribe to the thought-provoking and motivational Weekly Action Tips eMail series at: www.FocusedAttention.com .  

Get practical tips and supportive advice for developing the healthy, happy relationships you want and deserve.

Visit our blog at:
http://www.NewAgeSelfHelp.com .

Do you have trouble keeping your thoughts positively focused? What if your energy was spent finding ways to create the quality of life that you want instead of being drained by fighting the negativity that is bringing you down? If you knew how to use focused attention in this way, you could put a stop to the self sabotage and renew your self esteem.

You CAN put your energy to better use by beginning to pay attention to the “do want” that’s on the flip side of what we call “negative self talk.”

What Warrants Your Attention?  

Oftentimes, when you understand the importance of keeping a positive mental attitude, it’s easy to use strategies such as distraction, avoidance, or sheer strength-of-will to force your attention back into the positive zone where you want it.

Distraction and avoidance can be fine tactics when dealing with minor irritations or those pesky negative thoughts that pop up during the day. Most of these thoughts are not significant enough to warrant much attention, and so it’s easy enough to simply turn your attention back to something positive.

What Are You Focusing Your Attention On?  

But if you find yourself dealing with chronic, recurring negative thoughts on a particular subject, then the most effective way to change your focus of attention may be a deeper inquiry into the negative thoughts themselves.

We don’t mean that you begin to wallow in the negativity, or look for reasons to justify your concerns. On the contrary, one thing we teach people is that, just like a coin, every negative thought is really two thoughts. On the one side there is what you don’t want, and on the flip side there is what you DO WANT.

For example, let's say you became ill with a chronic sickness and that during your sickness you began to think negatively about your health. Even in your otherwise healthy, post-illness state you are still weighed down by the constant negative thoughts that seem to have stayed with you.  

The Place to Start  

The first step to overcoming this negativity is to identify each specific thought, rather than lump them into a category like “negative self talk.” So let’s start with a few assumptions and if these do not pertain to you, then you can simply plug in what is accurate.

For the sake of this example, we’ll assume that your faith in your ability to create a great life was somewhat shaken during your sickness. And, given the great life you’ve created so far, this may have been the first time you had to consider that a “great life” may not be “guaranteed“.

This might lead to thoughts that sound something like:
“What if I get that sick again?” and
“If that can happen to me what else might go wrong in my life?” . . .  

That kind of thinking might even snowball into more negative thoughts such as:
“Am I losing my self-confidence?” and
“Will thinking these negative thoughts bring more bad experiences into my life?” . . .  

Flip it Over!  

Given the power that your focus of attention has to shape your life, it’s important to turn each of these thoughts around to discover what’s important to you - what you value ? that’s on the flip side. So we’ll use one of these thoughts as an example and show you what we mean.

Let’s flip this thought around and see what’s on the other side:
“If that can happen to me what else might go wrong in my life?”

This may also mean - “Can I handle other things going wrong in my life?”

Which may also mean?
“I’d like to know that I’m doing everything I can to take care of myself and that I’m capable of handling anything that does come my way.”

Which also could mean?
“I really value a certain level of predictability about my future, having confidence in my ability to take care of myself and my family, and creating a life full of the things we love.”

Again, this may not accurately reflect what’s most important you. Our purpose here is to give you an example of how you can uncover the gift that a persistent negative thought is trying to give to you. And here’s the value in being able to discover this.

Consider the original thought for a moment.
“If that can happen to me what else might go wrong in my life?”  

Try it on. How does it feel? Does it bring your energy up or down? Does it give you any information that you can use to take positive actions?

Now consider the final thought in the series.
“I really value a certain level of predictability about my future, having confidence in my ability to take care of myself and my family, and creating a life full of the things we love.”

Try it on. How does it feel? Does it bring your energy up or down? Does it give you any information that you can use to take positive actions?

What You Focus Your Attention On Grows  

It’s important to be able to flip any persistent negative thought so you can identify what’s really important to you in the situation. This helps you maintain focused attention on what you do want and gives you a great deal more information you can use to figure out how to get it.

Getting back to our example, it is helpful to think of anything you can do to have more predictability about your future, or more confidence in your ability to take care of yourself or your family. Asking these questions may lead you to discover what you value at an even deeper level. Maybe you would like to discover a sense of inner peace and tranquility that transcends your circumstances. What could you do to develop that?

The Bottom Line  

There is a lot we offer in our courses that help people practice these skills, more than we‘re able to cover in this article. The bottom line here is that: What you resist persists. And so we suggest that you transform your resistance to these persistent negative thoughts by learning how to identify the gift they are trying to give you.  

After you discover what important values they are trying to remind you of, you can then turn your attention to specific strategies that will help you experience more of what you value in your life.

Once you’ve turned your attention to these positive actions that will help you get what you want, these thoughts have done their job and are likely to stop pestering you.

Again, this is a rather large topic to answer in such a brief article. But we’d love to hear if you are able to apply anything we’ve offered here and find that it helps. Tell us your story by e-mailing us: BethandNeill@FocusedAttention.com

Discover more strategies to eliminate low self-esteem and create the life you want now by signing up for our free thought-provoking and motivational Weekly Action Tips eMail series by visiting our website  

This series has valuable insights that will help you create the life and relationships you’ve always wanted.

Visit our blog at:
http://www.NewAgeSelfHelp.com .