How do I connect with myself through communication?

Communication, as we've talked about, is not just a one way, one time step.  It is an on-going process.  With communication, it develops with us through our daily lives and through our different relationships.  For me, communication has greatly developed my personal relationships and my professional relationships.  All aspects of my life revolve around the way I communicate with others.
To begin, in my personal life, communication has taken on many different roles in the formation of the person I am today.  In my family, there are many boys.  As we know, communication is not just about the words we use to communicate, but the kinesics, haptics, artifacts, and environmental factors, among other things, we use to interact with those around us.  Growing up with boys, I learned that words don't tend to mean as much as the non-verbal communication devices do.  Boys use pats on the back and hand shakes and fist pounds to show their emotions.  Along with that, boys tend to keep their emotions and feelings to themselves.  This is how I was shown to communicate, so I now have many of the same habits in communication as boys do.  In my later teenage years, I have developed a sense of security in my emotions, and can now speak my mind, but that is not how I started out.  These habits of communication have made me the person I am today because without sometimes keeping my feelings to myself, I may have said something that would have turned me in a different direction than I am now headed in.  I can now use words to clearly explain what I mean and I can clearly describe what exactly I need or want.  This has come in handy in my professional life.
My professional life consists of both my school and work experiences.  During school, communication has shown me, through cultural development, how to act around teachers and how to act around friends.  With teachers, I am expected to be respectful and obedient.  I don't have a problem with this, as communication throughout my lifetime has said to me, "This is the respect teachers deserve and you need to show them that you value them as an administrator."  With friends, I know that I need to explain my points of view sometimes to avoid conflict.  If there are two different points of interest, to find a common ground and communicate clearly, explanation is due. Also, with friends, peers are more likely to use the same words as you do, but maybe in a different sense, so you have to make sure you understand what they mean before you react.  During work, I talk to people for a living every day.  I don't know any of these people on a personal basis, and there are cultural norms that keep us from "peeling the onion", but I do try my best to find a common topic to talk about.  When I'm at work, my job is to provide exceptional customer service and make customers feel like they can ask me for anything.  I try my very hardest to break the ice with some very generic personal questions like, "Are you from around here?", or, "Are you staying here in the Inn with us this week?".  To provide them with a personal feeling of welcome is my job, but also my pleasure.  Over time, communication has made me very social and warm towards others, and I love to talk and share stories with anyone. 
Communication has made me the person I am today, not only verbally, but non-verbally.  Communication has brought me out of my shell, and it has shown me that in order to know how I feel, feedback from people I communicate with is very important.  Going through my life and using different forms of communication has given me the chance to find what works best for me, and how comfortable I am with myself.  I can see what kind of mood I'm in just by the way my friends react to me or the way my boss tells me how the customers are reacting to me.  Communication's feedback through my lifetime has shaped the way I express myself by giving me the chance to observe how different people react to my different ways of communicating. 

What is Communication?

What is communication?

According to Julia T. Wood, author of Communication in Our Lives, it "is a systemic process in which people interact with and through symbols to create and interpret meanings."  What does this definition mean?  By breaking it down into four key words Wood helps you better understand just exactly what she means.  The first key word is PROCESS.  Communication is a process, meaning that it is a series of events, not a thing.  An event is ever-changing and never stagnant.   The second word she uses is SYSTEMIC, meaning that the parts that are ever-changing work together and effect each other.  SYMBOLS, the third key word in the definition, are things that represent other things.  Some examples she gives are language, both verbal and nonverbal, art, and music.  MEANING, which is the last, but not least, key element of communication, is the literal and related form of expression.  In communication, the literal words being used can be interpreted differently by way of the underlying relationships between the people executing the communication.  So, what is communication, you ask?   By looking at the four elements of communication, we can gather that communication is a series of ever-changing events that affect one another.  It is executed by way of exchanging symbols that can be interpreted both literally and figuratively by the receivers of the information.  People use communication everyday.  Think for a moment about how very often you interact with anyone.  Every instance uses communication.  This is the way we relate to one another! If we were without communication, the world would be without any type of sync.  All beings would be in their own little universe, never exchanging a thought, a word, a look.... How very lonely we would be.  Humans constantly communicate.  Lack of communication has even been proven to cripple the psychology of human development.  It is as necessary as water, food, and shelter.  Could you live in solitary?