How can we amplify the impact of our words and actions? Join us in this riveting conversation with Dr. Joseph DiRuzzo as we journey into the heart of effective communication. Dr. Joe masterfully breaks down communication into basic sensory modalities - visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, gustatory, and vestibular. With anecdotes drawn from Dr. Spock's parenting techniques and personal childhood experiences, he makes a compelling case for adopting and incorporating at least two modalities for impactful communication. This episode promises to thrust you into a new realm of understanding about the power of multi-modal communication.
We further dissect the role of different sensory modalities in our interactions and decision-making processes. Find out how body language and tone of voice can alter the entire perception of a message and how strategically employing these elements can optimize communication. We also probe into the vital concept of meaning and significance in communication. Dive into a discussion about how education, life experience, and self-confidence influence our ability to express ourselves effectively. This is a conversation you don't want to miss as we delve into the art of effective communication, helping you transform the way you connect with others.
How can we amplify the impact of our words and actions? Join us in this riveting conversation with Dr. Joseph DiRuzzo as we journey into the heart of effective communication. Dr. Joe masterfully breaks down communication into basic sensory modalities - visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, gustatory, and vestibular. With anecdotes drawn from Dr. Spock's parenting techniques and personal childhood experiences, he makes a compelling case for adopting and incorporating at least two modalities for impactful communication. This episode promises to thrust you into a new realm of understanding about the power of multi-modal communication.
We further dissect the role of different sensory modalities in our interactions and decision-making processes. Find out how body language and tone of voice can alter the entire perception of a message and how strategically employing these elements can optimize communication. We also probe into the vital concept of meaning and significance in communication. Dive into a discussion about how education, life experience, and self-confidence influence our ability to express ourselves effectively. This is a conversation you don't want to miss as we delve into the art of effective communication, helping you transform the way you connect with others.
This is the Optimal Human Experience Podcast with Dr Joseph DiRuzzo. To learn more, visit OptimalHumanExperiencecom. And now. Dr Joseph DiRuzzo and the Optimal Human Experience Podcast.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to episode 12 of the Optimal Human Experience Podcast with Dr Joseph DiRuzzo. I'm Paul Andrew, I'm here with Dr Joe and Dr Joe. The question must arise what do you want to talk about?
Speaker 3:
You know I always have a hard time communicating with you. No matter what I say or do I get the feeling, you just don't get it and you know I don't know where to go from there. What? I'm sorry. Did you say something? Why don't we talk about meaningful and impactful communication? Okay, all right. So the thing with communication is you have to come from like being centered and you have to communicate in the most powerful way and with the right intention and then people get it right and in the greater scheme of the universe and in this galaxy, like meaningful communication comes from intent and going to a space of where communication is like open.
Speaker 2:
Well, you know, you said a lot of words there and I'm sure they meant something in some part of the galaxy. I mean, I got to process that. What the hell are you talking about?
Speaker 3:
It's time to process, but it's always time to process. The more meaningful, you know, you processing is more All right. So communication is a problem for most people and we're going to simplify, simplify, simplify, just the absolute nuts and bolts of communication. And this is straight NLP theory. One time John Grinder said to me how do you know when something is real? And I went, duh, I don't know. I don't know, boss. He said characteristically, it's when you have at least two modalities functioning out of visual, auditory kinesthetic. He said you're sitting in your chair. How do you know that the computer in front of you is real If you close your eyes? Could you swear on your, on your father's grave that it's real? And the answer is no, not really. You say to somebody how do you know something's real? And what do they characteristically do? They will reach out and touch it and then they'll say, okay, this is real.
Speaker 2:
Right. So if I close my eyes and you say okay, could you swear on all that is holy, that that computer that was in front of you a minute ago, could you swear beyond the shadow of a doubt that it's still there? You know, I would say yeah, except the thing that would cement it for me would be, with my eyes closed, reach forward and kind of touch and make sure it's still there. Make sure it's still there, make sure it's still there.
Speaker 3:
So how we know something is real right. All right, so you've had children, right? Yes, oh, yes. And if one of your children, like, fills their pants, how do you know it's real?
Speaker 2:
Don't go there, man.
Speaker 3:
You can see it and smell it. It's real. Yeah, you can, yeah, so most sometimes you can hear it.
Speaker 2:
If they're, like you know, running with, forget it.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, it's always is real. So real communication occurs when we have at least two of the modalities.
Speaker 2:
Okay.
Speaker 3:
And that's how we know something is real.
Speaker 2:
Okay, and the modalities you mentioned visual auditory kinesthetic go over the modalities that we visual, auditory, kinesthetic.
Speaker 3:
Those are the three main ones V, a, k and most people will tend to specialize to a greater or lesser extent in one of those sensory modalities. Now, another sense of sensory modalities is olfactory, gustatory, smell and taste. Oh, we just talked about that with the kids.
Speaker 2:
Yes.
Speaker 3:
Guess what Emerald Legasi specialized in.
Speaker 2:
Oh, the, the famous chef guy with makes the pizzas or whatever.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and they'll say you know, this is refining the fragrance. And then they will tell you, by what they do and what they say, what their primary or representational system is oh for them, as individuals, in other words someone says someone says I see what you're saying. They're very visual.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, Cause they ain't seeing what you're saying unless you got words. You know, speech bubbles over your head I'll.
Speaker 3:
I'll think about that. I'll have to see how I feel.
Speaker 1:
So, because I can't feel it. I have to see it.
Speaker 2:
I can't feel it.
Speaker 3:
I need to see it in one's visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and then there's olfactory, gustatory, and then there's muscle movement. Right, why is a pianist Good at playing piano? They've practiced it over and over and over. They put so much sensory input into their muscle movement that they can move their muscles and remember. And then the last one would be vestibular, a balance kind of a thing. All right, so the key, the secret, the key, this core organizing principle, is to put your communication in more than one sensory modality. And the paradigm example is when Dr Spock, the child psychologist, started having parents talk to their children as if the children were little adults, right, and they say well, tommy, that's not very nice. I'm going to ask you to stop that now. Now I grew up and my mother would yell at me knock it off, and she'd give me a SWAT simultaneously Right on the bohine, and I got sensory input that was kinesthetic and auditory.
Speaker 2:
I would guess that at some times that was rather impactful on your actions, I never had the sense that I didn't get it Right.
Speaker 3:
So let us think about communication. If you are not communicating in two or more modalities, you're going to be relatively ineffective. If you're communicating in a modality that is not one of the primary sensory modalities for that person, it will influence your degree of being effective. Now let's kick in another variable, and that's open your eyes and look at them, and if they look like they didn't get it, chances are good. What?
Speaker 2:
I'm going to say take a stab in the dark and say, you know, if they don't look like they got it, chances are they didn't get it.
Speaker 3:
They didn't get it and it's your responsibility. If you want to communicate, then go back and do it again and add some more sensory input. Either wave your hands or shake them by the shoulder, or change your tone of voice or increase your tone of voice, or do something so that you're putting as much sensory data into this person and then when they go, boink I got it, you can see it on their face. They'll have that aha moment. So would you indication is relatively ineffective when it's only one sensory modality. It's just not enough.
Speaker 3:
By the way if you run a stop sign, what's going to happen?
Speaker 2:
Well, it depends on who's watching, or if anybody's watching.
Speaker 3:
The reason you stop is because in the back of your mind there's a policeman there. It's actually sensory input, this visual, and it's backed up by kinesthetic and auditory. Cops going to come. He's going to run his siren, he's going to pull me over. That's very impactful.
Speaker 2:
So at that point, do you recommend putting in as much as many different modalities? Speaking to the cop? Grab him by the shoulder, let him move your arms. Flail about convinced this cop that you didn't run that stop. Sign why you're going to believe me or you're lying eyes.
Speaker 3:
He will believe his lying eyes. Okay.
Speaker 2:
I don't know. I thought it might work.
Speaker 3:
Well, you know, suppose your wife comes up to you and she says the children have been misbehaving dear. All right, that's a certain input, right? What if she comes up to you and she's like purple with rage and her arms and legs are flailing about and she goes the children have been misbehaving all day long. What is a more impactful message in your nervous system?
Speaker 2:
The flailing about in ducking shoes and other household objects.
Speaker 3:
Yes, yes, so it is actually quite simple If you talk to somebody and just give them words remember the Bee Gees had their only words.
Speaker 2:
But words are all. Yeah, take your love away.
Speaker 3:
It's only when it's only words, it's not a complete communication. So talk to somebody and say to them here's what I want to say to you, and say it just in words. Notice their response. The big thing in NLP was notice the response you get. People used to say to me do you ever work with the deaf and the blind? And I used to say all the time, all the time some of them not yet diagnosed.
Speaker 3:
So when you look at somebody and you give them a message and they do not get, that aha moment, chances are good. Your communication was a failure and of course, it's all their fault, right, yeah, clearly clearly, clearly, especially, especially with couples, especially with couples, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:
No fault communication. Well, in there, in their attempts to be like civil to one another, they'll sit and discuss things as if they were having tea in in Great Britain and you know the the better moral. Well, I would appreciate if you'd refrain from doing that, dear and and in her responses. Well, I'm pleased that you can mention it to me. It's, it's, I'll do. I'll do what I can't To make a complete communication for your experiment and for our listening audience. Say this something important to somebody. Notice chances are good they're not going to respond. Get closer to them, turn purple and change your tone of voice. Just you clean, you'll just articulate wildly and notice they will get an aha moment and you can see it right before the fist impacts your the bridge of your nose setting that aside, that's your learning on your end.
Speaker 3:
Okay, so many people who say I told him a thousand times. Yeah, you have told him a thousand times and you've been ineffective in communication a thousand times.
Speaker 2:
It's time to do something a little different so that it would seem that one important part of this knowledge would be Noticing what the other person's main modality of communication is. So, given that you have worked with the, the deaf and the blind on numerous occasions, however, being people that can have full vision and full auditory capabilities, how did, how, could one Notice, since they don't already? I know, I don't how help us, doctor, help us? How do we? How do we know what other people are? What's gonna work with someone? Just Pile on and do everything from?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, pylon, doing well. Your first, you know, your first hunch is to slap them.
Speaker 2:
Right yeah, kinesthetic right now. You feel it Okay?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, slap them and across the face and scream at them.
Speaker 3:
And so you, I, you know, you've got visual kinesthetic and and an auditory so Start just notice, you know, when people are distressed they will characteristically look down and into the right, so People will not be noticing what's going on for the other person. Much of the time. They'll be overloaded with their own you know feelings and they won't be paying attention to the person. I had a. I had a friend whose name was Joanne and she was a delightful person. Her father was an ogre of some sort and he was mean to everybody in the family.
Speaker 3:
Her mother committed suicide by Blowing her brains out in the bedroom and which is an interesting way of saying what Not tonight, dear. Yeah, I have a headache. I mean this. I mean this is real people. And her sister committed suicide. She tried to Cut her wrist and when that didn't work, she hung herself in the closet. She had one brother who was in a mental institution and another brother was just an out and out alcoholic and I, you know, I was absolutely enamored with her, having very little experience in the real world. But you know, here's the point hold on.
Speaker 2:
So this was someone that that you met in years past, and you're interested in them, romantic basis of sorts, and but you didn't know any of this background.
Speaker 3:
Well, when I found out, you know, I still didn't understand the significance of it. We'll talk about the significance of stuff in a minute. But I didn't notice, and she used to. She was very visual. I used to call her two eyes an apopsicle stick. She was skinny and she, and when she would get stressed her eyes would roll back in her head. She would look straight up in the air and go this is what I get to see, this is what I get to see, whoa, whoa. So she was very, what, very visual, apparently.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so whenever she'd get stressed, you would go to her primary Representational system, right, and mine is auditory. So I'd want to talk about it and she didn't care. She'd say, well, I, I see what I see. And I say, well, let's talk. And She'd say, well, it doesn't look good for me. And I say, well, you're not listening to me. So, like two ships and passing in the night, our communication was hampered, primarily, to begin with. You know, auditory, joe, and Visual the gal, and we just, you know, didn't work and on top of it, in the communication we didn't have this insight into communication.
Speaker 3:
You want to communicate? Pause, take a deep breath, identify what you want to say, what you want them to understand, and then say it to them and mark it out also, either tonally or with increased volume, or reach over and wave your hand in front of their eyes or shake their shoulder. But do more than one sensory input system. Do visual, auditory, kinesthetic or olfactory, gustatory, muscle memory or vestibular balance, or do as many of those as you can and make it as much of a complete experience for them as you can do it.
Speaker 2:
Got it. Okay, we're about halfway through. I want to just say real quick if you like what you're hearing, you want to learn more, please visit optimalhumanexperiencecom. Optimalhumanexperiencecom. Go visit the website. There's a lot more of their videos, more podcasts, all kinds of stuff. Now, going back to your, do as many as you can, as many as you can. We already kind of talked about, okay, how do we determine what the other person's primary modality is. You, I don't know. Pay attention.
Speaker 3:
Well, first, of all, if they're highly visual, they'll use their eyes. They'll put their eyes up and left and upright, and up left and left and right, and they'll be trying to picture what it is that you're talking about.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so when they're looking up either to the left or to the right, that's a visual they're in their visual part of their brain and creating a picture of what it is they're thinking about or talking about. I see, hey, I see what you're saying. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, sure. So if their eyes, they keep their eyes level about at the same place that you would use a telephone, they are primarily auditory and they'll, and they will and they'll have they'll put their hand gesture right about where they would be holding a telephone. They'll put their hand on their chin and they'll put their hand near their ear, because they're auditory, primarily auditory.
Speaker 2:
Okay, and so if their eyes, instead of looking up either to the left or the right, or like the gal Joanne you were talking about, who looked straight up this is what I get to see If, if, instead of that, their, their eyes are moving on a level plane, like looking, like trying to see their ear, looking at this ear or that ear, then that's indication of their primary modality is auditory.
Speaker 3:
Auditory.
Speaker 2:
Okay, all right now.
Speaker 3:
The third distinction is an abnormally organized right-handed individual. If they're accessing feelings, kinesthesia, they will characteristically look down into the right. Does your? Do you have a cat in your house?
Speaker 2:
No, do not.
Speaker 3:
Where's the last cat that you remember touching?
Speaker 2:
Recently I took care of some cats when their owner was on a trip, and that was I don't know a few weeks ago. All right, what color were they? The cat was kind of a dark gray with a dappled looking coat, long, long hair.
Speaker 3:
Did you pick it up? Did you pick it up? I did, and was it? Was it heavy? Did it weigh a lot, or was it?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, huge. It was one of those main main koon cats which they, I guess they get the size of a black bear, which would not probably win in a fight with a grizzly bear. But that's a whole different conversation. Yeah, it was big, big cat.
Speaker 3:
Well, so I'm looking at you. You put your eyes up and left and right. You did not access kinesthesia and I'm kind of surprised at that, but I have to just simply pay attention, all right, have you had a disagreement with any person in your family as of late?
Speaker 2:
Oh, I never disagree with anyone.
Speaker 3:
And were there any feelings associated with that?
Speaker 2:
Yes.
Speaker 3:
Yes, yes there we go, yeah, and you listen to the tone of voice thing, you'll go oh, I never had any feeling, any disagreement with anybody. I say, well, there are any feelings associated with that? Well, yes, I guess so.
Speaker 2:
Oh, I suppose, and just so listeners realize, joe and I can see each other. We're on video. You can't see it. This is just auditory for you guys, but that's why he's making fun of me.
Speaker 3:
Go ahead All right. Well, the bottom line is to answer you know, you have visual, auditory kinesthetic, you have olfactory, gastritory, vestibular muscle movement, each. The more input you can put into this, the more they're going to get out of it in terms of communication. The second part of our story was my story personally was I was invited to be a physician to the Royal Family of Dubai and I was 27 years of age and I did not know the significance of that. I was freshly out of Chiropractic College.
Speaker 3:
It was during the era when Nixon had returned from China and he brought all these Chinese physicians with him and they brought traditional Chinese medicine, tcm. So I studied then I studied acupuncture and herbs and all the rest of that, and I was the new kid on the block, the hot Chat, and I was in Syracuse University area. I had a office up in Syracuse and In comes the head of the English Department of Syracuse University, nancy Sharp. Dr Nancy Sharp, and she says I'm sick and I've been to a million doctors and nobody can help me. Will you give it a shot? I said one million doctors one million doc.
Speaker 2:
Was there any?
Speaker 3:
I Never. You know, I never on over. You know, I never exaggerate.
Speaker 2:
There's not the least bit of hyperbole here. One million doctors.
Speaker 3:
There's low purply. But she tried all these doctors, nothing worked. I gave her some Chinese herbs and like about sure she got better. She sang my praises to her husband, dr Roger sharp Roger, and he was in the chemistry department there in Syracuse, so he wasn't getting well, he was sick. So little acupunctures and Chinese herbs and again he got better. And they said we have a friend named Margo for ronto bedrawn. She's head of the Middle Eastern studies in Hamilton College, remember, named after Alexander Hamilton.
Speaker 3:
All right okay so he comes sick, fix her up, no problem. She says I want you to work with my husband. His name is Ali bedran. He's going blind. So in comes, ali bedran. Little acupuncture, chinese medicine, does great, gets his site repaired. He's doing fabulous.
Speaker 3:
He said to me I want to take you to the kingdom of Dubai, the kingdom of Qatar, and you'll be the head that, one of the physicians, one of many, but nonetheless one of the physicians to their Royal family. Qatar or Dubai, which was it? It was Qatar, qatar. Okay, yeah, so it's down the street from Dubai. Yeah, right, just the same block. Anyways, there he went, they have all of our money because they sold us their oil. So he, I said to him, do I get a harem? He said no harem. I said no harem, no deal.
Speaker 3:
And the point I'm trying to make was did I understand the significance, at the ripe old age of 27, of what that could have meant to my life? They wanted to fly me to Qatar, where I would have. I would have probably gotten my head chopped off because I would have started spouting stuff about Chalmers, jefferson and all men are created equal and Unless you own, like the oil underneath the, you know the country of Qatar, in which case you're not as equal as everybody else. You're a lot more equal. But I didn't understand the significance a Lot of times. You know you don't understand the significance.
Speaker 3:
At my advanced age I Was at a I get together and one guy said I was doing NLP and I said, oh yeah, I did, I know P. Back in the day, another one said, well, I did est, air heart seminar training. I said, yeah, I did est too. And this other guy said, well, I did life spring training. I said, yeah, I was in on that and I had been. I had been flirting with this little black girl and she turned to me and she said how the hell old are you anyways? And the point is you don't understand the significance. First of all, miscommunication is the rule rather than the exception.
Speaker 3:
Okay, when two people get together. One will be talking about their feelings, the other will be talking about things don't look too good and another one will say I can't hear either of you. Right On top of it, they're communicating in only one, one modality. They will be talking and that's it. So the chances of a meaningful communication getting through are non-existent and, on top of it, nobody understands the significance of what's going on because they're not old enough.
Speaker 3:
When you get to my age, people say to me how come you know? You know all this stuff? I say I'm old enough to be my own grandfather and that has helped me immensely because I have judgment based on years and years of experience. I don't fight with idiots, which was one of my past time, for many years. I don't get in trouble with the law, which I used to think we were a free nation and you could actually like a free individual. I don't do any that stuff anymore. I have wisdom which makes you risk adverse, and you know a few things. When I watch TV and I watch these groups get together, they will talk people in their early 20s or 30s. I have doctorate level understanding in in a number of fields and I consider myself horribly uneducated. My greek, my latin very poor. My world history, my, my molecular biology could be a lot better. And I look at people and you know they have A high school education.
Speaker 2:
A full 18 minutes worth of of a of higher education.
Speaker 3:
Exactly, and they have next to no life experience. So they have no education and no life experience and they can barely read and write their own name and they're go out there in the wild kingdom trying to do something meaningful. Well, good luck on that. Who is the head of one of these groups? Said to a woman you like a man with confidence, right? She said, yeah, they have to have confidence. He said, yeah, confidence is important. Well, there's a lost performative there Confidence in that he can do what.
Speaker 3:
I mean, does he just strut around like a cry, you know, like a rooster being confident. He's looking confident. Can you do anything? No, can you know anything? No, but you're confident nonetheless. I'm confident about it. Yeah. So the meaning, the significance, the importance you first of all have to have a meaningful communication in at least two sensory modalities, right, mm-hmm, and they have to match up. And then somebody starts to get them the it's, they start to grok that, they get it. And then the other side of it. I was at a place where a fellow Put me in touch with a man named Christopher and Christopher apparently had a contact In a publishing company and they wanted to meet with me. Well, christopher was dressed mostly in goth and I couldn't take him seriously. He looked like a complete fool. And later on I found like 20 years later, I found out that this meeting had tremendous Significance. I didn't know that at the time.
Speaker 1:
I thought it was one idea, and introducing me to another idiot.
Speaker 3:
How did I know? So you have to first of all get it and then, second of all, you have to get the significance of it. Then you have a communication.
Speaker 1:
Okay, I'll give you a name.
Speaker 2:
A question. So how does the average Joe Schmo on the street, without years and years and years and decades of experience, move toward grasping the significance of communications, especially when most of them are in one modality only? So it's not a clear communication, it's a miscommunication. What's some practical advice, or is there any?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, take my seminar. Other than that, it's hopeless. I mean it's utterly hopeless. I see people argue and they get married and they argue in the same mismatched modalities for 30 or 40 years and there's no, this is not impossible. It's difficult if you don't know what's going on.
Speaker 3:
But if you don't have this information, you know, when you try to impress upon something to somebody, first of all just don't use just words. Remember the Bee Gees? They're only words, but words are all we have. It's not just words, it's gestures, it's tone of voice and if you have the permission to do so, reach over and shake their shoulder as you talk to them. Years ago I was teaching anchoring to some group and there was a gallon there. She anchored on my knee and later on she was trying to tell me something and I just didn't get it. She reached over and grabbed the anchor and shook my leg. The anchor was near my knee and immediately I got what she was trying to tell me.
Speaker 3:
If you do not have redundancy over and over again and the right perceptual modality and get them to get it right, so that may mean something to them. And then you have to check and make sure that they have some significance to it and if somebody comes, brings you somebody dressed in goth who's got important information you probably wouldn't know that offhand and you know you have the meaning of your communication is what the response you get. That was like a big thing in NLP. If you give a communication and somebody just sits there like a bump on a log, you didn't communicate and it's up to you. If you want to communicate, it's up to you to communicate. Reach over and shake their shoulder, get in their face, make sure that they number one get it, number two get the significance of it.
Speaker 2:
Okay, then that's our time for episode 12 of the optimal human experience with Dr Joseph Deruzo.
Speaker 3:
And they all get communications through time. Do you get it? Do you get?
Speaker 2:
it. Yeah, I get it All right. You got it. Okay. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:
This has been the Optimal Human Experience Podcast with Dr Joseph Deruzo. For the latest videos and courses, visit OptimalHumanExperiencecom. Join us next time for the Optimal Human Experience Podcast with Dr Joseph Deruzo.
Speaker 2:
You know, there's something to be said for that whole concept of being an apprentice, Learning things from an apprenticeship point of view, because you get the significance of these little tiny things that you do where you know. It seems like these days people don't take the time to become experts in anything.
Speaker 3:
Well, even if they were, how would you know? You know, I mean, it's all words now. There's no experience.
Speaker 2:
There's no experience. I do.
Speaker 3:
Every day I say the apprenticeship program is far superior. You've got academics and then you apply to it.
