18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A compelling look at the "thermal underwear" of the psyche, November 8, 1999
This review is from: Power Talk: The Art of Effective Communication (Paperback)
"The ego is the thermal underwear of our psyche," writes Howard Rankin in this highly readable, entertaining and yet profound guide to effective communications. "It allows our innermost processes to be kept within, keeping us warm, comfortable and protected from the harsh elements of the outside world..."
"The problem with most of our communication," he continues, "is that it is given and received with too much thermal underwear. We keep the barriers up, not extending ourselves, and not letting the other person in."
The upshot: "If meaningful communication is hard to find, so is meaning...Communication is a spiritual issue. It is spiritual not just in the fact it requires personal extension and understanding, but that it is a prerequisite for articulating the meaning in our lives. Communication skills are therefore the most valuable personal resource."
This book is full of gems like this. As a writer, I particularly enjoyed Rankin's discussion of story-telling. "Human beings are programmed to make sense of the world around them. Uncertainty is far too unsettling for the human mind, and we will go to great lengths to construct explanations, even if they are detrimental to us, rather than put up with the unknown...We are thus programmed to tell ourselves stories for the sake of our sanity. Communication _is_ story-telling."
But perhaps the most useful part of the book -- the section I will return to again and again -- are his 20 suggestions for escaping the "cage" of our own egos. His is a great list, but his message is that we must continually develop -- and experiment with -- our own.
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