Becoming a More Open Communicator

The concept I felt that was most useful as well as interesting was the tips at the end of the chapter regarding to becoming a more open communicator. I thought the five tips could be extremely useful to people who are close-minded as well as prejudice. The first tip basically states that one should try to be open to new types of people, people who are outside of your comfort zone and group of friends. It further on states, we tend to be more comfortable with others that are like one’s own culture. At the end of this tip it asks the question of out of all the friends you have how many are either from a different racial, ethnic or religious background. My honest answer is more than half of my friends are from different racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds. I have very few friends that are Caucasian or Greek. The majority of my friends are all Hispanic. The book stated that after answering this question the outcome is none or few it suggests that you should open up your mind to new people. Myself, I think I need to open myself to my own race more; however it is a little difficult because of the environment and people I’ve grown up with. The bay area is extremely diverse; where I live it’s mostly all Hispanic, Asians and African Americans. If you look at my five best friends you see one white, 4 Hispanics and one Chinese. Now to me that is pretty diverse and I love it. I think people should realize all these other cultures have a great deal to offer. I still learn something about each other these other cultures each day and I believe it makes me a wiser and smarter person. I understand how I can and should act with each of them and I respect their cultures like I respect my own. The second tip suggests learning about the history and cultures of different groups. Which, I love to do and I think it’s a great experience. The third tip is to become more fair minded and know and examine and understand your own possible stereotypes you might have. Another tip that the book suggests is to role play, look at things and experiences through another races perspective. This will open your mind a great deal more I believe. It will possibly help you understand who they are more. The last tip is to be more self confident. The more we are happy with ourselves, the more we are happy to learn and understand someone else. I believe this last tip is one of the best ones because I also believe this tip works in relationships. I believe that you have to be happy with oneself in order to be happy with a friend, significant other, family member and co-worker. Without being happy with oneself, you’re more likely to get down on these people as well as take it out on them. These tips I think are extremely important to be a more open communicator to different groups of people. I think we should all try at least one of these tips.