Hey everyone, Ben Cumber Radio. How on earth are you doing this podcast? Could be a little bit noisy.

I am out on a walk with my dog with Ivy. You can probably hear her in the background getting very excited and wondering what is going on.

You can probably hear the birds tweeting but this is in short and in all honesty the best I can do for today's podcast.

I am unfortunately going for a slightly rough patch of my personal life where I am caring for Ivy pretty much full time.

I am also doing my job running my business and I am unfortunately having to care for my wife currently who is not very well.

So I am being pulled in every single direction possible and unfortunately this podcast is something that has been fallen by the wayside.

Now you might just think why not just leave it Ben? Why not just do anything? Why not just not upload a podcast? Why not just take a week off or whatever?

I suppose there are a couple of potential lessons in that and also a value proposition around 9 years ago I committed to uploading a weekly podcast that helps to inform, educate and inspire people to live a better, more awesome life.

It always quite often centered around nutrition and fitness and adventure into mindset but that is my commitment and I really value in life effective communication.

If I need to let someone down you down I think it's really important to communicate effectively. Why has that happened? What can you expect?

The reason why I think that is important is there is then no ambiguity, there is then effective change and if I was to single out a skill which I feel I have developed as a coach, as a practitioner, as a business owner over the years it is effective communication.

I want to challenge you today where I want to challenge you today and ask or raise the question how do you think your communication is? Could it be improved?

Should it be improved? When we think about our relationships with our partners, with our kids, with our friends, with our family, with our work colleagues,

everything comes down to communicating how we feel, what's going on, what projects need to be delivered, where you need to be and the people if I was to think in my line of work, the people that I tend to work with consistently again and again and respect the most.

Yes, there's an element of skill but there's an element, big big element of effective communication, how hard is it to work with someone when they don't communicate effectively, when they're not telling you what they think and feel when you've got to read between the lines?

I'm sure you can think of experiences in your life where people have just assumed things, I assumed you'd know, I'd assumed you'd pick them up, I'd assumed you'd get that, I'd assumed you'd do this.

And the thing is, the assumption element is us staying in our own heads, you know, not everyone thinks the way that we do, in fact no one thinks the way that we do, you do, we are individual people and we all have our own thought processes, education, background, biases and we can't assume anything.

And I can't assume that you will just think, oh, bends like, so busy you can't get to the podcast, it's a little bit unusual, it's not Mr. Showin' like nine years.

But I don't want that to happen, I don't want you to have to assume, I don't want you to have to wonder whether that's positive or negative because most people go to a negative place when something is unsaid, most people think the worst.

And that's a bad thing, so in your life where are you not saying things, because the chances are it's leading to a negative outcome.

If you're not saying that thing that you need to say to your partner, they're probably thinking negatively about it.

If you're not saying that thing that needs to be said in a team meeting, then you're not being an effective team player and so much of life is about effective communication and that's why I'm recording this quick podcast today to say look,

...