Clear Mind Press
Fiercely independent publishing, neither asleep nor woke
Dynamic Writing - a course in memoir writing for women
Paul Neuteboom
Communication is Everything
Happy and Successful through Intelligent Communication
Translated by Suzanne Visser, edited by Phil Walcott Jonathan Smith
Intelligent personal communication has a big impact on how happy and successful we are. Whatever relationships we want to develop and whatever goals we want to reach, communication will always be an important part of the process. This book contains everything we need to become a communication champion.
This book is intended to teach students in the age range 10 to 16 communication skills that will give them a firm grounding in personal interactions.
I clearly remember the day that the idea for Communication is Everything came to me. We were sitting around the table – my wife Lisette, my daughters Lois and Isabel, and me. It must have been in 2007, a normal weekday. I do not remember what we were talking about, but I was trying to explain to my children how to have a conversation, just as my parents had taught me. I guess it had something to do with listening. Whatever I was trying to explain must have been simple, because at that time my daughters were eight and five.
After the children had gone to bed, I was sitting alone, staring into space. I thought how strange it was that there was no course on teaching children the skill of interpersonal communication, even though communication is such a big and important part of our lives. It’s at least as important as maths and English.
The idea stayed with me. Over the years, I built up a collection of notes called “Communication is Everything”. This was a phrase I sometimes used at work and at home. Whenever I had an idea or learned something about communication I added to my notes, with the aim of eventually developing a course on teaching communication.
A busy job and children who were growing up meant that the project did not make much progress. For a long time, it stayed on the back burner. Then, in 2017, I found the time to start working on it seriously.
The result is this course, Communication is Everything.
I am convinced that if we teach children to communicate effectively, they will have happier and more successful lives. My mission is to get lessons in personal communication onto the curriculum in schools. Children would experience the benefits for the rest of their lives.
I hope you enjoy reading this book and supporting your children in learning this important skill. If you have any questions or ideas about how it can be done better, I would welcome them.
Good luck!
Paul
Paul began his career at Planet Internet, a large Internet start-up in The Netherlands. Not aware of his writing aspirations yet, he managed a small development team. Two years later, he, with four others, started a company that grew pretty fast but was affected by the Internet bubble of the early 2000s. He tried his luck once again with another software start-up. This company was sold in late 2016. This finally allowed him to work on his idea of teaching young people the basics of personal communication. Communicatie is Alles was released in The Netherlands in 2019. With the book came a website of teaching materials to help teachers and parents teach communication skills to children between ten and fourteen.
The English version is published as a book only.
Paul’s most recent project is naturalhumanism.eu that he developed with the Belgian Dr. Paul de Hert. It is a manifest that aims to define a new philosophy of life that places humans and nature on an equal footing and denounces anthropocentrism.
