Have you ever noticed that sometimes it's hard, even within your own head, to find the right word to describe what you want to communicate? That's right, the first barrier is simply coming up with the correct words to describe the concept. It seems the more abstract the concept, the harder it is to put into words. What do I mean, you ask? OK, as an example, what is love? Is it a feeling, a commitment, sexual attraction, or does it mean you want someone's beer? When you say you love football, love prime ribs, love your mom, love Metallica, and love "that special someone," do you mean you have the same feeling toward each? The first barrier to effective communication is often just finding the right words to say what you really want to say.
             Each of us has beliefs, values, knowledge, personality traits, experiences, and family or cultural conditioning that affect the way we perceive, evaluate, process and describe concepts (whew, that was a mouthful). For example, you and your grandparents probably view rock music differently. You may perceive it as music, they may not. You may evaluate it as being something you like, they may not. You may tap your toes or shake your anatomy when you hear it, they probably cover their ears. You may describe it as "cool," they may describe it as awful. Therefore if you tell them you bought some cool music, they might interpret it to mean some store is selling Frank Sinatra albums that have been refrigerated. OK, that was pretty obvious. How many times have you and someone you know defined the word "later" differently? They say they'll call you later, you expect to hear from them in about 15 minutes, but they actually call the following week.
             Clearly, the word later - even in the same language, culture, and social group - can have different meanings to different people. Words represent concepts, and because each of us is different we often have slightly different interpretations
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