Sight, hearing, touch. Which sense do you subconsciously prefer?

By Nick Ashcroft


Everybody knows that we approach reality using 5 senses: sight, hearing, touch, olfaction, taste. What most people don't know thought, is the fact that everybody got a preferred one. This means everyone of us unconsciously prefers a sense over the other two.

That doesn't mean we use that sense above others to live, that would be incorrect as humans will always be depending more on sight than on other senses, for evident reasons. Sight is and will always be the sense that furnishes more informations on external reality. So this preference is not about the sense that we use more, rather that's about the way each of us prefers to organize his inner perception. That has to do a lot with memory. What kind of memory do you have? That is what modes are about. If you're visual, you describe your inner world using images, if you're auditory, you describe it with inner dialogue, and when you're kinesthetic you're doing so by feelings.

And how is this related to improving my communication? If you want to be an effective communicator, you should recognize and adapt to the preferred perceptive modality of the person you are talking to. This way you can talk more significant to her.

Exactly what do you mean?For example, if you're speaking right now with a visual person, you should be adopting a visual-related language. That let you two swim in the same perceptive world. Language has evocative power. When you say a word your mind automatically depicts that meaning into your head. But what if you say "screeching", do you depict that? or rather you listen it into your head? As you understand, a visual word recalls an image, while an auditory one recalls a sound. What about "fear"? This one can only recall an emotion. So that what adapting to your interlocutor mode means: use words that he recalls very well.

Ok, but exactly how can you know his inner mode? To determine that, listen to him talking. The words he chooses will reveal this precious information. If someone is visual, he'll choose expressions and idioms which reveal a visual inclination, (idioms in particular): "That's so clear", "This appears to be true", "I see the point of the matter", "I see I bright future for you".

An auditory person will select more sound-likely expressions: "That's music for my ears", "I feel in harmony with myself", "We're on the same tune right now"

A kinesthetic person will draw idioms from the world of feeling in order to express himself: "That's a hot topic", "I'm holding the world in my palms", "Slip out of my life!"

How to take advantage of knowing this? Try to make use of that type of expressions, for example, you may say "this appears to be bad" to be able to respond to a visual person, "this sounds bad" to reply to an auditory, "this feels so bad" to reply to a kinesthetic. A great trick here is to start from the verbs and then build the rest of the phrase around it. Be litteral, just figure out what your idioms means in a litteral way. This is how you can determine whether an idioms is visual/audithory/kinhestetic-related. Everything depends on the contest as well.

That just can't be easy, because it's not something that you can understand by reading a book. You got to practice that with people. We are all different: everybody has his own way of interpreting and figuring out sentences. I think that perceptive modalities are a mean to understand people rather than a way to label them. Think of your goal as understanding the more you can about people you interact with and you'll be on your way to communicate

effectively...




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