I have enjoyed the diaries that have addressed how to make self confident and esteemed political conversation. I have forgotten how to do that with all of the sensationalism and sound bites that have flooded and invaded the common persons political news and information. It’s really bizarre but it has affected me and I find myself many times coming from a position of defensiveness bordering on hostility because I have come to believe that I am poorly viewed and even despised by many people in this country.
About thirteen years ago I took a course in NLP that was pretty costly. I did it for business reasons and I was told that it would improve more relationships in my life than just the business ones, and were they ever right. Telephones and computers make very poor ways to communicate well with people. Those of us on here are an even more special section of the population than we may have previously thought because the computer and reading are major ways that our brains can take in and process information. If you show up on Booman and just read and infrequently post anything it is highly likely that you are a very visual communicator but not a very kinesthetic communicator…..hugs and touching aren’t high priority and may even be uncomfortable in daily situations. If you read and post a lot chances are that both of those forms of communication are comfy and you also have a bit of what is considered an artistic streak because you are good at visually processing things and also comfortable in doing things with your hands and that makes for good artists. If you post lots of diaries all the time and you are surrounded by piles of stuff but you know exactly where what you need is in every pile you are most likely a primarily kinesthetic communicator.
I learned that people usually use three basic forms of communication and those are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. You are born with one primary and that is primarily how you understand and map the world. We can use all three. A very odd thing to note is that when we are falling in love we are all very good at using all three in very high modes. If a person is weak in one of the areas I have also learned that it can be learned and improved on. I am primarily visual though, born that way and will stay that way.
Figuring out what someones primary communication mode is can help tons in understanding them and having a fulfilling relationship with them and fulfilling discussions with them full of mutual respect and understanding.
Visual people take in everything with their eyes and they talk with their eyes. These are the people who can give you “the look”. They tend to be quiet or at least quieter people. They will wear shoes that are too tight if it matches their outfit. They will clean the kitchen at 2:00 am because they can’t sleep if it is a mess. They have all their sweaters in the sweater pile all nicely folded, they fold their towels a certain way and even the sheets. They are finishers and will only start something if they can finish it, and they run around finishing everything for the kinesthetic people and thinking that they are better than the kinesthetic people. If a person is really really kinesthetic and doesn’t even know what “the look” is if you bash them over the head with it we also think that that person is stupid and we firmly believe it until we take an NLP class.
To feel comfy when you talk to us we need personal space and if you touch us it turns our brain off so we aren’t being cold when we pull away, it just doesn’t work for us. Very visual people can’t play basketball because everybody is always touching you and it turns their brain off, they don’t play much football either or wrestling. My favorite sports are volleyball, skiing, track, soccer,…….no touching! When we make love we have to close our eyes so that our brains will stop visually processing the world around us and we can feel, so please don’t be insulted. If I closed my eyes playing “smear the queer” (child abuse telling us that that was what the game was called) I could also feel where everybody had a hold of me and I was really tough to bring down. Closing eyes though didn’t work in basketball.
I will hear everything you have to say if I’m given some space to view you in. Please understand that how the world looks is what is important to me. If it doesn’t look right it is how I know something needs to happen so it will look right. If you can tell me how something isn’t looking right I can begin to understand where you are coming from. I can seem distant to some people or even kind of frigid or cold but it isn’t so, I’m only poorly understood by some. I love gifts no matter how insignificant they may be. If a child gives me a pretty rock they found I feel cared for, a hand written note is very special.
I sometimes say things that hurt auditory people because auditory people remember everything ever said to them and I don’t remember anything really mean word for word that anybody ever said to me. All that I saw was that they were angry and their lips were moving while they were letting me know they were angry. I will write tomorrow what I learned and continue to learn about auditory people since I live with two……..much happier now that I understand them better by the way. My secondary is kinesthetic as is my son and my husband and my daughter so we do all four have that in common and it is nice to have.
Very informative.
I certainly am visually oriented, which can drive my husband to distraction, but I will NEVER be found cleaning the kitchen at 2:00 am, or in tight-fitting shoes – I have to draw the line somewhere. Now if I could find a way to garden at 2:00 am…
Mechanical noises drive my husband crazy, while I find them only annoying. He will dive at the radio when an irritating (to him) voice comes on, and has zero patience with a lot of pop music. And he can ruin my dinner by using napkins that clash with the dishes.
Can’t wait for the next installment on auditory people.
Thanks again.
Well now that you have described me to a “T” should I be embarrassed? I am hoping that what ever you tell us tomorrow I will find parts of me there also, I can hope. Very interesting and informative. I need to know if I can fix myself, will that be in part three?
One of the nicest things that I learned from the class was that how you are is great and once someone has had a moment to take in the different communication modes they begin to understand the people that they felt they couldn’t understand before. As humans we tend to gravitate towards what makes sense to us. I wanted to write a third diary about the kinesthetic folks. One of the most amazing things is finding out how each communicator feels appreciated by others and then taking a little time to do that with some of the individuals that you may have felt distant with where you work or in your family. It is amazing what can happen when people feel acknowledged and appreciated. I took this class when I owned a landscaping company and it did amazing things. I knew who was going to be mostly concerned about the sprinkler system working efficiently and being able to mow efficiently around their landscaping, who would want a butterfly garden and who wants shade or a little fountain. I have been out of the workforce for 5 years now, but what I learned from that class has been one of the most beneficial things for me that I ever did.
What does NLP stand for?
Never mind… googled it.
Not familiar with NLP at all but recognizing and understanding the different ways in which people perceive the world, process information, make decisions, and communicate is important for healthy relationships and for communication of ideas.
I found the Myers-Brigs test on personalities to be similarly helpful in understanding the differences between the way in which I process information and make decisions and the ways in which others do.
Ya’ll are really weird but I accept today that your way is just as legitimate as mine.
Keirsey has a great of information here. I don’t think his new temperament sorter II is anywhere near as accurate as his orginal “mini Myers-Briggs” test (no longer found on the web site but still found in his book Please Understand Me II) but there is still a great deal of good information about different personality types, our varied strengths and weaknesses, and the differences in how we process data and come to conclusions.
I always recommend this for people. So many of our problems can be traced back to a lack of understanding of each other and a resulting inability to properly communicate with each other.
I think perhaps you and I experienced that in a thread awhile back Tracey.
Peace,
Andrew
when they added personality tests. We all ended up there for business reasons and some were business owners but many were sales people whose employers had taken the class and wanted their employees to. It was a simple Dominant, Influence, Security, Critical test. All of the business owners were of course D’s…..something hysterical about D’s though is that we think everybody is a D and they are all after our place as being the boss. Only one out of ten people is a “D”, and everybody else has no desire to be the boss……they have other goals in life and it doesn’t concern having to watch over anything else that anybody else does. They just want to go to work and do their job and be paid adequately and respected but they have no desire to run anything other than their own life. That was really funny to find out!
I remember that I tested out to be just another Bill Clinton and I finally knew why no matter what he does I am blind to any flaw he may ever have.
You might be interested in taking the Myers-Briggs-Keirsey variety of personality/temperament test. It has a different set of catagories and can be quite revealing to go through and learn about our own temperament type as well as those close to us. Sounds like NLP gets into similar stuff.
Peace,
Andrew
Interesting diary. I definitely think it is important for people to remember that we all have our strengths and weaknesses in communication and that these aren’t necessarily correlated to intelligence. Writing for me doesn’t come very easy, so I really have to take some time writing diaries.
Maybe that also has to do with being a part of the “Microsoft Word Generation”. It’s much easier to right click a word and choose the right one than to learn how to spell well..