Sensory Awareness for Your Relationship Pay Attention

One of the biggest problems that couples face in a relationship is the ability to communicate effectively, honestly, and empathetically. Problems that arise have many different ways of being handled and your solution might not be your partner's solution. Being emotionally intelligent in a relationship means that you are able to dial yourself into the emotional status of your partner. This requires you to use one of the four pillars of neurolinguistic programming?sensory awareness, or simply making full use of your senses to collect information and make an informed decision on how to act.

Observe Without Evaluating.When using sensory awareness when communicating to your loved one, its important to observe and collect information using all your senses, but without evaluating the information being collected. Your fears, your assumptions, your beliefs, your wants?all of these can taint the information being collected. Just as a scientist makes sure that his experiments are objective and repeatable by other scientists, so should you remain objective when using sensory awareness to observe the situation. What you are doing when you are observing is carefully noticing things that are different with your partner. What they say, what they do, what they look like?all of these things you are observing, without making any conclusions as to why these changes are taking place.

Evaluating the information being collected is particularly bad because of the way we make assumptions. We have an egocentric thought process and we tend to think of ourselves first before others. Therefore when we make assumptions, we tend to base those assumptions off our worst fears or we inject ourselves into that assumption, when in reality, it has nothing to do with us at all. By keeping evaluation separate from observation, we can weigh the information objectively.Communicate Your Findings.

Because we never really know what our partner is thinking, the only way to understand them is by connecting to them with the power of communication. Let them know the changes you observed and express your genuine concern. Have them explain themselves and focus on listening and asking questions. You will find that your level of connectedness with your partner will increase by using this method.

Tristan Loo is the founder of Alternative Conflict Resolution Services, a management consultancy based out of San Diego County, Calfornia. Tristan is a former police officer, conflict expert, professional mediator, and negotiator. Tristan gained his experience by actively engaging conflict out on the streets, honing his knowledge and understanding of conflict during hundreds of dangerous encounters with hostile and violent subjects. Tristan is the author of Street Negotiation--How to Resolve Any Conflict Anytime.For FREE Conflict Articles and Products, please visit our website at http://www.

acrsonline.com or email us directly at info@acrsonline.com.

By: Tristan Loo