Knowing Your 5 Primary Senses

How well do you know your senses? Do you know which of the five primary senses; visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, taste, is your strongest? Do you maximize this chosen sense to your best advantage in your recreational pastimes? How about in your choice of vocation? Do you choose your partners, friends or work colleagues according to their preferential sense?

We see, hear, touch, smell and taste the world around us and even though we use all our senses to various degrees, we are dominant in one. Our choice of words reveals immediately our preferential sense. There are many ways our vocabulary describes different sense processes and the way we think.

If we know someone who is clever at mimicking voices or is always humming or singing, we say, 'they have a good ear.' If someone is gifted at drawing we may say, 'they have a good eye for detail.' Apart from knowing more about ourselves, it is interesting to discover which senses are dominant in those around us and then matching them to different ways of thinking.

An easy method to find out is simply to recognize words and phrases that are commonly used. Just turn on the television or radio and listen to an interview. Who is using these phrases?

Someone who is visually dominant may say:

I see what you mean.
I can see the problem.
There is another way of looking at it.
I am glad to see that...

Whereas the person who is aurally dominant may say:

I hear what you are saying.
I am listening to you.
Tell me again.
Spell it out.

On the other hand, the person who prefers tactile and movement may say:

Let's go through that step by step.
Walk me through the solution.
Let's take it one point at a time.

When you have become familiar with identifying these sense words and phrases in a conversation, listen and detect which ones you mostly use and then identify those spoken by your conversational partners. Are you similar or different? How does it affect your conversation? If different, do you both express different opinions and viewpoints or does it provide a point of disagreement?

These are big clues in letting you recognize which sense is dominant and how that person thinks; whether they tend to be visually or aurally dominant. You can now use this knowledge at home, work and play.

At Home.

If you are visually dominant, is your partner similar or different? For recreational pastimes, one of you may prefer seeing films, taking photos, drawing or painting, visiting galleries or changing lighting so maximizing visual sense whereas the other may love listening to music and needs to have the background noise such as radio or TV for maximum auditory stimulation.

One partner may enjoy splashing through waves, feeling sea breezes and smelling salt spray to satisfy tactile and olfactory senses, whereas the other prefers to sit on a rock listening to the waves and seabirds.

At Work.

Similar analysis can be made with your work colleagues. Do you work best with someone with similar or different dominant sense? In your work team or office staff, do people have jobs where they can use their strongest sense to best advantage? Do you have a variety of people on your team with different sense preferences?

At Play.

We share pastimes and select friends according to both our own and friend's dominant sense. Often we have different friends for different pastimes. For example;

Visual dominance: nseeing films, book reading club, decorative and art classes

Auditory dominance: nconcerts, singing, foreign language lessons,

Taste dominance: nsharing recipes, trying new foods and wines,

Tactile dominance combined with movement: ndancing, yoga, swimming, jogging, walking, gym

When you have discovered which sense is dominant, you can then use this knowledge to your advantage. All you have to do is listen to the words people use, then choose activities to match their preference. Friends, family and work colleagues will appreciate your sensible approach.