Sunday, May 18, 2014

VAK

My brother let me borrow a book called Pushing Up the Sky by Lee Donaldson and Jonathan Rand. Usually I am wary of such books, but as I read it I realized it wasn't so much a self-help book as a self-awareness one. I would place it in a similar category as the well known Love Languages books (although I haven't read those). 
After reading it all, discussing it, and thinking about it, I decided that these type of books shouldn't necessarily be taken as complete truth, or a solve all for all your questions but more like one more set of tools for my human analysis repertoire. 
So, a little about the theory: Everyone has a Personal Operating System that is how we process information. First we acquire it, than organize, and finally value it. There are three main ways of doing all this: Visual(seeing), Auditory(hearing), Kinesthetic (feeling/doing). The authors put forward the idea that each person has a dominant way of doing all three steps. Such as acquiring information visually(1V), organizing it through talking and hearing(2A), and place value on the information depending on how we feel about it(3K). I decided this is my personal operating system (VAK). But you could also be KAV, AVK, KVA or any other combination. 
The part I found most fascinating is how some things about myself that I have noticed actually fit into these principles. Instead of it being just a weird quirk it means something deeper about myself. Such as how I need to talk ideas through before I act on them or understand myself what I was thinking. This is a common characteristic in 2As. I process information by listening/talking about it. Or perhaps even odder, the thing I always hated most about gym class was not playing the sports (which I usually enjoyed) but the idea that when you play sports people focus on watching your body (not your face) and that made me extremely uncomfortable (hand over the baggy clothes please). This actually makes sense in the context of my being a 3K. Motion and emotion is powerful to me, and sharing it easily makes me uncomfortable.
The other thing I found interesting was how no one completely fits into one category for each section (at least that seems highly unlikely) but we are often more dominant in one over another. But in all actuality that makes us more adaptable.
Anyway. I found it all pretty fascinating and can't do it justice in two paragraphs, but oh well. The problem is I'm not sure I am particularly effective about actually applying the things I learn, to make me a better communicator. . .

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