Did You See That?

Did You See That?

Know the state of your flocks, and put your heart into caring for your herds.

Proverbs 27:23

In her book Reading People, Jo-Ellan Dimitrius tells the story of a man, whom we’ll call Ron, who was hired by an environmental institute dedicated to preserving an endangered species of bighorn sheep that lives in the mountains just above the institute’s offices.

When Ron visited the institute, the director took him outside, pointed to the hills, and quietly observed, “There are a lot of them out today.” Ron squinted up at the hills, but he couldn’t see even one sheep. Tactfully, the director called his attention to one after another, and Ron soon began to see dozens.

As Dimitrius points out, the director’s eyesight was no better than Ron’s, but he had learned to see the sheep. And what had become automatic to him became that way to Ron, too, once he learned to see the sheep.^a

The same applies to your relationship. If you give careful attention to your partner’s subtleties, you will routinely see what most others never even notice—and what you once failed to see. We’re talking about the nonverbal expressions your partner makes.

Researchers believe that about 90 percent of emotional communication is nonverbal. Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal developed an assessment of people’s ability to read emotional cues called the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS).^bHe shows subjects a film of a young woman who expresses feelings like anger, jealousy, love, gratitude. Unbeknownst to the viewer, one or another nonverbal cue has been edited out of the video. For example, sometimes the woman’s face is visible but not her body.

The goal of the video study is to force viewers to judge by subtle cues whatever feeling is being expressed. The better they do, the higher their scores. But the real discovery is this: people with higher PONS scores enjoy more successful relationships. The good news for us is that we can all improve our scores by simply taking the time to study one another. Make a study of your spouse to learn his or her nonverbal expressions better than you know them now. Put your whole heart into caring for this person who shares your life.

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

^a 31

^b 32