OBSERVING THE OBVIOUS

To become good at observe the emotion of a person the student first have to improve their skill to observe the obvious. We use a new word: Obnosis. It simply means "to observe the obvious".

At first it may seem to simple to bother with. But as with so many other things in life: Simplicity is power. So the student will have to go through some 'un-learning' and some learning before s/he can do it right. You have to look directly at something and get the is-ness of it. You just observe and notice what is in plain view and you can directly observe with your physical senses as your eyes and ears, etc. There is no mystical element to it it's straight forward observation. How does a student learn to see what there is? First of all, you give them something to observe.

In the class room, the instructor will have one student stand up in front of the class. S/he will ask one of the other students: "What do you see?"

Student: "Well, I can see s/he has a good sense of humor".

Instructor: "Can you really see that? Tell me what you can actually see".

Student: "I can see the wrinkles around their eyes and mouth. It looks like they smile and laugh a lot." - "Well, I guess what I really can see are the wrinkles".

Instructor: "Good. What else can you see."

Student: "I can see s/he has two arms".

Instructor: "From where you sit, can you see both arms?"

Student: "Actually, I can only see the one arm fully and the other shoulder; so I guess the right answer is, I can see their right arm and left shoulder".

Instructor: "Very good. You are catching on".

And so it goes on. No assumptions, no use of ideas what s/he is supposed to look like or how s/he looks like compared to others, if they are not in plain view as well.

If the student was to say: "S/he is very tall". The instructor would ask: "Compared to what?" and make sure it is not some picture in the student's mind they use for comparison.

"Compared to you, I would say. S/he is much taller than you are".

Instructor: "Good; so you see that by direct comparison right in this instance. That is what you are supposed to do." Anything the student would arrive at by using her/his "experience", his/her memory or comparisons with something not there, is un-learned.

What the student has to learn, is to observe the obvious, to do Obnosis. Where we are really going with this is to teach the students to be excellent observers. They need this skill as communicators to determine a person's emotions without prejudice; without using 'intuition'. You don't want to get mystical or complicated about these things. You just need the real evidence.

-- AnarchistU - 30 May 2006