Say It With Your Eyes

One of the basics of communication and therefore quality relationships is eye contact. In the beginning of developing a horse one of the biggest challenges is “getting both eyes”. It’s a way of saying we would like the horse to look at us with both eyes. For a human it is only natural to look at something with both eyes. Both eyes are on the front of the head identifying us as predator animals. Prey animals have the ability to not only see what is right in front of them but see almost all the way around themselves. This ability protects them from predators sneaking up on them.

When we begin to play with a horse in the round pen the horse will usually not look at the human with both eyes. The horses’ attention is focused primarily on finding a means of escaping the round pen. The focused stare of a predator is almost more than the horse can bear.

Slowly, as the horse begins to accept the presence of a human, he begins to actually become curious. Usually with only a little help the horse stops looking for a means to escape and stops. Within a few moments he will turn to look at the human with both eyes. This is a wonderful first step in the forming of a relationship. The horse is saying “you have my full attention.”

Have you ever asked someone a question and found that they simply could not make eye contact with you? It’s a very cold an unnerving feeling. More often relationships are sacrificed by failure to maintain eye contact. Eye contact may initially be a part of the communication, but our eyes turn away telling the person essentially “this conversation is not that important”.

When we begin to communicate human-to-human we must strive to give and receive “both eyes”. Do we give our full attention to the person talking? Since humans are primarily visual in nature we must actually look at the source of the communication to fully comprehend its meaning. We have all heard the saying “the eyes are the window to the soul”. In fact experts in neurolinguistic programming can watch the very subtle eye movements and determine which area of the brain is being used and therefore what emotions are being processed by the communicator.

Experts in human-to-human communication stress that focusing on the left eye of the person you are conversing with gives the purest reading of their meaning. The more we focus the more we understand. Simply making and maintaining eye contact is the start of creating valuable communication and relationships of integrity.