Feelings Follow Thinking

One of those phases that has always been on my mind is, "why do we do what we do when we know what we know"?

Covey said, "common sense doesn't mean common practice".

As I attempt to uncover why do these happen, I found that John Maxwell also talked about this in "Go for Gold", where in one of the chapters he discussed "Feelings follow Thinking".

A good model that I refer to a lot and guides me in the many things I do is Gregory Bateson's neurological level of change. Bateson talked about the five levels; identity, values/beliefs, capabilities, behaviours, and environment.

Several people, including myself, have adopted and adapted this for their (my) work. Some replaced it with mindset, assumptions, actions, and results. For me, I add another dimension before identity; spiritual and uses a collective sum total of each level for an organizational context.

Today, let's just look at it from an individual's perspective to explain "feelings follow thinking".

Let's examine our actions. Our actions today will bring about the kind of outcomes tomorrow. In other words, our outcomes today were a product of our actions yesterday. In this times where the economy is in a tail-spin, how prepared we are is a function of what we have done in the past and it is also the environmental landscape in which we operate.

For instance, if we have always taken personal responsibility in our own development; in today's climate because of our cutting-edge knowledge and skills we will be spared the pink-slip. However, trained as we may be, if the organization we work for is not able to withstand the onslaught of the recession, we'll be axed nonetheless.

But if you ask anyone who's been shown the door if they knew about it, the odds are they knew. So, if they knew about it, then why didn't they do something about it previously when there was an opportunity?

Chances are, their replies would range from times were good, we were too busy, we didn't have the time, or we didn't think it will happen to us.

All said and done, I believe it is all about feelings. But where do we get our feelings from? Let's examine this closely.

I believe context gives words the emotional dimension. In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talked about the experiment where individuals are showed a particular cluster of words and with that it evokes certain feelings. He went on to describe that if the words are shown in a particular sequence it evokes a feeling different from one where the sequence is changed.

That said, words (either flashed to us or said to us) can trigger certain feelings. In NLP we call this syntax. Studies have shown that if words were said to us, we were touched in a particular way, and in a certain type of environment we could feel loved.

Take for instance when giving feedback, do we tell the other person their flaws then give them the positive remarks or if we reverse the sequence it could result in very different reactions. What complicate matters is the fact that for different people, the same sequence could trigger different emotions.

Hence, understanding how particular type of feeling emerges and under what circumstances will give us a clue to how to re-create the same feelings over and over again.

Now, what's the benefit of that, you might ask. Think back to a time when you did something exceedingly well. Whether it is in the classroom or when you were making a great presentation. How would you describe the feelings? Did you feel resourceful or engaged or was it just a "flow"? What is it? Until we are able to identify those feelings, can we then narrow down to the specific elements that need to be there in order for you to experience those feelings again.

And what about the things that occupied your mind? What were you thinking? Was it an alignment of your thoughts and your beliefs/values that triggered those feelings? Once we can identify these elements, we can then re-create all those factors in our mind over and over again so that we can feel that way on demand and hence get us to take those specific actions over and over again.

Another benefit of this experiment is this. It helps us make the necessary changes.
Your friend,
Melvyn
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)