In outlining the master lines for this article, “Think – Feel – Act”, I thought of another triad that would also make sense, “See – Judge – Act”. In the process of discerning between the first or the second, I realized that although there are points in common, there are also important divergent points between the two triads.
In the first triad, emotions have a preponderant place but not in the second. In the second, thinking has a preponderant place as it is preceded by seeing or observing. In my opinion, the first triad is more appropriate to the person as an individual being, as a factor of change or conversion, while the second is more appropriate to the human being as part of a society, to instigate social changes, revolution or evolution.
Tridimensional behaviour
We are trinitarian or tridimensional beings because the existence of one supposes the existence of two others: Father – Mother – Child; and if so, in all honesty, we cannot say we exist because our existence is not self-justifiable nor entirely independent. Consequently, instead of saying, “I think and therefore I exist”, we should say, “I think and therefore I coexist”.
As tridimensional being, our behaviour is also tridimensional because we are what we think, feel and do. Our being is incomplete and we don’t feel well when we experience one of these aspects while neglecting the other two. What we think affects our feelings and actions, what we do influences what we think and feel, and what we feel affects our thinking and our action.
We feel frustrated, anxious and restless when we think and build castles in the air and not on earth, that is, when we think and plan projects that never see the light of day. We also feel bad when we do things without thinking and they come out wrong. Similarly, the same feeling strikes us when working on our projects we don’t take into account our own feelings or the feelings of others, by either repressing or ignoring them.
Proactive or reactive
Word out of the mouth is like stone out of the hand.
Although we don’t like to admit it, but the animal nature in us has not disappeared despite more than 5 million years of evolution that exist between us and the primate that gave rise to us. In the same way, the formation of the human neocortex did not nullify the limbic or emotional brain of mammals, and this latter did not nullify the first brain, the reptilian.
Just as these three brains function in unison, one within the other, so also the animal nature, from the first microorganism that appeared on the planet to our primate ancestors, is assimilated in our current human nature by a phenomenon that Konrad Lorenz termed tradition – what one generation learns, passes to the next and so on.
Konrad Lorenz founded a branch of science called Ethology which studies animal behaviour and its complete correlation or transposition to humans. In fact, since Pavlov’s experiments with dogs, behavioural psychologists have also conducted studies with mice or doves, as Skinner did, and applied their findings to humans.
As the above proverb indicates, we speak without thinking and end up hurting someone; much of our behaviour or action is not proactive or reflective, but reflexive, instinctive, automatic, fast and reactive like animal behavior.
The triad that should begin with thinking followed by feeling and action, begins instead with feeling followed by action and only in the end comes the thinking. Sometimes the action comes first, followed by emotion and thought. Our behaviour is tridimensional because it always involves thinking, feeling and acting. Depending on the situation, thinking may not always come first; however, whether it starts in feeling, or in action, all three are always protagonists.
Our reptilian brain is quick, the limbic not as fast as the reptilian, but it does process data relatively fast, the neocortex, on the other hand, is comparatively very slow and has a characteristic that the other two do not have which causes it to become even slower – it doubts itself and the veracity of the first thoughts or solutions to a given problem. The other two brains never have doubts, they are always right.
Finally, before we enter the twist and turn of thinking, it is worth noting that our animal nature is never cancelled by reflective thinking. It remains there, although not always present at the conscious level, depending on the nature of the problem or subject our mind is addressing. However, at the level of deep motivations of our thinking or acting, it is ever present.
Think
This is the first behaviour in the sequence of think – feel – act. All authentic and genuinely human acts come or should come from discursive and reflective thinking, something that is unique to human beings. No animal has this ability, no matter how close to us in the evolutionary scale.
Language and thought
Language did not develop primarily as a means of communication, but as a way of forming concepts. (Noam Chomsky)
Which came first, language or thought, is a chicken and egg question. A thought without the use of language would be unintelligent. However, it is likely that thought existed before language and as Chomsky says, it did not arise first as a form of communication between individuals, but as an instrument to form concepts.
Proof of this may be seen in the Chinese alphabet which is still pictorial, that is, each character represents a concept, much more than a letter, word or phrase constructed by our Latin alphabet. Another proof may be onomatopoeic words, which are words or concepts that arose from mimicking natural noises or sounds, such as buzz, boom, cuckoo etc. In this case, the word and concept are formed from the relationship of the person with nature, that is, from the effort to understand and conceptualize the observed and not as a way to communicate with other human beings.
On the other hand, intelligence and language can be defined in the same way. If intelligence is defined as the relationship between neurons that may be diametrically in the opposite part of the brain, then language is defined as the relationship between concepts that may have no apparent connection with each other.
Consequently, and contrary to what was thought, polyglot children are indeed more intelligent than those who learn only one language. Unlike adults, children can learn several languages at the same time and speak each language indiscriminately without being confused.
Give a fish or teach how to fish?
Primary and secondary education and, in many cases, even university education are not very critical. Often they are based on acquisition of knowledge, in filling indiscriminately the memory bag and dumping the content in an exam to get a diploma. Subsequently, everything is forgotten and is no longer a part of their lives. This is what I call “to give a fish”. Instead of stifling the creativity that would teach them how to think, we should "teach how to fish", as by this method it would be much better to give children, adolescents or young adults the appropriate tools so they can discover things for themselves.
This was the basis of Socrates’ maieutics; the teacher is a facilitator and as such should not in a condescending way give chewed up food to the student who merely swallows it. Similarly, the non-directive psychotherapy is based on this same principle: the psychotherapist helps the client or patient to find out what is happening to him.
It is much more effective when the client discovers with the help of exploratory questions from the psychotherapist than if the therapist were to discover the problem and solve it for the client by bombarding him with advice. What we discover for ourselves is ours, what others discover for us is not ours, even if it involves us. The same technique was applied by the well-known Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his social action on literacy.
On the other hand, in relation to affections and feelings, education aims to be completely aseptic and distant, as if these were subversive viruses in the system. One is educated for a profession not for life, where literary and mathematical abstract intelligence is more important than emotional intelligence. Affections are forbidden because what is intended to emphasize is not solidarity, but frivolity, competence, selfishness and individualism.
The cognitive sphere of our life and our behaviour
When we function in the cognitive sphere, we stop looking at the world and start turning our eyes inwards. The world is now inside of us in a symbolic and cognitive way, in the form of conceptualizations. The context and existence of objects start to mean less and their essence starts to mean more. This is our way of mastering the reality that surrounds us, that is, by knowing. Here are some of the functions or processes of our mind or thinking, and how they are defined in the dictionary.
- Analyse - Separate a whole into its parts or components, in order to study them singly and therefore be able to understand better their function or relationship to the whole. It means to investigate, examine thoroughly, scan or dissect.
- Relate – Compare new things to already known things, in order to establish their difference. It is the same as to compare: when something new comes to our mind, we search for something similar that is already known to us, with common points, and only after we look for dissimilarities.
- Experiment - Submit to an experience, a real and practical test, in order to know it better by the reaction obtained.
- Deduce – Conclude, infer, come to a logical conclusion from an experience, or after a logical reasoning process such as a syllogism.
- Imagine – Form an abstract mental image of something that is not currently present. This is very important in order for us to be able to create, discover, idealize, invent or establish a hypothesis.
- Conceptualize – Form a concept concerning a thing or a reality; it is the same action as knowing, it is to archive that thing or reality under a title or name in our mental database. It is to define the identity of a thing, to judge, or to evaluate.
- Systematize – Organize various elements in a system, that is, reduce (facts, concepts, opinions etc.) to a body of doctrine and formalize a theory.
When we start from scratch, that is, when it comes to carrying out a new project, this is the triad that will be used: from thinking to feeling and then to acting. There are, however, other situations where this same triad takes place unconsciously. Often our thoughts, our beliefs provoke feelings without us being aware of them.
For example, if I believe (thought) that my boss does not appreciate me as he should, as I think I deserve, I begin to feel bad (feeling), and if I see my boss appreciating others, I can feel envious (feeling), and if, in my opinion, these others deserve the appreciation less than me then I can become angry (feeling). All this can make me more competitive (action) or sloppy, unmotivated and do even less (action).
Cognitive therapy, as we will see later, is based on this triad. There are certain irrational or false beliefs that provoke undesirable feelings and actions. If I can modify the belief then these feelings stop being felt, as well as the actions motivated by them.
Feel
We make decisions at the emotional level and later justify them at the rational level. (Daniel Kahneman, Israeli psychologist and 2002 Nobel Prize winner in Economics)
When talking about our emotions and feelings, we are not talking exclusively about our limbic brain. As we have said, the three brains act in unison, that is, we are not going to talk about emotions of mammals, but rather about human emotions as the neocortex understands them. Because a mammal, even a primate, is not aware of what it feels, that is, it does not know that it feels anger, fear, hunger or sleepy or whatever it may be, it simply feels.
It is our thought that attributes meaning to our emotions, which deciphers and understands them. This assumes that we have more control over our emotions than we think we have, because it is our mind that conceptualizes them. This not only makes cognitive therapy possible but also allows us to master our emotions.
This means that we can have not only an abstract intelligence as we described, but also an emotional intelligence. In other words, we can enjoy, take advantage and use our emotions in favour of life and not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by them, as it happens in depression, when we lose control due to anger or any other passion.
It is true that we are not responsible for our emotions, for what we feel, but we are responsible for what we do with them. Therefore, if we feel dissatisfied or even irritated with our performance, with our feelings or thoughts, with our behaviour in general, only we can change this situation and nobody else.
Before we deal with emotions, we should have a clear sense of what we are talking about. For some authors, emotion and feeling are synonyms and so they use them indistinctively oftentimes in the same text. Other authors make a distinction between emotion and feeling, equating emotion more in line with instincts and using them interchangeably.
Instinct and emotion
Instinct is more primitive and comes from the reptilian brain, although it manifests itself in emotions; that is, from emotions I can know what instinct I am dealing with. For example, the reptilian brain has three behaviours: fight, flight or hide. When faced with an invasion of territory, or danger of life, the animal assesses the invader by its size. If the invader is bigger, then the animal feels fear and flees, freezes, or hides. If the invader is smaller, then it feels anger and attacks the invader.
Emotion in this sense is the manifestation of an instinct, it is the way instinct shows itself and acts. For example, in the case of sexual instinct, emotion would be the sexual attraction or passion; the feeling would be love.
In the context of nonviolent communication, where emotions and feelings are synonymous, we learn that each feeling or emotion is closely related to a need, that is, to an instinct. On the other hand, all feelings or emotions are either positive or negative – if the need attached to a particular feeling is met then the feeling is positive, and if it is not met, then it is negative. In the context of the stimulus-response, instinct is the need, and stimulus or emotion is the response to this need.
Emotion and feeling
Sensations and emotions are innate, but feelings are built at every moment by the mind. Sensations and emotions have more to do with the body, while feelings like love have more to do with the mind.
Emotion is a reaction to an environmental stimulus and causes a movement, a series of chain reactions like altering the cardiac and respiratory rhythms, blood pressure, endocrine system in the secretion of hormones, immune system, unexplained pain, crying etc.
Emotions are intrinsic and essentially physical, while the feelings that originate from them can exist independently, without the support of the physical body and practically without any obvious and clear physical manifestation; as examples of this, we can think of vanity, selfishness, envy…
The emotion of euphoria corresponds to the feeling of joy, the emotion of crying to the feeling of sadness, the emotion of panic to the feeling of fear, the emotion of anger to the feeling of hatred, the emotion of passion to the feeling of love. Feeling is an emotion enlightened by the mind or, that is to say, the humanization of an emotion. Animals have emotions, but they don’t have feelings.
Emotional intelligence (EQ)
Emotions that are out of control make smart people stupid. Emotional intelligence accounts for 80% of success in life.(Daniel Goleman, psychologist)
Rational and abstract thinking is the best way for us to relate to material things, to know them and to master them. It is the type of thinking that science needs. On the other hand, we need emotional intelligence for arts, human relations and relationships we establish with ourselves.
It is emotional intelligence, however, and not abstract or mathematical reasoning that determines the most important decisions and actions in our lives. It determines the success or failure of human relationships and often also of professional relationships, since there are no profession that does not involve relating with others.
In our professions, within associations, institutions, factories and companies, technical skills represent only one factor to self-fulfillment. It is often the emotional intelligence that sustains the most important raw material of these companies and that is their employees. Emotional intelligence applies to those who lead and to those who are led, to those who coordinate the teamwork that is so important in modern companies.
It is emotional intelligence that governs almost all the acts of our daily lives; having it guarantees happiness, and not having it leads to failure, as Daniel Goleman states in his 1996 bestseller book, Emotional Intelligence. In his book, Goleman tells us that it is possible to create a balanced and harmonious interaction between the rational and the emotional brain, and he teaches us how to develop this emotional intelligence.
It is emotional intelligence that helps us to know and give a name to our feelings. Most of us are emotionally illiterate: if asked how we feel, most of us automatically answer “well”, and we cannot identify more than four or five feelings when in fact there are dozens of them, as we saw in our yearlong discussion on Non-Violent Communication.
After identifying our own feelings, we should try to identify other people’s feelings because only in this way is empathy possible, and with it a harmonious and constructive relationship with others.
Cognitive therapy
According to the theory behind cognitive therapy developed by American psychiatrist Aaron Beck, emotions and behaviours are brought on by the internal dialogue that we maintain with ourselves. This dialogue is based on thoughts, assumptions, and beliefs of which many are false or irrational.
The founder of cognitive therapy understands that it is enough to challenge these false and mistaken beliefs that he calls “cognitive distortions” and confront them with reason, in this way the emotions that they provoke, as well as the actions rooted in them, disappear. Cognitive therapy has been proven to be effective in empirical studies.
The principle is simple and is rooted in a concept much older than Beck’s that is well known to us religious: the concept of conversion that in Greek is metanoia, that is, change of mind. Generally, when a person says that he has changed his mind, he is saying that he has also changed his behaviour and that he has made other decisions contrary to those he had made earlier.
Feel – Think – Act
According to some current studies, and as Daniel Kahneman also states, we are more emotional beings than rational beings, despite the fact that the neocortex is more than twice the size of the limbic brain. Fundamentally, we are emotional beings who then resort to reason to justify, explain or sanction and validate our feelings.
In a positive sense, what we do is very similar to the defense mechanism described in the fable of the fox and the grapes. The fox upon seeing the grapes desires them (feeling), decides to jump to get them (thought), but still can’t reach them and feels frustrated (feeling). To get rid of this negative feeling it declares the grapes unripe, rationalizing the feeling (thought).
The emotional brain is much faster than the rational brain, so that the first reaction to everything that our senses capture is an emotional reaction and not a rational one. Everything that our five senses receive provokes feelings long before provoking thoughts.
For example, a mother who looks for a school for her child, visits one where her first impression is that it is dirty and disorganized, she does not even bother to find out if this school’s performance is good or bad, as she immediate decides that her child will not be studying there.
Act
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Finally, we are in the pragmatic sphere of the tridimensional human behaviour. As we have seen in relation to the three brains and three basic personality types, there are more cerebral people who live comfortably in the “upper room” with very little contact with reality.
There are also people to whom the most important thing is human relationships and for this reason, they live in the midst of society and run away from being alone, finding it hard to be by themselves. Finally, there are people to whom the most important thing is to do things, they live in the thick of action and are always doing something practical, using their thoughts more than their emotions. They are energetic people who learn by doing and are always involved in some project. When they are not involved in a project or doing something, they fall into depression.
The “cogito ergo sum” changes face depending on the basic personality type to which it relates: for the cerebrals, it applies as “I think therefore I am”, for the emotional “I feel therefore I am”, and for the visceral “I do therefore I am”.
In the twilight of our lives, we will be remembered not by what we thought of nor by what we felt or said, but by what we did. Chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel says that we will be judged by the acts of love that we have or have not done in our lifetime. (Matthew 25:31-46)
Nonviolent communication has taught us that love, more than a feeling, is a need: all human beings need to love and be loved. The importance of a person is certainly measured by his deeds, but it is equally important the thinking and feeling behind the deeds. We are what we think, feel and do.
We can devote ourselves only to thinking, to being intellectuals and even to living apart from others. However, it will always be our deeds that will save us and give meaning to our lives, through scientific research, the creation of technology that makes life easier or the production of literature that delights and teaches.
We can also be emotional and write poetry, devote ourselves to the arts and music or to establishing peace and harmony among people. It will also be our deeds, the way we materialize our feelings that will give value to our lives before ourselves and before others.
And finally, for the pragmatics, for those who live in the midst of action, if it is not well thought out, not enlightened by reason and guided by feelings, then it serves nothing.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 1Corinthians 13:1-3
Act – Feel – Think
This triad is rarely regarded in a positive light, but very often and very much manifested in the negative. It is like “putting the cart before the horse” or when the action anticipates thought and feeling. The popular poet Antonio Aleixo already warned us in his famous verse: “In order to avoid offending anybody and have happier days, do not say everything you think, or that comes to you mind but think or ponder carefully everything you say”.
In the negative sense, when an action is thoughtless and ignores feelings it will make us feel bad about ourselves and make others feel bad, and can even lead us to draw false conclusions about ourselves and about others. Why not use this mechanism in the positive sense?
I suppose this is the basis of the therapy that comes from behaviourism. Instead of dealing with attitudes by studying their psychoanalytic roots and never getting to be what we intend to be, behavioural therapy argues that by practicing a set of behaviours repeatedly, these will end up creating the desired attitude.
Amy Cuddy from Harvard University argues that if we display an attitude of power, confidence and leadership even though we feel insecure, we will end up being and feeling what we physically show through our body language. According to her, our body postures affect hormone levels, in this case testosterone rises, and make us feel safer. As she once stated in a conference, “fake it until you become it”.
Many stage and film actors allude to this phenomenon: after playing a role for a long time, they had serious problems deconditioning themselves from it. Our actions and how we communicate can change our thoughts and feelings. I suppose flight attendants who always have to smile at work, even if they are crying inside, become more positive and optimistic people in the long run.
The expression “count your blessings” urges us to list all the blessings we receive instead of counting the misfortunes. Even more explicit in this positive therapy to exorcise our negativity, we have the Castilian proverb, “Al mal tiempo buena cara”, that is, smile at life, insist, persist and do not desist until life smiles back at you.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
Interesting and well written.
ReplyDelete