When feelings are positive, they drive us. Kevin Jarrard’s first look at Amenah was a tug at his heart that made him want to take action—it initiated a dream of a well and healthy Amenah, something that came to pass.
Feelings create momentum and speed, which is necessary to go forward and take action. Remember the first time you fell in love? It was exhilarating, intoxicating, and all consuming. You had butterflies in your stomach, your heart beat faster, and your body tingled. It was a wonderful experience. That single emotion pushed your behavior—powerfully drove your behavior—in many different ways, but most notably toward the person you loved. Yet, feelings can be very powerful, and like an untamed horse, hard to ride.
Emotions can better help you achieve a dream when they are under control, which is easy to say but hard to do. Think of how the rational leader Lieutenant Colonel David Bellon acted when one of his hand-picked men, Kevin Jarrard, came to him with a mission that was driven by emotion. It helped that Kevin had given the matter considerable thought, and had consulted with Nadeau, known to be a careful and systematic thinker.
David Bellon was no stranger to emotional issues. When soldiers are in the heated line of duty, emotions can be very near the surface. When the soldiers go home to America after their duty, they have to act civilly, in control of their emotions. Bellon knew they needed to be just as in charge of their emotions while in Iraq. In fact, that was part of his vision, his dream.
When he recently discussed the state of mind he was in that caused him to encourage Jarrard in his Amenah quest, he said he knew he needed to train his soldiers to deal with their feelings, so they would make the right decisions in emotionally charged situations. He described how feelings can flash when a young Marine is on patrol, as he put it, “those moments when you’re enraged, but you still conduct yourself with measured discipline and compassion.”
Bellon and Mark Lamelza shared that dream: to take a group of young men through an experience that was probably going to be violent and traumatic and to return them back to their families and their communities as better husbands, fathers, brothers, and citizens. David’s two prior tours had been tough—losing young men and women to death and life-altering injuries. In his third tour, he wanted—he needed—to make sure that every soldier had moral clarity. He and Mark spent a lot of time indoctrinating the soldiers with a clear message of “who we are.” Somewhere in the future, David said, he didn’t want one of his soldiers sitting in a coffeehouse someplace in Palo Alto experiencing angst over “who we were.” Instead, he and Mark were determined that the battalion was going to step into this endeavor with moral certainty, quite confident about “who we are and how much we can take.” David and Mark’s dream reverberated through the 3rd battalion and, undoubtedly, guided the behaviors of every single Marine.
This stance, to take the moral high ground when possible, is in large part behind the impetus to allow Kevin Jarrard to start the chain of seemingly impossible events that resulted in Amenah returning to her home in Iraq healed. And, because the Marine mission at the time was to shift control of the country back to the Iraqi people, to bond with them, to interact with them, this turned out to be a very sage, emotionally driven dream to encourage. As Nadeau put it, “We got more traction from helping that little girl with the people of Haditha than probably anything else we did.”
Feelings do not need to be at the intensity level of rage to override thinking and influence our behavior. A study done by neuroscientist Alan Sanfey at the University of Arizona illustrates the point. 1 The study used a simple negotiation game in which one player has to split $10 with a second player. In this game, let’s say Jane is the first player and Joe is the second player.
Jane can offer Joe any amount, from zero to $10, and she can keep the change, but only if Joe accepts the offer. If Joe rejects the offer, neither of them gets any money.
According to game theory and common sense, Joe should accept the offer no matter how low it is because getting some money is better than getting no money. That is rational, reward-driven behavior, right? Well, it doesn’t work that way. Here is what happens. As the offer gets down to a couple of dollars, the people in Joe’s role consistently turn down the offer and forego the free money. If you put yourself in Joe’s shoes, you know the reason—people get mad at cheapskate offers, and would rather have nothing than a couple of dollars.
The really interesting part of this research is that the investigators mapped the brain of the players while they were playing. As the offers became increasingly unfair, a region in the brain that is tied to negative emotions, such as anger and disgust, became more active. When this region became more active than the region in the brain that drives goal-oriented reasoning, players rejected the offer. Feelings overruled thinking and sent a resounding message: “You cheap jerk. If you can’t be fair, then you’ll lose, even if it costs me, too.” You might be inclined to attribute the rejected offer to principle or sense of fair play, but magnetic imaging suggests that feelings drove behavior.
Let’s take one last look at feelings that are so subtle we don’t even recognize their occurrence, but they still impact behavior. This example is a Gordian knot. Social science research consistently shows that we have a tendency to fear people who are different from ourselves. We might not think of ourselves as prejudiced, but at a physiological level, we do show a fear reaction to people who are different from ourselves. Indiscriminant evolutionary cues are signaling us that different means dangerous. We wouldn’t recognize the feeling as fear, but instead might draw a gut conclusion that we don’t like the person. In a global world that is becoming closer each day, people need to be aware of unconscious biases like this. The way to cut the Gordian knot is to recognize that feelings operate in this fashion.
When feelings row much harder and faster than thinking, it creates an imbalance, and you typically have trouble making good judgments. That doesn’t mean you should try to repress your feelings as if they were Victorian-era vices. That won’t work—they just won’t behave, so the best practice is to recognize your feelings and the important role they play so that they work for you and are in concert with your thinking.
Thinking
For someone like Jonathan Malloch, thinking is a regular day at work and a way of life. He had to find the safest, yet most affordable way to get Amenah to and from America with minimal risk to his colleagues. Chartering a Galaxy 6 or hiring the air medical agencies was out of financial reach, no matter how energetically Janet and Kelly were gathering donations. This is someone who charts every step of a process and has contingent plans B and C for each step. He had to deal with the state department, which offered little real support and basically said, “We know you’re coming. Just don’t mess this up.” He had to study and rehearse all the Muslim custom issues with his extraction team colleagues. And he was ready to pull the plug on his team’s involvement if the risk grew too great, which it did at one point until Blackwater Worldwide agreed to help escort the team.
Aside from tournament chess players, few people have to study as many permutations of a situation as Jonathan did. But thinking, when powered by your dreams and feelings, can be a very powerful aspect of your life.
Thinking is the third member of the rowing team, and building thinking skills is what this book is really about. Thanks to your thinking side, you can anticipate, plan, invent, innovate, contemplate, and decide. On a daily basis, when you are sizing up situations, gathering information, weighing alternatives, and considering consequences, you are using this marvelous side of your mind. Its capabilities are boundless, so you can continually get better at thinking. From an evolutionary perspective, reasoned reflective thinking developed fairly recently and is housed in the newest part of our brain, and like a shiny new computer, it can process a lot of information and purposefully drive behavior. Thinking plays a key role in recognizing and evaluating life-changing opportunities, solving complicated problems, and making wise decisions.
Anoth
er role of thinking is to act as an emergency brake when feelings run too fast. The connection between primitive feelings and behavior tends to occur very quickly, so in this situation the key on the thinking side is to be able to rapidly recognize and label those feelings. It is a reactive position, analogous to an emergency situation where rapid recognition and response is necessary. The purpose is to gain a foothold and interrupt the flow of emotion. Of course, the majority of situations in our daily lives are more mundane and thinking can and should play a proactive role in how we behave. Accessing your thinking side across everyday situations will greatly enhance your life, allowing you to be in control, shaping intentional behavior, and moving in a positive direction.
Developing your thinking will also give you a highly sought-after skill that is in short supply. Employers and educators in our country are waving red flags because employees and students are not demonstrating the kind of thinking it takes to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world that requires responsiveness and independent judgment. A nationwide survey of employers highlights the extent of the problem; among employees new to the workforce, under 30 percent of those with a college degree, only 4 percent of those with a two-year degree, and none of those with a high school degree were rated as possessing excellent critical thinking skills. 2 Those numbers suggest a gap between capabilities and demands that needs to close to sustain societal well-being and prosperity.
As you can see from Amenah’s story, good thinking can shape miracles, or support them as they unfold. By developing your thinking, you can position yourself to meet the demands of a complex world, and, in turn, you can use your newfound talent to positively impact the world with inspired dreams and dedicated achievements.
Summary
In this chapter, you put the pieces together, learning why people behave the way they do and how dreams, thoughts, and feelings work together to determine our actions and behaviors. Understanding how your mind works is critical at that very moment when you are about to act and you need to decide if thinking or feelings will run the show. You need clear dreams so that you have a road map that points you in the right direction. Understanding how your feelings work allows you to use them to your advantage. They are like an eccentric family member—you love them and need them even though they embarrass you from time to time—so it’s best to acknowledge their existence and get to know them well. And finally, thinking is your ace in the hole. It is an unlimited resource that you can harness to improve the quality of your life and the lives of those around you.
Endnotes and References
1. Sanfey, Alan G., J. K. Rilling, J. A. Aronson, L. E. Nystrom, and J. D. Cohen. 2003. The neural basis of economic decision-making in the ultimatum game. Science 300:1755–58.
2. Are They Really Ready to Work? Employers Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21st Century US Workforce. 2006. Study conducted by The Conference Board, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the Society for Human Resource Management.
Damasio, Antonio. 1994. Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York: Avon Books.
Chapter 2. A New Way of Thinking
Jonathan Malloch made numerous calls and sat down several times with the extraction team of Glenn Susskind and Gary White as they scrutinized lists, charts, and cost sheets to determine the feasibility and best ways of transporting Amenah to Nashville. As Gary put it, “You don’t just hop on a plane and run over to Iraq and bring a girl back.” There were a lot of moving parts to consider, so they went to work, identifying the most crucial questions: Could the child fly, did they have the logistic ability to get from the Iraq border to Amman, what type of air transportation was needed (e.g., air ambulance), what type of transportation was possible given the costs, how would they transport their medical equipment through international airport security, and how would they secure an interpreter?
They didn’t waste time with irrelevant questions, and they didn’t overlook a single crucial detail or possibility as they assessed risks, probabilities, and options. They were expert thinkers in this arena, all having served professionally as part of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team, which is now housed under the Department of Health and Human Services. Their experience and expertise came from working together in crisis situations, such as the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Some of their expertise had to do with their medical background and training, but their experience also came from having to think through emergency situations; to work effectively with ambiguous, inconsistent, and incomplete information; to make the best possible judgments given the circumstances; and to plan effectively under time pressures.
An expert in any field learns to organize and group information around principles. That allows the expert to quickly draw information when he or she needs it. Doctors see a symptom, scan through a database in their heads, and ask a series of questions to quickly winnow down the possible causes. Peyton Manning can scan a football field, see opportunities and risks, and make snap decisions with great success. A novice organizes information in a more random and error-prone fashion. By putting a thinking model in your head, you are organizing important steps and information, which helps you learn more quickly and efficiently. A model, like a recipe, helps you see the ingredients and steps for success. So, let’s look at five steps of a model that can become a valuable part of your own thinking.
Five Steps to New Thinking
1. Stop and Think
After David Bellon listened to Kevin Jarrard’s proposal, he walked back to the base, which took about an hour. He thought about Kevin—was he on his game? He thought about Dr. Nadeau and the expertise he brought to the situation, their mission in Haditha, and his and Mark’s dream of moral certainty for their soldiers. He processed and he reflected in the solitude of the night. By the time he arrived at the base, he had sized up the situation, knew what his next steps would be, and anticipated that his role would be one of strategy and influence with higher command.
Janet Jarrard, Kevin’s aunt back in Tennessee, was a PR specialist. But she was faced with an unusual conundrum. She needed to solicit funds to finance the transportation of Amenah, her mother, an extraction team, as well as a female escort. But she couldn’t use any of the best tools of public relations. She couldn’t initiate a media event able to garner attention and funds, nor could she use any of the latest social media tools, all of which could make her task far easier. If word got out too soon, Amenah and her mother might never make it out of Iraq. Their lives would be at risk. She’d also been asked to organize the medical extraction team and help find a female escort for the mother and sick child. So Janet had to pause and consider possibilities. It was all daunting, and some of it was a little over her head. What could she do? How could she go about all of this, yet do it in the quietest and most effective way possible?
When faced with the impossible, it’s often best to start with the small steps of what is possible. Once she weighed her options, a quiet e-mail flurry to all her friends and acquaintances seemed the only real way to start a grassroots fire able to sweep in funds and solicit help with the harder parts of the mission. In time, the pieces began to fall into place. Her friend Lisa Van Wye, a nurse from Bowling Green, Kentucky, offered to be the female escort from Jordan to the states. Deanna Dolan, of World Relief, rounded up an interpreter and led Janet to the Bergers, who offered their home as a place to stay, while the Grace Chapel Church in Lieper’s Fork, Tennessee, started to help gather funds. And, pivotal to the most daunting task of all, Jonathan Malloch got in touch with her and said, “What can I do?” That completed the missing parts of the puzzle as the impossible, in the way of such miracles, started to look pretty darn doable.
Being able to stop and think is a reflective skill; it is the ability to stop and figure out what type of thinking skill you need at this point in time. When you do this, you are actively taking control of your thinking. The situation might be
life changing, an unproductive debate with your teenager, a problem at work, or an entrepreneurial opportunity. The situation does not matter—the process remains the same. You stop and think about your thinking so that you can apply the correct strategy for the situation. Here are a few simple, but essential reflective questions to ask yourself:
• What is going on here (or with me)? Stop and define the situation and gauge your feelings. Notice that the first step for both Lieutenant Colonel Bellon and Gary White was to “size up the situation.”
• What am I (are we) trying to accomplish? Stop and define your purpose or goal. Keeping your purpose, goal, or dream at the forefront prevents derailment and keeps feelings in check.
• What type of situation is this? Stop and figure out if it is urgent or important. Most situations are not urgent or extremely important. When they are, you want to be ready to apply your thinking skills. When they aren’t, you don’t want to waste energy by treating them like they are.
• Do I need to know more? Determine if you need more information to answer what (facts), when, why (the context), or how (process) questions. Do you need more information to determine if there is a need to plan, to monitor, or to evaluate?
Now You're Thinking!: Change Your Thinking...Revolutionize Your Career...Transform Your Life Page 6