You’ve probably heard that old saying:
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Whether it’s attributed to Maya Angelou or a leader in the Mormon church isn’t all that important. What is important is that any time spent working with others—whether in a personal or business setting—will quickly validate it.
(Ir)rationality and Relationships
Feelings are important. Furthermore, feelings are efficacious—meaning they make things happen. We may think we act based on logic—reasons, evidence, and all that. But it’s been well documented in the psychological research that we tend to make a lot of decisions based on how we feel—only to rationalize them after the fact. And many times we do so quickly and unconsciously.
Relationships are at the core of life. How your relationships go dictates how well things go for you, period. And the single most important factor in the health of your relationships is how the other party in each relationship feels about you.
And for those who insist that they don’t have relationships with others, and (for some reason) don’t need them—you’re still not exempt. We each have a relationship with ourselves. It sounds weird, but it’s absolutely real.
We all engage in self-talk to some degree. We all have (or lack) a level of trust in ourselves. We all feel certain ways about ourselves. So ensuring that those feelings are both positive and strong will go a long way toward improving your life—even if it’s just you by your lonesome.
The Method In a Nutshell
The great thing about working with feelings is that you don’t have to go through any kind of process to get started. Feelings are everywhere. Every interaction you have with someone—or even just sitting by yourself—feelings are there. Sometimes they are front and center; other times they are lurking in the background—though they’re still very much pulling the strings.
Effectively working with feelings is as simple as a 5-step process. It’s one you can repeat over and over again.
- Validate
- Investigate
- Extrapolate
- Integrate
- Create
Do these 5 things, and watch the depth and quality of your relationships improve. The result is a much better return on your investment of time and effort. You’ll always be able to leverage those strong and deep relationships to help you achieve your goals.
Validate
All feelings are valid. You can’t get anywhere in any relationship until you acknowledge this principle and act accordingly. You need to make sure that you validate whatever the other party is feeling, and that they see that.
This is where we so often get tripped up. We may think that there’s no reason for the person to feel the way they do. And that may be true. But that doesn’t mean that the feeling isn’t there.
Acknowledge the feeling. Make sure the other party feels acknowledged. And use the validity of that feeling as the starting point of what comes next.
Investigate
Once you’ve validated the feeling, it’s time to find out what’s driving it.
Keep in mind that what someone says is driving their feeling may not actually be what’s behind it. We’re often mistaken about why we feel the way we feel. Sometimes the thing we think incited our rage would normally not even get any kind of rise out of us. But some other background tension already had us ready to boil over.
The best way to get to the bottom of why someone feels a certain way is to ask questions. But the seemingly obvious questions (like why do you feel this way?) rarely work. You have to come at things from the side door—so to speak. Here are some things to poke around at:
- what’s been happening in the past few days?
- how have you been sleeping lately?
- are you looking forward to anything?
In general, you want to understand the emotional landscape at work. If nothing else, that will help to foster a much more informative conversation in general. But gather as much indirect information as you can.
Extrapolate
Perhaps you do understand why someone is feeling a certain strong way. You have a picture of the past—which has gotten you to the present. And that’s great.
If that feeling is a barrier to getting somewhere valuable, then you need to unpack the present and future. Namely, there’s a strong feeling at work. What is it doing? Where is it going—or threatening to take people?
The thing about feelings is that they’re often symbiotic with desires. We have desires, and when those desires get thwarted (or we sense they will), we develop negative emotions. The stronger the desire, the stronger the negative emotion. The same holds true for desires that get fulfilled. A desire fulfilled is the foundation of positive feelings. And the stronger the desire, the strong the feelings.
Perhaps the most important work we can do is to get clear on what desire is linked up with the feeling in question. There may actually be a few interconnected desires at work. And some may even be competing with each other. All this needs to be unpacked.
Furthermore, desires are supported by two other things: beliefs and values. What we believe and what we value can help create desires, but they can also threaten our desires. And what others believe and what they value can threaten our own desires—and vice versa. When we sense that, emotions can flare up.
Integrate
Knowing feelings is half the battle. The other half of the battle is being able to work with them. And I use the word with here because you can’t work against feelings.
People like to think that somehow facts trump feelings, but I think experience shows us otherwise. People’s feelings are powerful enough to force them into wild goose chases for data to support the conclusions they’ve become emotionally invested in. The human mind is resourceful that way.
Again, don’t work against feelings. Work with them. Harness them. Integrate them into the action. Integrate the feelings with facts and other feelings.
If people are angry, and you’ve found out what’s at the root of it, the next task is to find out if that anger can be productive. It might be. But it also might just need to dissipate. And at that point, you need to integrate that anger— and the desires, values, and beliefs at the root of it with other values, desires, and beliefs that will help the anger dissipate.
This isn’t actually a new suggestion. People do it all the time. They appeal to shared desires and values to get people in a fight to stand down. People use terms like “we” and “our” to appeal to the inherent desire to belong that each human has deep within. And that’s just one example.
Create
After validating, investigating, extrapolating, and integrating, it’s time to create. It’s time to take those newly integrated feelings and get them creating.
From an acknowledged and well understood feeling, we can form a belief and plan for action. And with the power of that refined old feeling, or the newly-formed one, we can move forward.
And the great thing about feelings is that they’re the most efficient fuel for consistent and persistent action. Feelings motivate more effectively than any fact or enticement. When we feel strongly enough, we act. And as long as we keep feeling, we keep acting.
Iterate
Whatever you do, just remember that however much we want to be “facts-first” people, it’s a fantasy. We are and always have been “feelings-first” people. If I were to make an evolutionary argument, I’d say that we have feelings because natural selection proved them to be advantageous. Feelings—when appropriately harnessed—got us as far as we’ve gotten as a species.
And yes, facts and reasoning have their place, but that place is not the forefront. They may be at the conscious forefront, but they are not the stars of the show—merely great supporting actors.
We feel first, and reason second—though a close second. Understand this, see it in others, and learn how to work with that fact—not against it. Boy will things be a lot easier for you when you do.
Feel better now? 😉