Chapter I:  The Behavior Chain

Thoughts: The Crown of the Tree

I wonder when it first occurs to us, that we might be able to exercise some control over our lives. Maybe it’s when we first feel a want, like hunger, and are aware of an intention to capture our parent’s attention and gain their response on our behalf. Maybe it’s a little later, when we first set a goal, such as winning a game, gaining the attention of someone special, or making good enough grades to receive some cherished reward. The act of setting out in a certain direction and pursuing that path of action is what I call intentional living, and it’s notably difficult to sustain. History is littered with examples of people who started out bound for one place, and wound up quite somewhere else- Columbus comes to mind. My personal history, and probably yours as well, offers a number of illustrations of detours, roadblocks, flat tires and other breakdowns, and a few cherished examples of destinations reached, as well.

There are at least three ways our intentions can go astray and fail to be fulfilled. The first is that they may prove inappropriate, wrong in some way, or simply not in our best interest. In those cases, we benefit from exercising flexibility and making adjustments, rather than stubbornly pursuing the path first chosen. Secondly, we can simply fail to fulfill our intentions through laziness, weakness, lack of skill or will, poor planning, or a host of other failings. Here, motivational improvements, skill practice, strengthened faith, a gain in persistence, and other increases in ability can solve the problem. The final source of failure in achieving intention is that the intention itself is flawed by a blindness or distortion in our understanding, a failure in the thought process that led us to set that intention. In each of these cases, a fuller comprehension of the chain of behavior – thought, emotion, action, and consequence – can increase the likelihood of successful intentional living.

It all starts with your thoughts. That chain of behavior, that flow that ends up with consequences, both wanted and unwanted, begins with that voice in your head. Suppose this morning I thought when I first woke and looked over at my husband, “What a jerk- he didn’t fix the faucet, and it leaks all over; and he didn’t clean up the spa- and he knows people are coming to look at the house this morning!” You can imagine the behavioral flow from there, easy to predict, and not pretty. But suppose, on the other hand, I had thought upon first looking at him this morning, “How lucky I am to have a husband at this age, when many women are alone. How fortunate I am that he’s cheerful, easy-going, and friendly to everybody- he keeps me from biting people’s heads off over every little thing.” The chain of behavior – emotions, actions, and consequences, flowing from that line of thinking is very different indeed. Both thought patterns would have been at least partially true- truth is often a complex thing. But the series of events they stimulate are as divergent as possible.

Even though these thought patterns are so different as to be contradictory, nevertheless they have a kind of unity because they come from the complexity of my personality and of our marital relationship. Whichever thoughts are foremost in my awareness at any given time, those are the thoughts that bring about the sequential events of emotion, behavior, and consequences. Usually, we act as if those thoughts we are aware of are true and inevitable, when really, they are simply an alternative to many other perspectives on reality. As we learn to increase control over the nature of our thoughts, one of the goals of this book, we see that there is nothing inevitable about the way we have been used to thinking.

I just referred to a chain of events that thoughts stimulate. It’s really more like a flowing river of events, each part following and growing from the earlier ones; the thought, the emotion that thought gives rise to, the logical behavior that follows, and the consequences of that behavior. If it’s true, as I believe, that thoughts produce the emotions that produce behaviors that result in consequences, how is it that we fail to exercise control over our thoughts, so that we obtain the consequences we desire? Why, when I could as easily think something positive and productive, do I think something negative and destructive instead? Perversity, possibly, but more likely than not, ignorance and laziness.  Even though those words are not flattering, they are hopeful, because both those limiting aspects of my thinking pattern can be countered and improved. I can become more conscious of the influences on my thought patterns, and can more often take care to encourage the uplifting thoughts and discourage the negative ones. And I can learn to more often reason, wish, and will my way out of the boxes of limited thinking inherited from my background. It’s not a new problem, certainly. St. Paul said “the things that I would do, I do not, and the things I would not do, those I do..” (Romans 7:15) In your moments of honesty, I’m sure you see similar behaviors-and causative thoughts- in your own life.

So, if the goal is to gain more control over our rather automatic thought patterns, we can begin by figuring out why they are the way they are. The influences on thought are several, and begin early. We are passive recipients of some, active developers of others, and, unless we understand their origin, influence, and limits, we are victims of them all.

There’s no great mystery about the list of influences; it’s simply what makes you unique- what makes you you. Start with your gender; given at birth, and for nearly everyone, invariable throughout life. It interacts with culture to create expectations and roles which produce predictable thought patterns, which may or may not be true or useful. Add personality style, which shapes your interests, goals, and communication patterns, mix in your age with all its possibilities and limitations, and you’ll see why I’ve chosen the intricate crown of the tree, with all its complexity, as the metaphor for thought. And I haven’t mentioned religious affiliation and understanding, the powerful factors of race, ethnicity, culture, education, work background and all the other distinctions in life experience that mold an individual’s thoughts into a truly unique expression. Then review the impact of your close friendships, the influence of media, as well as your family structure and travel history, and you begin to see why your thoughts are as unique as they are. Individual to the extreme, each person’s background has shaped his or her thought patterns so distinctively that it’s a wonder we are able to communicate with others at all.

But this isn’t an exploration of interpersonal communication; it’s a journey to discover what makes the flow of our behavior the way it is, and how we might begin to alter it so that we are more likely to experience desirable consequences more of the time, or at least, the consequences we intended. So what happens next in the chain of behavior? Those thoughts we experience produce emotions within us, strong feelings that we experience as inevitable, even though they’re not.

Emotions- High trunk, “Crotch” of the Tree

One disturbing conversation I had with a dear friend will illustrate how thought creates emotion rather automatically, with potentially destructive results. She and I had often talked about retiring to some comfortable, interesting place after all our family and work responsibilities were lessened. We dreamed about attending concerts and art shows, relaxing over leisurely lunches, and exploring new horizons from a pleasant perch. I was startled, therefore, when she announced one day that she had purchased retirement property in a northern Mexico coastal town. I hadn’t even known she was looking! My thoughts were of abandonment, desertion of me, and of our dream retirement. The emotions which arose from these thoughts were fear and anger. How could she? Without as much as a word? What will I do? How can I face a lonely old age? And so on, and on. A reality check would have told me that I already have a house in Mexico, and a husband to share it with, as well as other friends. But still, I wanted to be part of her planning. Amazing, how strong my need for security must be, that I seem to need well-buttressed back up plans! Retirement planning is a major life event, yes, but the fears triggered by this surprising news from my friend indicated some deep-seated insecurity that I must face, armed with facts, not just emotions.

Much less important events, even trivial ones, can also lead to inappropriate and dangerous emotions when the thoughts that trigger them are not checked for accuracy. I was nearly finished swimming my daily laps when two piano students showed up with their dad, a bit early, I thought. The patio clock said I had a few more minutes, enough to have finished and changed back into proper piano-teacher clothes. My thoughts were about the minutes I thought I had left, and my emotions were about distress at the “invasion of privacy”, resentment, or at least regret, that my carefully scripted day with ample exercise time was being wrested from my control, and a bit of anger over the lack of consideration I perceived. Had I done the needed accuracy check, I would have known my patio clock was wrong, and I was the rude one, not ready for the lessons. Those churning emotions were not only “overkill”, they were completely off target- a response to a slight that did not exist, except in my thoughts.

As long ago as I can remember, my thoughts have generated emotions which have then produced behaviors which created consequences that  may not have been what I wanted. Sometimes the result has been just the opposite of what I wanted! One silly example happened at high school graduation. Partly because it was a small class in a new school, and partly because I worked hard, I was valedictorian, and got to give a little speech to the graduates and their families. My typical teenage insecurities got the better of me, and I decided I didn’t look good enough to be in the spotlight, and that a deep tan would help a lot. Only I fell asleep under the tanning lamp, and had a burn that led to three peeling layers of skin on my face. I still wonder if those in the audience wondered the whole time, based on the evidence before them, whether I really was that smart after all! I’m sure they didn’t listen to the speech I had so carefully crafted, since my multicolored face was much more entertaining. The emotional insecurity that arose from my thoughts of inadequacy led to a dangerous behavior which produced consequences I still am embarrassed by, so many years later.

Behaviors- the trunk of the tree

Our thoughts produce emotions, and, responding to the force of those emotions, we act in ways that we hope will satisfy our needs. This is the first “public” piece of the behavior chain, because everyone around is a witness to our actions. Behaviors are solid, visible, additive, and “real”, observable in ways that thoughts and emotions are not. So it’s little wonder that behaviors are what others react to – after all, they can’t see your emotions, or share your thoughts. Rather, if they think about your thoughts and emotions at all, they deduce from your behavior what those must have been, using their own experience as a model. There’s a serious flaw in this reasoning, of course, because their thoughts which lead to their emotions and behaviors are unique to them, a result of their particular experience and interpretations, naturally different from yours. So, their inference, their deduction, about the causes of your behavior may be quite a ways off the mark, and is never exactly right. Nevertheless, your behavior is there for all to see, and that’s the objective reality everyone else responds to.

It isn’t quite that simple, of course, since all observers see something a bit different, as any sociologist or psychologist will tell you. You know how witnesses at an accident scene all describe something unique? Well, it isn’t the accident that causes that, but the perceptual filters we all have, and the stereotypes we all use to fill in the blanks when we observe something in part, and then speak of it as if we have observed it in its entirety. Nevertheless, there’s far more agreement on someone’s behavior than there is on his or her contributing emotions and thoughts, and it’s the behavior that is judged by society, using standards that are usually conditioned by time and place.

If you take an isolated piece of behavior, you can see how dangerous this can be. One day while walking in a field in Ethiopia with my baby on my back, I suddenly turned and struck out at some small children following me. Now, anyone seeing that behavior might conclude that I was deranged, or vicious, or racist. Really, I am not in the habit of striking small children! These kids were pulling out my baby’s blond hair as souvenirs, and I had failed to convince them to stop with my limited language skills, and so, frustrated, I took a more direct route to protect my child. Not noble, perhaps, but definitely understandable. How many times have you felt the need to explain a behavior of yours that looked compromising? Wouldn’t it be helpful if others understood our contributing thoughts and emotions? But they can’t and they don’t, so the need to guard our behavior is ever present, for it is our outer self to the world, and the quality of our life very much depends of the world’s interpretation of and reaction to our behavior.

That interpretation, as I’ve said, is bound by place and time. If someone stood on a street corner in a small American town and beat himself about the head and shoulders with a whip, people would call the police, or mental health professionals, to stop him from hurting himself and frightening others. If the same behavior took place in Europe in the Middle Ages, passersby would give the person alms, for he was a “scapegoat”, taking on, and bearing the punishment for, the sins of others by his flagellation. So the behaviors, although similar, would have vastly different interpretations - and consequences- in the two cases.

Consequences- Where the trunk meets the ground

Consequences are the place where our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors meet the common ground of the world – our interactive life. It is the place where the trunk meets the soil, in the metaphor of the tree of life. Here, the contrast between the automatic life and the intentional life is most telling. Here, we reap what we have sown; others respond to what they see in us, not knowing the struggles we have made to direct the chain of behavior, only seeing the action that results from that struggle won or lost.

Let’s take an oversimplified illustration to start. Kirsten thinks she should meet some new people after her breakup with her long-term boyfriend. She thinks she’s fairly attractive, maybe a few pounds too heavy, and more than a little too critical, but possessed of high standards, several good friends, and an admirable work record.  These positive facts lead to thoughts of competence and emotions of pride. However, because of the breakup and her role in it, she also experiences the emotions of regret, fear, loneliness, and anxiety. So, determined to find other single people, she seeks out a likely forum. Depending on which set of thoughts and related emotions is strongest in her at the moment, the self-accepting or the self-punishing, she will behave quite differently, perhaps even choosing sites as different as a bar or a church for her search, and behave with confidence, or with timidity and carelessness. The consequences to her- the types of people she meets and the way they evaluate and treat her- are largely dependent on these choices her thoughts and emotions give rise to. Her presence and projected self image are part of what might be called a self-fulfilling prophecy. When she thinks, feels, and acts confident and proud, the responses she receives from others are vastly different from those she receives when she thinks, feels, and acts sad, anxious, and guilty.

Let’s take an even simpler illustration. I step into my aunt’s house unexpected, and knock against the kitchen door to announce my presence. Lost in thought, she jumps, and turns quickly with a fearful, startled look on her face. At once, I’ll say “It’s only me”, or something like that, to help her change whatever thought led to the emotion of fear, and the startle reaction. It’s really not me she’s afraid of at all, but the invading stranger in her anxious imagination. The fearful, startled behavior would have led a stranger to judge her as unfriendly or unduly timid, a consequence unfair to her and her relationships.

The consequences we experience are our motivators to make changes, if those consequences are not as we expect or want.  If my aunt didn’t like being thought of as fearful, skittish, and stand-offish, she would want to change her easily startled behavior, with its frightened look and quick tremor or backing off. It’s not so easy to change our behaviors, however, as we all know from the many times we’ve tried to lose weight, or ease up on drinking, or change our patterns of friendship, our work habits, or other comfortable, familiar ways of living. Making changes in behavior requires analyzing the underlying emotion, and the thought that causes that emotion to have such a firm grip on us, and then consciously working to alter that thought pattern. Such a change is difficult, threatening, complex, and exhausting. To navigate it successfully, we need some solid support, and I like to think of that support as our tree’s root system, nourishing us and keeping us stable in the face of the winds of change.

The Root System – Stability and Nourishment

Most trees have a branching root system that includes dozens, or hundreds, of roots and rootlets of varying length and diameter. For our simplified Tree of Life model, however, we can concentrate on just three major roots and their auxiliaries. The taproot in this model, the major source of nourishment, is the person’s faith. The side-branching roots which provide stability are friends and family, and to a lesser extent for most, mentors and guides. With these simple concepts of support, we can draw on the strength to negotiate the needed changes in our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, so that we more often reap the consequences we desire.

Think of a time when were experiencing a set of circumstances that seemed unfair, when you might even have felt misunderstood and persecuted. How did you survive that time? Knowing, as we do, that the circumstances you found yourself in were consequences, at least in part, of others’ perception of your behavior and their inference of your emotions, thoughts, and beliefs, and knowing that those perceptions are often erroneous, it’s quite possible to be misunderstood, unfairly accused, and even hated for reasons over which we have no control. The urge to defend ourselves, to fight back, even to counterattack, is strong and, I’m learning, counterproductive. Better to rest in faith, to draw nourishment from our deepest beliefs, and to know that this, too, shall pass.

I’ve been reading from the Old Testament Book of Job lately, just because it’s where I am in the discipline of reading the whole Bible once more from beginning to end. Job is a hard one for me, especially since it reminds me that at one time I experienced a somewhat similar circumstance in my own life, but his faith gets him through the loss of everything he has held dear, and it did for me also. When has your faith carried you? It’s when despair threatens, when consequences are their most unfair, when it seems that justice is a mockery. Yet we emerge on the other side of such an experience still standing, recognizing how essential to survival our taproot of faith is in this life.

I’ve named the lateral roots for friends and family, and also, for some, for mentors and guides. These are the sources of stability; the models, caretakers, nurturers, and cheerleaders who surround us all our lives long, whose voices we only sometimes hear, but whose encouragement is available and whose support is critical to us, especially when we are working to change our chain of behavior in order to reap more fulfilling consequences.

Have you ever spoken your struggle to a caring family member or friend, and found wisdom, love, and hope right there for you?  It’s a true blessing, and many of us have found it just when we needed it most. Other times, it’s a mentor, teacher, or guide who says the word that reframes our problem into something we can handle differently and more effectively. I know I’ve experienced that sort of thing often enough I should spend much more of my time expressing gratitude than I do! Particularly during times of change, when the wind seems to be blowing us over and threatening our very survival, these roots of stability, friends, family, and mentors, act to keep us in the place where we can continue to grow, and eventually, to bear fruit.

The Fruits of the Behavior Chain

Our family spent a couple of decades, all told, in the agriculturally rich central California valley. When I had the opportunity to write about the area surrounding Fresno, located near the middle of that valley, I was so impressed with the fertility, the diversity of produce, the significance of the fields and rows of crops all around the city, that only poetic expression seemed to do it justice. I wrote in Fresno, Valley of Abundance,

            Imagine a valley so vast that it stretches from the sun-browned coastal

            mountains to the snowy Sierra peaks, a valley with gold, and black gold,

            and the white gold of cotton as well. Imagine a place where business starts

            with agribusiness,…where culture starts with agriculture and transcends the

            human condition in myriad forms of beauty and delight, echoing the rhythms

            and patterns of the seasons and the soil. Several nations in one, several regions

            coexisting peacefully, citrus and grapes, nuts and melons, figs and potatoes,

            snow peas and corn; the productivity of the ever fertile valley and of its

            earnest, hardworking people is a legend of our time.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about fruitfulness, and offering in my seminars, some ideas about how to best leave a legacy of worth. Obviously, fruit comes most readily to healthy stock, so our Tree of Life model encourages us to focus on attaining and maintaining health, physical, mental, and spiritual. Further, fruit comes in the variety suited to the individual type of tree, so we can avoid inappropriate jealousy over not bearing the kind of fruit others can bear. I would love to paint like Rothko, design beautiful buildings like Gehry, sing like Streisand, or found a wonderful university like the Stanford’s. However, the evidence of my life tells me that those fruits are not my gifts to give the world. I need to examine, instead, what kind of mark I am meant to leave in the two major arenas of life, Freud’s love and work duality, and then consider how best to order my thoughts, emotions, and behaviors so that those fruits are the consequences of my life. We do leave a legacy, for good or ill, and it may be fleeting or enduring. The choices we make about our thoughts, and the resulting emotionally-driven behaviors have, as we’ve seen, consequences, and some of those consequences are long-lasting.

The more temporary type of consequence is often referred to as influence, the shaping we do of other’s thoughts and their consequent emotions and behaviors. But, although we might take much pride in our persuasive abilities and our influence, it’s an indirect legacy at best.  The more enduring of those consequences are what we leave as our legacy, the changes we have direct responsibility for in the environments we’ve touched, leaving them either better or worse off for our having passed through. Those environments include of course the people whose lives we’ve touched, as well as the financial, physical, and other manifestations of our life’s work.

What kind of fruit would you like to be known for? What kind of legacy in the worlds of love and work would you find it most satisfying to leave? These are the questions to ponder, and the answers to these questions will motivate us toward growth and improvement more powerfully than any other kinds of consequences.

To summarize this abbreviated version of the Tree of Life model, the leafy crown of the tree represents our thoughts. They may be scattered, seemingly unrelated, but our personal history holds them together, as the branches do the leaves of a tree, for our life experience is the source of these thoughts and ideas. That experience is all of a piece, one whole, even though it may seem that the various “branches”, such as our education and our gender, are unrelated. Just one example will show how the integration of the varied components of our experience works. There are many studies that demonstrate the effect of a student’s gender on the way teachers treat that student in class, from early elementary school right through college and graduate school. So, a person’s educational experience is influenced by his or her gender.  Conversely, gender still, even in this enlightened age, shapes the educational choices of many young people, as any count of males and females in engineering or nursing school will illustrate. Education then, not only is at times influenced by gender, but gender at times influences education.  Like this example, all the branches are interrelated to a greater or lesser extent. So, our thoughts come from the many distinctive but interactive aspects of our life’s experience, inborn and acquired, and these interrelated aspects mingle to produce our individual knowledge, values, ideas, concepts, and ordinary, everyday thoughts.

Thoughts then produce emotions. Rather than the famous “I think, therefore I am”, I’d say, “ I think, therefore I feel”. If I think, “That car is going to hit me!”, I likely will feel fear. If I think, “That’s a beautiful sunset!”, I likely will feel relaxed and grateful. If I think, “I’m so pleased that my grandchild can sing so well”, I’ll feel pride and enjoyment. Usually there’s not much time lost between the thought and the emotion; it’s almost simultaneous. The emotion may be faint or it may be strong; it may or may not occur in combination with other recognizable emotions. Nearly always, though, it seems natural, right, unarguable, and undeniable.

There’s a quiz I often used in seminars to help people understand and gain control over the emotion of anger.(Cit.) What I particularly liked about this instrument was its ability to separate the thought from the emotion and both of those from the action. By looking at the pieces of the behavioral chain separately, people can begin to apply the analysis to other emotions, finding their root causes in thoughts, sometimes thoughts they were not aware of generating.  This ability of thoughts to appear unsolicited gives them an aura of reality and unassailable truth, but they are just products of what we’ve learned, who we are, and where we’ve been, nothing more. Because of the power we attribute to thought, we experience the emotion it causes as natural and powerful. It incites us to an action that supports it and carries it forward into interaction with others.

By the term action I mean to include everything that is observable behavior; from the slightest change in facial expression to the pirouette of a trained ballerina, from freezing in place to striking out in anger. When someone asks, “What did you do?” the answer you give describes your action.  Thoughts, no matter how beautiful or brutal, don’t by themselves change anything. Emotions, no matter how powerful or painful, don’t by themselves create a new reality. But when these are translated into action, the world takes notice, lives are altered, and history is written. The behavioral chain, originating in the experience that shapes the thought, gaining motivating power in the emotion, now becomes an action that takes place in time and space, taking an individual step toward the future, and that future includes others who will respond in some way to this movement.

And so, in the final process of the behavioral chain, action meets reaction, in the form of consequences. Because we operate within  systems, whether family, community, class, marriage, or any other, action of one part of the system necessitates reaction of another part and adjustment of the whole. As Susan Page has pointed out in her excellent book on marital interaction, one partner can change the relationship, simply by doing something different, requiring a different reaction. (How One of You can Bring the Two of You Together, Broadway Books, 1997) In a simpler format, I’ve often taught in communication seminars that those who experience repetitive arguments (you know, the ones where you might as well plug in the tape and go bowling because you know what you’re both going to say anyway) could change that by simply listening and responding to assure that listening is happening. People repeat themselves because they don’t feel heard, so it stands to reason that if they feel heard, they will stop repeating and go on to new territory in the conversation, which could be a lot more fulfilling!

However, if we’re trapped in our old unproductive thought patterns, experiencing yet again our painful emotions, and acting in predictable ways that bring about irritated responses from another, fulfillment is unlikely. Because it all starts with our thoughts, that’s where the changes can be made which will bring about a new, different, and just possibly, much better behavioral chain. And, because this change requires wrestling with your personal history, which is a daunting prospect, the supporting and nourishing root system of faith, family, and friends will be essential to your success.

Here’s where doing some spadework will pay off. You might think of it as tending your tree’s garden. If you have living family members of an older generation, or even siblings,  you might benefit from some discussions about “long ago” in the life of the family, to give you some insight about where some of your early thoughts and beliefs originated. For example, if you find yourself disturbed about your occasional lack of sensitivity, even harsh judgments, you make about people of a different ethnic group, you might ask a parent or an aunt to talk about the old days, and who was in the neighborhood, and when and how that changed, and how they felt about the changes. You may gain important insights from such a conversation. There’s no need to be confrontational; you’re just mining history for information, and they may very well appreciate the chance to talk about an important part of their own lives. In a conversation much like this, I was surprised to find that my older relative led the way in discussing how the fear experienced then proved to be groundless and how relationships among the groups have changed for the better over the years. Whether there’s an enlightened attitude expressed or not, you’ll still gain an idea of the origin of some of your thoughts, and you may strengthen the familial relationship in the bargain. Be gentle with them and their memories, and be gentle with yourself as you explore the origins of your thoughts, which then shape everything else in your history. You are embarking on a journey to take a more intentional path to the future by gaining understanding, and ultimately, more control, over your thoughts.