Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High

98 CRUCIAL CONVERSATIONS

begs the question: What's causing Maria's feelings in the first

place?

Is it Louis's behavior? As was the case with the nacho-mother­

in-law, did Louis make Maria feel insulted and hurt? Maria

heard and saw Louis do something, she generated an emotion,

and then she acted out her feelings-using forms of masking and

avoiding.

So here's the big question: What happens between Louis act­

ing and Maria feeling? Is there an intermediate step that turns

someone else's actions into our feelings? If not, then it has to be

true that others make us feel the way we do.

Stories Create Feelings

As it turns out, there is an intermediate step between what oth­
ers do and how we feel. That's why, when faced with the same
circumstances, ten people may have ten different emotional
responses. For instance, with a coworker like Louis, some might
feel insulted whereas others merely feel curious. Some become
angry and others feel concern or even sympathy.
What is this intermediate step? Just after we observe what
others do and just before we feel some emotion about it, we tell
ourselves a story. That is, we add meaning to the action we
observed. To the simple behavior we add motive. Why were they
doing that? We also add judgment-is that good or bad? And
then, based on these thoughts or stories, our body responds with
an emotion.
Pictorially it looks like the model in Figure 6-2. We call this
model our Path to Action because it explains how emotions,
thoughts, and experiences lead to our actions.
You'll note that we've added telling a story to our model. We
observe, we tell a story, and then we feel. Although this addition
complicates things a bit, it also gives us hope. Since we and only