How Can You Gain Control of Your Emotional Brain?

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Have you ever decided to focus at work and one hour later, you end up responding to your Facebook comments?

Or have you ever thought to follow a diet and end up eating all the ice cream in the fridge?

Or do you get ignored by your crush and decide to send an angry text to him/her? Then the next morning, you feel embarrassed.

We’ve all been there.

We’ve all been in a situation where we knew the right thing to do, and yet, we lacked the self-control to do it.

Before we can discuss a solution, we must understand the problem — our brain dynamics.

Rational Brain vs Emotional Brain

Wikimedia

Our brain is divided into three major parts.

Let’s talk about the two parts of the brain for now: the rational brain and the emotional brain.

From an evolutionary standpoint, the emotional brain is the oldest part. It is very important for our survival.

The rational brain is the newest part. It handles cognition and language.

The problem isn’t that we don’t know what to do. It’s our belief system — we believe we can do the right thing even when we’re in the wrong environment.

• We believe we should be able to focus on our work when our FB notifications are turned on.
• We believe that we should be able to see how happy our ex is on Instagram without becoming annoyed.
• We believe that we should be able to keep ice cream in the fridge without eating it.

We should. However, we do not.

Unfortunately, our brains weren’t built for rationality. Our brains were evolved to create order and certainty.

The rational brain is relatively weak. It can function well only when it is not competing with the emotional brain, i.e. when there are no emotional triggers from the outside environment.

The good news is we can control these emotional triggers.

• Buy only healthy foods in the grocery store. So, you don’t have unhealthy foods at your home in the first place
• Unfollow your ex on Instagram.
• Put your smartphone in the next room while working.

The solution is simple:

You hack your environment so that your emotional self is not activated. So, the rational self will win by design.

The best things in life are paradoxes — only if we accept that we have less self-control in these situations, we will be able to control these situations.

Good luck!

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