How to take control of emotions

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

An excerpt from Takashi Tsukiyama's book on why we need unpleasant things and how working with memories can help us feel better.

1. "Risk-control" over emotions, which gives the brain stability

Try to reduce the number of negative incentives

We cannot voluntarily stop the generation of emotions in the brain. Unpleasant things seem to us unpleasant, tedious - tiresome. An effective way to control emotions is to try to control not them, but the stimuli that generate them. This technique can be divided into two approaches:

• Quantitatively control the stimuli that generate emotion.
• Change the interpretation of information "loaded" in the brain (memories).

Let's talk about the first option first.

There are two aspects to the problem of controlling the stimuli that elicit our emotions. Firstly, it is a balance between pleasant and unpleasant impulses, and secondly, between weak and strong.

Quantitative incentive control involves two things. The first is to achieve a balance between pleasant and unpleasant, the second is to regulate the strength of the impact.

If something very unpleasant or annoying lasts too long, you need to reduce the amount. But we do not always have the physical ability to do this: sometimes we have to do some important, albeit unpleasant work, sometimes - to communicate with people who we do not like at all.

In such cases, it is important to “somewhat” reduce the number of disincentives.

When you have a lot of things to do that you are reluctant to do and don't like, you need to include in the schedule something else that you enjoy.

When you are working hard or studying and having a hard time, plan something very enjoyable at the end of the day.

The uninspiring stimuli will not go away from this, but in the long run, the balance between pleasant and unpleasant will be struck, and the brain will not suffer from an excess of negative emotions. And this will have a good effect on motivation and activity.

"Very unpleasant" plus "very pleasant" does not equal balance

Remember that balancing strong and weak stimuli is very important in controlling emotions.

From a mathematical point of view, if something very pleasant is followed by something very pleasant, you get zero, that is, balance. But in the case of the brain, this logic does not work.

If something particularly unpleasant is constantly interspersed with something very pleasant (or vice versa), this can lead to a tangible emotional buildup and loss of balance. As a result, it will become more difficult for you to reason in cold blood, you will be "carried away" to extremes.

To avoid this, after a lesson that evokes strong emotions, you need to start quiet work or study, which almost does not affect any feelings.

This emotional “risk-control” is a useful skill for modern people living in an era when emotional stimuli are plentiful. You can even train yourself to do it all the time in order to stabilize the brain.

Emotional Control as a Balanced 6: 3: 1 Ratio

Emotional stimuli are best distributed in a 6 to 3 to 1 ratio.

I propose to build your plans so that 6 of them are “pleasant, preferable” (here include what you don’t want to do, but useful for your future, and what you are neutral about), 3 - “a little unpleasant, a little troublesome "and 1 -" something very unpleasant and very troublesome."

You might think that ideally for emotional “risk-control” you need to further reduce the amount of unpleasant, and bring the pleasant as close to 10, but from the point of view of the brain, this is a bad idea.

The brain seeks to minimize labor costs

I think you have heard about this phenomenon: among the working ants there is always some part that does nothing. If you remove them and leave only those who do not shirk, then after some time some of them will also stop working. The brain has a similar property. He always strives to reduce energy costs.

Imagine that you are doing a job that you find terribly difficult. Everything else looks “desirable and desirable” by comparison, and you think everything would be perfect if you could get paid by doing just that. But what happens if you get the chance to really only do what seemed "desirable and desirable"? Surely some part of the job that used to be so attractive will become unpleasant and troublesome. As a result, you again decide that you need to get rid of it and then everything will be fine.

The same thing happens in dealing with people. Usually, everyone has a person with whom it is not very pleasant to communicate. It seems to us that all our friends, except for him, are fine with us. We want to stop communicating with him, but what happens when this desire is fulfilled? You will most likely enjoy an exceptionally pleasant environment for a very short time. Among the people you seem to like, a few people will appear who will start to like you less. And among them, in turn, someone will suddenly become extremely unpleasant to you.

For the most part, our positive assessments are not absolute, but relative. Therefore, when something "unpleasant and undesirable" disappears, a new "unpleasant and undesirable" appears.

There will always be something that we don’t like or want to do

I have often mentioned in my writings that the brain is inherently lazy and tends to be idle. He not only gets rid of neural networks that have not been used for a long time, but also seeks to reduce the number of active, functioning networks. This can be called labor savings.

Because of this property of the brain, you are unlikely to be able to completely get rid of the "unpleasant and troublesome", even if you try to leave only the "pleasant and desirable" in your life. The brain will still find something uncomfortable.

Most likely, if a person finds himself in an environment where he can absolutely freely choose his job and social circle, he, following this property of the brain, will gradually reduce the number of his activities and eventually come to the conclusion that the most pleasant thing is to sit alone and do nothing.

Try to accept this fact: you will always have something a little unpleasant in your life that will not completely suit you. It is natural.

But sometimes it is useful to do very unpleasant things. Having these tasks helps us feel how enjoyable other things are.

The predominance of unpleasant stimuli is also unsafe for the brain. Therefore, it is important to monitor the ratio of negative and positive, the balance of strong and weak emotions.

Ideally, you will be able to design your daily schedule so that "enjoyable and preferred" activities will slightly outweigh "slightly unpleasant" and "very unpleasant" activities in total.

Here I ask you to remember the following ideas:

• "Unpleasant and troublesome" will not disappear completely from your life.
• Control your emotions based on a 6: 3: 1 ratio.

2. How to alleviate discomfort by changing the interpretation

Emotions are contained in the interpretation of events in our memory

Now let's look at how you can "change the interpretation" of the information contained in the brain (that is, memory).

Emotions are not tied directly to the words we read or hear, or to what we experience. They come from memories of all of this and from our interpretations of memories. Therefore, it is possible to make both a positive and a negative stimulus from the same event, interpreting it in different ways.

For example, remember how your boss told you. At first, you will feel uncomfortable and possibly annoyed, but if you convince yourself that the remark will benefit you, this feeling will diminish. If you interpret his claim as a desire to help you, then it is likely that the words that first touched you will turn into positive memories.

Making this logical change in interpretation as needed is one important way to control your emotions.

I will tell you with what simple methods you can achieve this.

Thinking with someone else's head

One of the simplest ways to interpret the information contained in the brain in a new way is to "think with someone else's head." Let's look at the example of a situation where you are seriously criticized.

A person has an instinct for self-preservation, therefore, when they tell us something bad or do something unfavorable for us, at first we feel discomfort.

If at such moments even the cognitive system is completely tuned in to self-defense with the thought “Why should I put up with this? I won't let you!”, Then the feeling of discomfort grows and in the end we are ready to attack the offender. In this we are no different from animals.

Man is a social being. Society consists of people who do not think like you, have different values, desires and feelings. Understanding and, to some extent, accepting this fact is an important condition for being a part of society, and it also underlies the ability to manage your emotions.

This is understandable, but think about it: the one who criticized you, like you, has some aspirations of his own, he also has a person whom he wants to protect, as well as an instinct for self-preservation, periodic mood swings, and so on. To begin with, it is important to try to understand this.

Try to take his place and imagine how hard it is for him, how he might be dissatisfied, how you look in his eyes. Often, such a restructuring helps to realize that, for example, a person criticizes you because subordinates pressure him. Or he is constantly being taken away from his family time, which he values very much, and because of this he gets angry at everything.

If you practice for some time like this "thinking with someone else's head", for sure, your initial discontent will gradually disappear after you are told or done something bad.

And if you can also tune in to find a mutually beneficial solution to the problem, think what you can do for this person, then you will learn to be even more relaxed about comments.

Think about the emotional balance of society

Sometimes, even "thinking with someone else's head", you feel that you have been treated unfairly. In such cases, it is useful to "think with public brains."

For example, as a manager, I am sometimes criticized at fund meetings. And sometimes the remarks cannot be called fair. Then I think like this: "He brought his anger down on me, but due to this, I hope his emotions became more positive than they were."

This is how I try to balance the emotional balance of the entire organization as a whole.

Being a part of society, a person has to not only receive benefits, but also suffer losses. The latter makes us uncomfortable, but the ability to "think with public brains" will help you control your emotions.

Expand your timeline and pay attention to what you purchased during this period

Another easy way to change the interpretation of information in the brain is to expand the time frame.

As an example, try to recall one of your biggest failures. Memory works on the following principle: the newer the information in it, the easier it is to remember. Accordingly, the emotions associated with new impressions are stronger than those associated with old ones.

Therefore, the experience of a recent loss is felt more strongly than the emotion of a long-term gain.

To overcome this with rational thinking and avoid unnecessary negativity, try to train yourself to count gains and losses over a longer period of time.

For example, suppose you made a serious mistake and lost your job. Surely this is a huge loss for you now. But try to look at the whole situation over a longer time frame. Surely, before this unfortunate moment, you managed to acquire a lot: knowledge gained at work, experience, money, personal connections. After all, you have not lost it.

What of the acquired will remain with you? Try to gradually remember more and more of these things. It is even better not to think it over in your head, but to write it down on paper.

The most valuable resources in life are knowledge, experience and personal connections, and these are usually not lost so easily.

Use what you have left to your advantage and try to look at the situation from a different perspective.

I, too, have suffered several major failures in my life, but in such sad moments I tried to pay attention to what I had acquired, what I had left. In the end, I gradually regained a positive attitude, reasoning that I arrived in the capital from a village in Aichi Prefecture empty-handed, which means that if I return there with at least one bag, I will already be in the black.

A bad experience in itself will also end up being a rewarding acquisition for you.

Always being a winner is bad

Society seems to me to be one big stage, where some people have the main roles, while others have secondary roles. There are roles of winners, and there are roles of losers. There are those who are loudly applauded, and there are those who are scolded.

Society is a collection of diverse roles, and it may not be the best option to play all the time as the winner, the protagonist, and the one to be applauded. After all, by doing so, you are forcing someone to constantly find themselves in a secondary role, in the image of a loser, someone who is condemned.

In addition, if you are constantly in the black and almost always receive benefits, then you, firstly, do not understand well that everything is relative in society, and secondly, it is difficult for you to take the place of another. Perhaps all this will eventually lead to even greater problems.

When you have a major setback, consider that this is your role at the moment.

Now you are not your entire personality as a whole, and your successes and failures are far from all that you have.

Takashi Tsukiyama is a Japanese scientist, practicing neuroscientist and brain specialist. In his popular science books, he shares techniques that can help improve memory, efficiency, and creativity. Learning about the capabilities of his brain, a person can achieve results that previously seemed unattainable.

In the book “It's just some kind of stupor! How to get rid of the fog in your head, gain clarity of thoughts and start acting.”Tsukiyama explains how to deal with negative emotions that interfere with work, where great ideas come from and how to stay motivated.