Your emotional-thinking brain is designed to make very quick designs in order to help you survive. It doesn’t have the time to weigh up every possible option (that’s what your logical-thinking frontal lobe does). It certainly doesn’t like uncertainty. Its job is to make you take action very quickly, and so it limits options available by making rapid judgements based only on the evidence it can see. Fight, flight or freeze ensues.

But life isn’t like that. Given the time, you can think of a multitude of possible futures for yourself. The all-or-nothing thinking of your emotional brain is best for snap decisions. Instead, take a step back, and a deep breath, and observe the bigger picture. What can you see more clearly now you have time? Rather than the situation being black or white, there’s in fact a wide array of colour and shades of grey between the two poles your emotional mind has created.

Prepare your options in advance, when your mind is calm, and have them ready for when it really is time to act on your emotions.

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash