Techniques To Strengthen The Thinking Brain – Part 2

• Don’t let emotions control your life.
• Deal with anger like Abraham Lincoln.
• Keep a journal to strengthen the thinking brain.

Delaying Your Actions

One technique that can be used to strengthen your thinking brain, is delaying your actions. Often when we make decisions we do so immediately, or impulsively, driven by our “emotional state of mind”.

However when we do so, we bypass our thinking logical mind, thereby leading to poor decision making and actions we may later regret.

To use this technique, you must resist the urge to immediately act on your impulses. Only making your decision after some period of time in which you are able to detach yourself from any emotions you are feeling.

In others words, this technique means not making important decisions when you are very happy, or very sad. Under the influence of these emotions, you are predominantly driven by your irrational unconscious brains, rather than your logical rational conscious thinking brain.

Abraham Lincoln And Anger

I once read a book about Abraham Lincoln, and how he used to use the technique I just described to control his anger.

When Lincoln would get angry with someone because of something they may have said or done to offend him, he would write them a letter venting his anger out on paper.

However, rather than mailing the letter immediately Lincoln would keep the letter in a draw, and then look at it in a few days or weeks after his anger had passed.

When he did look at his letter, most of the time he realised things weren’t as bad as he had initially thought, and would throw the letter away.

If we analyse Lincoln’s actions, we can see that his anger was a result of his reptilian and emotional brains.

Lincoln’s reptilian brain responded with anger and wanting to fight back by displaying its dominance, whilst his emotional brain amplified these desires by making him feel emotions associated with anger.

By writing a letter Lincoln satisfied the needs of both these brains, by venting his anger out on paper.

Later after a period of days or weeks when Lincoln reviewed the letter (and his anger had subsided), he was then able to use his thinking logical brain to critically analyse what he had written, and make a decision of whether or not the letter should be mailed.

By delaying his actions, Lincoln satisfied the desires of all three brains. But he allowed his conscious thinking brain to make the final decision, rather than reacting impulsively and being a slave to his reptilian and emotional brains.

Once A Reptile, Always A Reptile?

Of course, not all situations will give you the luxury of time to control how you react to something, and the decisions you make. Road rage is a good example of this.

In situations such as road rage, where you repeatedly and predictably react a certain way, you can still use the previous technique by involving your thinking brain.

Whenever you feel yourself getting angry because of another road user, try to think about the reasons why they may have acted that way.

Come up with an explanation for their behaviour, and understand that their actions were not personally directed at you as an individual.

It actually doesn’t matter what reason you use, or how you justify a person’s behaviour. The key is to involve your thinking brain, rather than just responding solely with your reptilian brain.

Although this may take time before you can completely eliminate your road rage (or any other type of anger), by involving your thinking brain you will eventually allow it to become the dominant brain, thereby allowing you to respond in calmer and more relaxed manner.

Unfortunately this technique can only be used in situations that happen more than once, or result in the same/similar patterns of behaviour, and when you are able to use your emotional brain to learn from that experience.

For random one time events, you are still likely to react in a pre-programmed reptilian manner. Although it should be noted that if you have been training your thinking brain, over time your anger will lessen to the point where only extreme high intensity situations cause you to revert back to your former self.

To sum it up, rather than reacting immediately and impulsively, delay making your decision by giving yourself a period of time to detach yourself from your emotions.

Then use your thinking brain to analyse the situation, and make the correct decision.

Whatever you do, just don’t make important decisions when you are either very happy, or very sad. Try to make decisions from an emotionally neutral point of view.

Journaling

Journaling is perhaps the simplest of all the techniques I have described. It is easy to do, and will only take a few minutes of your time.

Journaling involves writing down your thoughts on paper (or a computer), and is just like keeping a diary. At the end of the day you write down whatever is on your mind, anything interesting you did and what you would like to do better in the future.

By doing this everyday you strengthen your logical thinking brain, by causing it to think about your life and your actions.

Once a week you should review what you have written, as this will allow you to see what you are doing right and what you could improve. It will also help you to better understand yourself, and focus on your long term goals.

To sum it up, journaling can help you improve your life by strengthening your thinking brain and getting you to think about the things you can do better, rather than the things that went wrong.

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