Have You Ever Lost Your Cool?

Time To Learn: < 1 minute

Of course you have.

I have.

A lot.

I’m working on it.

But, despite what some may have told you (and me), this is not a problem with your character. It is literally because of the way that our brain is designed.

This is actually what happens just before we start screaming at strangers through the car windscreen.

To help make this point, let’s just look at two parts of the brain.

• The warning system (amygdala)
• The thinking system (Prefrontal Cortex)

Also, for this story, you’ll need to know what milliseconds (ms) are.

• You blink in about 200 milliseconds.
• In 12 milliseconds, you have subconscious visual recognition. That is, you could identify an image that you see for 12 milliseconds.
• 300 milliseconds is considered the ‘threshold of human perception’. It’s about the time it takes for a person to react to something.

OK. A stimulus arrives …

Let’s say you walk through the door at home after a mad day, and all you want is a warm greeting, but you get what you perceive as disrespect.

Bang. It starts.

What starts?

A chain reaction happening so quickly that you literally have no control over it.

Within 20ms your amygdala has identified the stimulus as a threat and releases glutamate. This acts like a massive power surge.

At 85ms, your brainstem is activated for immediate, primitive physical reactions. Noradrenaline is released, which focuses your attention on the source of the threat and … wait for it … dulls your sensitivity to pain!

You animal!

Meanwhile, you haven’t even consciously perceived the threat yet. This is all happening before you can even blink your eyes!

Finally, at 300ms, your brain comes online and says, “Pay attention, this is important.”

This is where your prefrontal cortex now has the ability to apply the brakes to the chemical surge kicked off by the amygdala.

But will you?

If you’re anything like me, the answer is often … no.

Even when I become aware of what’s going on, I’ll still continue down the path the ‘animal’ part of my brain has set in motion.

It takes a lot of cognitive (mental) power to overcome this chemical storm.

And … after a hard day, we don’t have it. We’re buggered. So, we give in and let the amygdala win.

But there is a solution. It’s easy (sort of), and it works flawlessly.

I’ll show you in the next post.