Why I Started To Take A Pause In Life

The human brain is deeply mystifying. We know more about the vast, ever expanding universe at this point, than we do about the human brain. It’s been a fascinating subject of scientific study for long and we still haven’t completely cracked it.

Yes, that three pound thing you carry in your head is profoundly adaptable to changes and is more resilient than you can imagine. Brain has a high level of neuroplasticity and is immensely malleable. This gives people two different types of ages — chronological and biological. Simply put, how old you actually are vs how old you feel. People with a high level of neuroplasticity remain biologically younger.

I decided to not be fooled by my chronological age as it was beginning to hold me back — I increasingly found justifying to myself, why I couldn’t do something because I was turning old. B.S. I realised, I was capable of accomplishing anything at any point in my life, I just needed to trick my brain into believing that I could — thus having more control over my biological age. If I wanted more autonomy, learning the art of controlling my brain was monumental. I desired more responsibility for my life narrative. I desired to be the biggest hero of my life.

It was paramount to be in control and drive my life story to its desired fruition.

Before I could think about tricking and driving my brain — I needed to understand it first in order to be more in control. Like, taming a wild beast before you could have it at your beck and call.

So with this objective, I set out on the odyssey to understand the science and art of controlling my brain better — to be more predictable; sure little emotional blips here and there are normal, it is what makes us human but how could I stop being on an autopilot mode and actively steer myself better in the right direction.

Human brain has come a long way

Trust me, I am not going to start a biology lesson here, so stay with me. With evolution, human brain changed by leaps and bounds and is now considered to be triune is nature.

• Reptile Brain is responsible for the fight-or-flight response. This is the brain that is constantly thinking about survival while keeping an eye out for danger.
• Mammal Brain is the reason for emotional responses in humans.
• Human Brain is incredibly sophisticated and rational. It helps us in making decisions, problem solving and reasoning.

From an evolutionary perspective, it made absolute sense. Surely, being humans we ought to use the Human brain at all times; but I realised, for me (and I am sure for most others), all these parts often co-existed. The brain part that needed to be amplified and activated was contingent on the situation.

• I was using my Reptile brain in life threatening situations — for instance, when I skydived, I could feel this part heighten and it made me scramble like a monkey in the air.
• Often, when I was in verbal fights/heated discussions — I felt a rush of emotions, this was the mammal brain taking over.
• In professional settings, I tried to stay quite rational and reasonable not taking things personally, Human brain at work.

Ideally, Human brain should always be at play regardless of the situation but I realised that biologically, I had little control on making this selection.

I realised I needed to be artful and come up with some ways to make sure, I was guided by my Human mind by empowering it so it took over the other two sub-optimal brains.

Mammalian Brain Hijack

Mammalian brain is capricious, it thrives on human impulses. It is always lurking around to hijack our brain and make emotions driven decisions. Regrettable decisions, I wish I never made. Unbeknownst to me, this mammalian brain was guiding my decisions in both personal and professional settings.

I was reaching a point, where I started feeling the whole world was out to get me. I was always on the edge as rationale and logic was taking a backseat. Whether it was an official email or text from friends, family — it was driving me up the wall. It was becoming woefully difficult to contain my emotions and I often ended up lashing out or saying things I deeply repented later.

“What was I thinking? Why did I act like that?”, was my lasting thought after most my encounter with people.

My poor Human brain was constantly being pushed aside and acting subservient to the Mammalian brain. I needed to migrate over to my Human brain. Staying in Mammalian brain was like being stuck inside my dreams and have someone implant ideas that govern my life, like in the movie Inception.

I needed to leave behind my Mammalian brain and operate on the Human mind.

My Jedi-mind tricks

I realised, I needed to be more in tune with the brain mode I was operating on. It entailed curbing my impulses and thinking straight.

But controlling impulses is not easy. The title of this section warrants a Star Wars reference — think about Luke Skywalker in his Jedi training by master Yoda. He seemed impetuous and impatient. It takes a lot of practice and resolute to kill our instincts and give people our second reaction. It is precisely at this instance, when you leave behind the Mammalian brain embrace the Human brain.

(i) Acknowledging the Mammalian brain

Mammalian brain is narcissistic, prejudice and flourishes on attention. It also has a negative bias. It feels that it’s constantly under attack and is always on the offensive. If someone at work or in a social setting quietly sits next to you and says nothing — your first emotional response is “Did I do something wrong?”, that’s the negative bias in action. We fail to realise that the person is probably having a rough day and just wants to lay low.

Having said that, it’s important and what makes me human. But this was often leading to hysteria where my floodgates seemed to open at the drop of a hat — I found myself in these bouts of emotional overdrive too much and too often. I realised, it needed my attention immediately.

Acknowledgement, I found, goes a long way in taking control back from this brain. But just being aware that the Mammalian brain is taking over is not enough, also identifying what emotion I was going through was critical — this provided me with enough arsenal to deal with it appropriately. I’ve also touched upon this in my earlier blog around how I now like to keep my emotions and relationships simple. Once I understood my emotion, I could strategise to alleviate it and Mammalian brain would stop being hyperactive and relax resulting in relinquishing control.

(ii) Sussing it out

That feeling of sharing my work, idea or plan immediately with someone in anticipation of getting lauded for it — ah, instant gratification, it’s intoxicating!

To my dismay, I was getting more negative feedback compared to a pat on the back. It used to make me furious. Only to realise, that I needed to suss out things and situations further in order to make my plan bulletproof.

This helped me in thinking things through and providing a plan and response that was more coherent and connected. Also, giving me more time to stack up the pros against the cons and explain myself upon being challenged.

Now, whenever I feel I’m ready, I run through my plans and iterate it at least three more times. Repeating this activity provides me with different viewpoints and surfaces blind spots that I had overlooked previously along with new ideas coming to the fore due to non-linear thinking when I chose to distract myself by taking on something different. In the hurry to share something, I was inadvertently compromising the quality of my plan. This was true on both professional and personal front.

Doing my due diligence, was like giving automatic control to the Human brain as Mammalian brain realises that it was out of its depth when time was no longer of the essence and matters can be held out, it seemed to disengage. Again, Mammalian brain voluntarily relinquishing control.

(iii) Taking a pause

Take a pause before responding to anyone. I repeat, take a pause before responding to anyone. Almost all of our immediate responses are emotions driven.

I realised, I was jumping right into responses expecting people to appreciate the promptness, only to realise that I had misinterpreted the situation and should have responded differently. Thank god for the delete option on WhatsApp and edit option on Slack and Microsoft Teams!

I knew I couldn’t kill my impulses, so I started to defer them

I realised that pausing for a moment provided me with the ability to not only read what was being said but also understand why it was being said along with reading the subtext. Let me tell you, this has been a game changer for me.

I have started giving myself at least fifteen minutes before responding to texts and asking follow up questions while in a real time conversation to see how measured the response ought to be. Of course, it doesn’t mean you need to do this for every single communication but communication that’s serious and requires some level of thinking. Pausing and collecting our answers also make the responses look genuine and authentic.

I have started to think deeply through my responses and only when I absolutely convinced, do I share it with others and this way, I don’t end up putting my foot in my mouth. This also means that the Mammalian brain had an immediate response but since I didn’t act on it and instead sat on it for sometime, it is no longer in interested as the time for gratification has passed. It stops caring and doesn’t mind the intervention from the Human brain.

Deliberation and thinking through gives me enough areas for consideration that I can readily share with others upon being questioned.

The truth is there is no right/wrong response, it’s essentially our thinking that justifies an argument. Like I said, it’s our narrative and we are our biggest heroes, the least we can do is think about what kind of heroes and lead our storyline well.

The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It’s not that there’s something new in our way of thinking — it’s that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.

~Carl Sagan