Balancing your perceptions and emotions can help you regain control, think more clearly and reasonably and master your mental faculties and life.
You’ve probably had a moment in your life where you experienced a powerful emotional reaction that didn’t allow your reasoning mind to remain in control, and you felt hijacked by your perception and its resultant emotion.
According to Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, you have two types of thinking:
You have a rapid Systems One thinking where you are in survival mode and react quickly to emergencies where you don’t have time to think. This could be when a car’s about to hit you, or something suddenly startles you. In other words, you react before you think.
Then you have Systems Two thinking, where you take the time to reason, think, break things down, and decide how you’re going to respond. In this case, you think before you react.
Systems One thinking is predominantly governed by a subcortical area of the brain called the amygdala. It assigns an emotional charge to events that you experience and makes you either impulsively seek them or instinctually avoid them.
Any time you are highly infatuated with something, or highly resentful towards something, those highly polarized emotional states tend to occupy space and time in your mind. You may have intrusive thoughts. Find it difficult to sleep. Difficult to focus. Difficult to concentrate. These reactions are not random. They are based on how you are perceiving an event in that moment.
Your ratios of perception determine whether you’re in Systems One or Systems Two thinking.
If you have a balanced ratio of perception, you tend to move into Systems Two thinking and become more reasonable. But if you have a highly imbalanced ratio of perception, you tend to go into Systems One, where you’re more reactive, impulsive and instinctual in your responses. This is what’s called amygdala hijacking. It has hijacked you from reason.
If you can bring those perceptions back into balance, you are able to calm yourself down and move your blood flow up into the medial prefrontal cortex, where Systems Two thinking occurs. Now you can think before you react.
The neurons in your lower subcortical regions tend to be larger and faster to fulfill their role in survival. You’ll tend to react first and then think about how you reacted afterwards.
But if you train yourself to change the ratios of your perceptions in advance, and you begin to see both sides of an event, you can avoid being hijacked. You’ll know how to bring yourself back into reason before the more extreme emotional reaction takes over. This is training that martial artists often develop, and it’s something that any individual can begin to master.
The moment you begin to polarize your perception to one side or the other, the more your amygdala comes online. It is preparing you for what you perceive as prey, which you want to capture so you don’t starve, or a predator, which you want to escape so you don’t get eaten. And the more extreme the imbalance, the more intense the hijacking reaction tends to be.
Any time you have an imbalanced ratio of perception, whether it’s infatuation or resentment, you tend to be run by it. You assign a positive or negative charge to what you’re perceiving. You feel an impulse to seek or an instinct to avoid, and it occupies space and time in your mind. In those moments, the impulses and instincts to seek or avoid can override your reasoning mind. You may feel out of control, ungoverned, and caught in what Aristotle described as the passions or affections.
The word passion comes from the root “passio,” which relates to suffering. Because when you’re highly infatuated or highly resentful, you may find yourself wanting to change yourself into someone else, or change someone else into you. And that tends to be futile and often leads to frustration. So, these emotional extremes are part of survival, but they’re not necessarily the states that allow you to thrive.
Systems Two thinking is more associated with thriving. It’s where you can set objectives, plan strategically, execute those plans, and embrace both the positives and the negatives in the pursuit of something meaningful. It’s more about finding the mean between the pairs of opposites. If you can balance your ratios of perception, you can begin to activate that level of thinking.
That’s part of the reason I developed the Demartini Method, which I present in my signature Breakthrough Experience program. It’s a series of quality questions that you can ask yourself to help bring those imbalanced perceptions back into balance. For example, if you’re perceiving only the positives, you can ask, “What are the downsides to what I’m perceiving?” so you can begin to bring your awareness into balance.
Your intuition innately does this. You might meet a very attractive individual and feel that impulse, that immediate reaction that says, “I want that.” But at the same time, there’s often another voice that says, “Just slow down. Don’t rush. It might be too good to be true.” That intuition is attempting to reveal the side of the equation that your impulses are overlooking. When you begin to see both sides, you tend to become more centered. You’re less reactive, and more able to be present and be your authentic self.
Now, instead of waiting for time and aging to do that, you can begin to ask quality questions that help you do it in the moment. That’s essentially what the Demartini Method is. It’s a series of very precise questions that help you become conscious of what you’re currently unconscious of.
As you begin to ask those questions and honestly answer them, you are more likely to begin to see both sides simultaneously. When you do that, Systems Two thinking comes online and the amygdala hijacking subsides. You’re able to respond more objectively and reasonably. Instead of reacting emotionally, you begin to see both sides and you can respond from a more balanced, objective state.
If you ask questions that help you equilibrate your mind, you begin to liberate yourself from those intrusive thoughts and emotional reactions. And when that happens, you begin to feel more centered, self-governed, and empowered.
When you bring those perceptions back into balance, you begin to govern your life from within. And that’s why I’ve said for many years, when the voice and the vision on the inside become louder than the opinions on the outside, you begin to master your life. You move from being a victim of your history to being a master of your destiny.
As William James said many years ago, one of the greatest discoveries is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the perceptions and attitudes of their mind. You have that capacity. When you begin to ask quality questions and bring your perceptions into balance, you can take command of your life and move from being a victim of your history to a master of your destiny!
Dr John Demartini is the Founder and CEO of the Demartini Institute, human behavior specialist, international bestselling author, educator, and consultant
