In the first few chapters, we will try to create an exhaustive list of the processes that are at play to keep you from altering your life in the way you choose.
emotion (n.)
1570s, "a (social) moving, stirring, agitation," from French émotion (16c.), from Old French emouvoir "stir up" (12c.), from Latin emovere "move out, remove, agitate," from assimilated form of ex "out" (see ex-) + movere "to move" (from PIE root *meue- "to push away"). Sense of "strong feeling" is first recorded 1650s; extended to any feeling by 1808.
The Problem ?
It may feel that our life's problems are because we can’t push ourselves to solve them. If we could rid ourselves of these pesky emotions we would all be Elon Musks and life's problems would melt away.
This is sadly not true. Let me try to explain with a thought experiment.
If you didn't do something because you didn’t feel like it, would you do it if you didn’t feel at all ?
The truth is we only move because we feel like it. The word emotion means a moving, stirring, agitation. We feel hungry so we move to find food. We feel fear so we try and run away as opposed to staying put.
Given that we need emotions to accomplish anything. How do we go about achieving what we wish to achieve ? The only recourse then is to manage our emotions in some way.
Leaving this for now, unanswered, let’s look at the effect emotions have on our body.
The Body
There are 2 pathways our emotions interact with our body via the Nervous system.
Sympathetic - (Fight or Flight)
Parasympathetic - (Rest or Relax)
Parasympathetic Nervous System
The Parasympathetic nervous system is the more benevolent of the two. It is triggered when a perceived threat is removed or is absent and allows the body to rest and relax. This is essential for good mental and physical health.
Sympathetic Nervous System
The sympathetic nervous system, when triggered, unleashes the flight/fight response. This is our trigger to get ready for an attack. It makes us more alert by increasing our pulse rate and constricting our blood vessels, increasing our blood pressure so that our brain and senses have enough blood to function at a high level of alertness. In this state we can hear and see better than normal and can perform athletic feats like running and jumping better than our normal relaxed selves.
This doesn’t come without a cost though. In order to make this happen our hormonal glands dump large amounts of specialised chemicals like adrenaline, ACTH and cortisol into the bloodstream. These can be very harmful in the long term. For example, Cortisol is known to cause cholesterol to solidify and form layers on the walls of arteries, later causing heart-attacks or strokes.
The sympathetic nervous system is triggered when we perceive a threat looming over us. In the ancient days this warned us about a predator stalking us down and protected us from sudden violent attacks. In fact our nervous system is so well wired that the chemicals enter the bloodstream and start acting even before the threat is fully recognised by the senses.
This is how we sway out of collision paths without knowing what we are about to collide into.
This was great when we were living in the wild and needed to be constantly reminded of danger lurking around the corner.
In the modern world, however, perceived threats are of a kind that you cannot run from. Its the terror of the approaching deadline, or the daily battle with the boss. The body unfortunately cannot differentiate between these 2 threats and sends out the same response leading to an almost continuous heightened state of alert. As we cant run away from these “threats” the body remains ready for fight/flight forever. This is stress. The wasted adrenaline in the body and the cortisol slowly affect the health of the body, causing symptoms like fatigue, depression, heart-attack if not kept in check.
Even worse, continuous heightened alert leads to mental and physical fatigue. This affects our mood, our memory, our self control and even our sleep.
People under constant stress tend to make more mistakes in their jobs as they cant think straight or for the long term, their relationships deteriorate because everything irritates them.
The vicious cycle then kicks in, where their everyday life gets worse which further increases their stress which makes their life even worse and so on.
The stress trap is another natural cycle that tends to keep the quality of your life the same until you die. This can be seen best in people living near the poverty line. The constant stress of finding money forces them to look for quick ways to happiness, pushing them to drink and drugs to survive the constant worries and depression.
Even low levels of constant stress, can lead to bad decisions and anger which can be a downward spiral if not kept in check.
Perception
Which nervous system gets triggered depends on your ‘Perception’ of your reality. Your Mental Model. Unfortunately, (as discussed in the previous chapter “Thoughts”), this is more connected to your “Subconscious” thoughts than “Conscious” thoughts.
It doesn’t depend on what you think you know. It depends on your experience in similar situations and/or thoughts/beliefs you have held for a very long time.
We will deal with this later, but this “Perception” plays arguably the greatest role in keeping you right where you are in your life.