Think Before you Act: How to Manage our Emotions
A light breeze blows in his face. The green of the forest fades into the dark of the night, while the silence deafens its surroundings. He sneaks; slowly; quietly; eyes focused on the boar. “Now!” his instincts scream as he leaps forward with a firm grip on his spear. In the split second before, the boar spots the danger in the corner of her eye. She squeals while she immediately attempts a quick getaway, but it’s too late. The spear pierces through her skin during the scurry. Blood stops rushing to her legs as she falls to her accepted fate. On the other end of the altercation, the man is intoxicated by the promise of his feast tonight. Suddenly out of nowhere, a wild jaguar appears in front of him. The man’s heart instantly beats against his chest, his muscles tighten and his fingers firmly clench his spear. He accelerates towards the jaguar, springs in its direction and penetrates his spear through the jaguar’s side in one motion. The jaguar roars in pain and rapidly fleas the scene. Panting vigorously, the man knows he’s safe now.
Fast forward 3000 years. 9 year old Michael has spent all weekend making his new Lego spaceship and he brings it outside to play. His brother, Tim is playing football next to him and while keeping his eye on a loopy pass from the wall, he bumps into Michael and knocks him over. Michael tumbles over and his spaceship hits the ground with impact, smashing into hundreds of pieces. On the ground, Michael’s heart breaks as he sees his masterpiece collapse in front of him. His heart thumps against his chest as his fists clench and his jaw tighten. He instantaneously rises and begins furiously hitting his brother, shouting “Why did you do that! You’re such an idiot! I hate you!”. Tim’s eyes fill with tears as he starts crying and runs inside. Michael stands alone, upset at the situation.
The Fight of Flight Response
These are two very different situations but despite 3000 years in the difference, the internal mechanisms are still the same. In order to protect ourselves, our brains needed to learn quick ways to tell our bodies what to do and the messages that allowed us to do this are what we understand today as emotions. For the ancestral man, he spots the jaguar and his brain and body prepares to protect himself by fighting. In this case, he does not have time to think because if he was to weigh up his options, the jaguar would be chewing on his neck by the time a decision was made. So his brain sends him what we understand as anger to prepare to fight. The boar before him tries to flea, promoted by the emotion of fear. This is the commonly referenced fight or flight response.
The Fight or Flight Response Today
Now let’s compare Michael’s situation. Tim has threatened him in the form of breaking something that was important to him. Because of his ancestors, his brain responds in the same way by preparing him to fight (activates the brain cells that we understand as anger). Michael’s heart then begins beating faster and his muscles tighten, just like our ancestor. However, the big difference now is that Michael’s brother is not a jaguar trying to kill him and we now have a process between the emotion and the action: thought. Thought allows us to consciously plan before we act and it gives us a choice about how we act. However, we sometimes ignore our thoughts and immediately act on the impulse of our emotions, without thinking, just like our ancestors. Because the world is a different place now, he does not need to behave the way he does and immediately acting on our emotions usually results in negative emotions continuing.
The only way to prevent this from happening is to make Michael aware of this process. Because of how our brains developed, we cannot control an emotion happening. It is hardwired into our brains and is therefore natural. For example, when we are threatened, our brain will release the emotion of anger. However, we can manage how we think about that emotion, and how we act as a result. Our actions then influence the emotions we feel afterwards, which means that we have responsibility over how we feel. If we don’t teach children how to take responsibility of how they feel, how will they learn? We tell them to think before they act, but we don’t teach them how to think.
How to think before you act
Emotions are simply the brain telling us something. For example, Michael’s brain expressing anger is telling Michael that Tim has done something wrong so he needs a sense of justice. Because we now have the ability to think before we act, this means that we can choose how we act to ensure that we have positive emotions afterwards. For example, Michael can hit Tim ferociously and then feel guilty, or he can explain what he has done wrong, receive an apology and feel better afterwards. Therefore, thinking before we act gives us the ability to manage our emotions. This, ladies and gentlemen is emotional intelligence. If we can understand what emotions we experience, and then think and act in a way that manages these emotions successfully, then we are emotionally intelligent.
When we have unhelpful thought patterns, we carry out unhelpful behaviours, like Michael hitting his brother, and this results in negative emotions, such as continued anger and guilt. If we continue to have negative emotions, we run the risk of poor mental health. That’s where Motus comes in! We teach kids how to think before they act, rather than just telling them to think. We are angry at the lack of mental health education in our schools but like the examples above, we are not acting on our emotions and immediately criticising others. Instead, we are listening to our anger and we are using it to motivate us to make positive change. We need to educate our future generations on how to be emotionally intelligent. We need to prevent mental health problems before they happen. And most importantly, we need to think about the consequences of ignoring emotional education before we act.
Yours Sincerely,
The Motus Movement.