A short instructional talk explaining how to move emotional responses from limbic/amygdala-driven reactions to prefrontal-cortex deliberation. The speaker endorses the traditional advice to 'count to 10' (attributed to Thomas Jefferson), cites a paper recommending counting to 30 while imagining the consequences of an impulsive action, and emphasizes giving yourself time so emotion can be managed rather than control you.
Chapters
How to move the experience of emotions from their limbic origins to where you can manage them, decide what they mean and how to act, which is really a prefrontal cortex function. That's an executive function of the brain. How do you do that? And the answer is, you got to give yourself time to catch up. Somebody wise in your life told you that you should count to 10 when you're angry. That's what you should do when you're angry. I looked up the origins of that at one time, and as close as I can tell, that's Thomas Jefferson. And he said this. He said, when angry, count to 10. When very angry, count to 100. What was he really saying? Don't leave the experience of anger just in your amygdala. Let it get to your prefrontal cortex, where you can decide why and what you want to do, as opposed to what you're actually feeling. Now, there is one paper that asks, what's the right number so you can save yourself a lot of embarrassment and heartache? And the answer is, count to 30. And then while you're counting to 30, imagine the outcome that would occur from doing that thing that you want to do that your amygdala is telling you to do. What I want you to understand is that you can manage your emotion such that it's not managing you. You're understanding, working for you and not against you, and you're learning and growing as a result. That's really what we're talking about.
