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Why is The Synergy Between Your Two Brains Important

Hint: It helps you develop the most wonderful skill!

By Myriam Ben SalemPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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Image by Nicola Giordano from Pixabay

You don’t get to control your feelings, Thinking Brain. Self-control is an illusion. It’s an illusion that occurs when both brains are aligned and pursuing the same course of action. It’s an illusion designed to give people hope. And when the Thinking brain isn’t aligned with the Feeling Brain, people feel powerless, and the world around them begins to feel hopeless.

The only way you consistently nail that illusion is by consistently communicating and aligning the brains around the same values. It’s a skill, much the same as playing water polo or juggling knives is a skill. It takes work. And there will be failures along the way. You might slice your arm open and bleed everywhere. But that’s just the cost of admission. ~ Mark Manson

Can you guess the wonderful skill the brilliant Mark Manson is referring to?

Let me help; it is probably the most underrated “soft” skill, everybody is suddenly talking about in business. Even the bossy manipulators have found themselves rushing to adapt their attitudes during the pandemic. (Pathetic, I know!)

This skill is the subject of so many articles, books, and presentations. It has helped create many new positions in the self-development and coaching industry. The labels might be different, but they all revolve around the same magic skill.

Please give warm applause to our winner: “Emotional Intelligence”!

How is an emotion managed?

Let’s say a stranger acts cruelly towards you, triggering anger? This emotion is sent to your subconscious, the fastest part of your brain for processing data.

One of two scenarios might occur at this point:

  1. If your program is not your friend, maybe full of emotional scars, trauma flashbacks, bad mental patterns, you name it, the anger emotion reacts with the same feeling from your program, and you react in a violent way.

There is no space between the stimulus and your response, which creates misalignment between your left (logical) and right (emotional) brains.

The misalignment may be described this way:

The Left logical brain says, “It doesn’t make any sense!”. The Right emotional brain sarcastically answers, “You must be kidding me! You’re worthless! It’s no secret, and you’ll only confirm it if you don’t defend yourself, loser!”

2. If you work on re-writing your invasive program, to understand their meanness is impersonal and says more about their suffering than being cruel to you, you create space between the stimulus and your response, removing the misalignment. As a consequence, the anger emotion can be transformed into empathy:

The Left logical brain says, “It doesn’t make any sense!” The Right emotional brain, confident of your self-worth replies, “You’re right, it makes no sense. You don’t deserve the mistreatment. You could stand up for yourself, firmly and gently. But, you will probably never meet this stranger again. It’s simply not worth it. Let’s move on!”

In the words of David J. Pollay: “Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they look for a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you. So when someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Believe me. You’ll be happier.”

I wrote an article detailing the different types of anger a few months ago, should you be interested!

What if the person responsible for the emotion is not a stranger?

Of course, when dealing with someone you have a relationship with, you need to work with them, rather than simply walk away.

Working with your invasive program in these situations will be very rewarding and help you build better quality communication in the future.

The emotion might be legitimate. Maybe that someone violates your boundaries, or doesn’t requite your investment in the relationship. Such situations can create a whole range of negative emotions, like frustration, anger, disappointment, sadness, and resentment, anxiety, jealousy, and envy.

These emotions are a sign something is wrong and that you need to start working on your program!

However, you need to see a value for the long term. If you are involved with a toxic or emotionally unhealthy person who is draining you every day, then you should consider if the investment in the relationships is worth the effort!

You deserve a nurturing relationship in which the key ingredient is healthy expectations.

When you have such a relationship, and you create that vital space between the stimulus and your response, the two sides of your brain can work in harmony and create the correct emotions and reactions.

An emotionally healthy person needs to be seen, recognized, encouraged, challenged, and celebrated. They need free acts of kindness and generosity. They need the roles in a relationship to be clarified. They need people to keep their promises. They need them to apologize quickly and sincerely if they screw up — as, of course, we all do from time to time!

While love is a pure emotion you can give to anyone and anything, a relationship is deserved!

Takeaways

Your EQ level, most particularly your emotions’ regulation part, relies on a synergy between your Left and Right brain.

The more you tear down your limiting beliefs, the closer you come back to the original ‘Principles’ Center, buried under the layers created by a life-time of conditioning, and the higher this synergy is!

With this synergy, you are able to healthily manage your negative emotions.

You still experience them, but developing the gap between the stimulus and response gives you power to respond effectively!

Thank you so much for deciding to stop by and invest some of your precious time reading this story! It means a lot to me!

If you feel interested in discovering the different stages of re-writing your program, then this article might be for you.

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About the Creator

Myriam Ben Salem

I'm a passionate grown kid, a writer, a storyteller, an edutainer (education & entertainment), a lifelong learner, a speaker, an unapologetic truth-teller, and a stoic life philosophy lover!

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