Don’t Look Now, But Your Amygdala’s Just Been Hijacked…

How Our Stressful World is Impacting Your Thinking, Beliefs and Actions and a Few Tips to Help You Regain Your Focus

In this issue: Don’t Look Now, But Your Amygdala’s Just Been Hijacked…/ Leonard Mlodinow Interview: The Surprising Science of How Feelings Help You Think/ The Ukraine Crisis Has People Rattled. Here's How to Talk About Fear at Work / The Lighter Side of Self Awareness

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Why you’re getting this:

I'm Andrea J. Miller and this is my “On Leading Well” Newsletter. I send this to people in my networks, people I’ve met recently, and friends I want to keep in touch with. You can unsubscribe (SEE THE VERY BOTTOM OF THE EMAIL) anytime, I won’t be offended

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Don’t Look Now, But Your Amygdala’s Just Been Hijacked…

How Our Stressful World is Impacting Your Thinking, Beliefs and Actions and a Few Tips to Help You Regain Your Focus

In case you’re not as interested in brain science as I am (and yes, I really am considering getting new hobbies :) …an amygdala hijack is an emotional response, usually characterized by an overreaction to stress.

The term was first used by Daniel Goleman PhD., in his now infamous book “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ,”

He described an amygdala hijack as something that occurs when your amygdala responds to stress and disables your frontal lobes, activating the fight-or-flight response and disabling rational reasoned responses.

In other words, the amygdala “hijacks” control of your brain and your responses, so much so that you may react in ways that aren’t always in your best interest.

This often less-than logical, fight-or-flight response while useful to our cave-dweller ancestors, who lived continually under immediate physical threats, is a bit less so in current times.

This is why I’m writing this; two weeks ago, like so many others, my brain was “hijacked” by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Though I’m privileged to be writing this from the safety and comfort of my home, my mind is on events happening thousands of miles away.

This led to the stark realization of just how often I’d experienced this with other events over the last few years.

I’d try to focus on work, conversations, etc. and my thinking would go to the circumstances happening around me…and judging by what I’d read, I knew I wasn’t alone.

As a society, we’ve gone from one stressful experience to another, often not completely recognizing their impact on our lives.

Research shows that at best we’re conscious of the way we feel about 85% of the time.

So, under the best of circumstances, e.g., no invasions, COVID, etc. some 15% of the time our thoughts, beliefs, and related actions could be considered somewhat (or very) questionable.

Now, multiply that by all the people you work and interact with…

The collective lack of rationality and related outcomes are staggering.

It’s a wonder how anything is functioning at all.

So, what are people and the companies they work for to do?

How Self-Aware Are You, Really?

This brings us to another area of emotional intelligence, self-awareness.

In its simplest definition self-awareness is about being aware of the behavior you demonstrate, your strengths and limitations, and the impact you have on others.

However, that doesn’t address its full impact on our lives.

It’s possible to be self-aware about aspects of yourself and your emotions while also having blind spots because of how they affect your thoughts, beliefs, and actions.

Who hasn’t made an emotional decision that they rationalized away believing they were in control, but in fact…well, maybe not so much?

The good news is it doesn’t mean you can’t prevent your amygdala from taking over.

It just means you must make a much more conscious effort than most of us are used to or often want to demonstrate.

So, back to the how.

Sorry, I’d lost my focus…

Regaining Focus in an Often Stressful World

In order to address an amygdala hijack, you have to really examine and understand your triggers and be able to pause when they begin to appear. While it may seem easy, our brains have thousands of years of “training” in overreacting, making us all experts in the subject.

Here are a few steps to help you be a bit more self-aware:

1.     Mindfulness - Pay attention to and become more familiar with the way you tend to think, feel and act both at work and home. Consider adopting a self-reflective practice (journal or diary) where you regularly reflect on the way you’re thinking, feeling, and acting.

Consider how your thoughts, feelings, and actions are both serving and limiting you. Ask yourself why you are behaving the way you are, what impact your behavior is having on others, why you’re responding the way you are, and, more importantly, how you could respond differently for a better outcome.

2.     Meditation – We often mistake meditation as a practice of quieting the mind. While it can provide relief from endless mind chatter, the reality is that it’s pretty much impossible to completely stop the continual barrage of thoughts that most of us have.

So, the real value of meditation comes in our ability to recognize we’re doing it and being able to stop and start over. When we take that mindful moment and notice that our brains have been hijacked it’s helpful to use the meditative practice of acknowledging what’s going on, if possible, naming it (for example, “thinking” or “feeling”) and calmly accepting that you should begin again.

This practice gives us the space to notice, assess and explore how our thoughts and feelings are influencing our behaviors in various circumstances. That can help in the interpretation of events and therefore, influence the way we think, feel and act in response.

3.     Feedback – Even the most mindful and meditative people have blind spots. By actively asking for feedback from others, particularly those you trust, you can get a different perspective and potentially see things that you might have missed, thus broadening your thinking and actions/reactions in both the good times and in times of stress.

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RECOMMENDED LISTENS, READS And other interesting things

Leonard Mlodinow Interview: The Surprising Science of How Feelings Help You Think: A new book explains how our emotions—not just our rational thoughts—are often running the show upstairs.

The Ukraine Crisis Has People Rattled. Here's How to Talk About Fear at Work: Your workplace doesn't exist in a vacuum. Amid global tragedy, anxiety and other emotions are bound to trickle (or even flood) in--and that's OK.

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The Lighter Side of Self Awareness

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Are there any other subjects you want me to cover? Hit “Reply” and tell me!

I love hearing from you :)!

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Andrea J. Miller

+1 (646) 556-5401 (Whatsapp)