Connect Rational and Emotional

Humans are very irrational people at times. Yet all of feel as though we are completely rational. We can think through a situation and make decisions with objectivity, right?

Most of us faced this question at some point. If we are truthful, we realized that we weren’t necessarily in control. In other words, our rational mind wasn’t the controlling factor.

In The Righteous Mind – Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt, the author talks about these two sides of the human experience. He says, “One of the greatest truths in psychology is that the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. To be human is to feel pulled in different directions, and to marvel – sometimes in horror – at your inability to control your own action.”

Thoughts versus behaviors

When I was younger I found myself conflicted over this many times. I seemed to act in a way that contradicted my thoughts. I knew what to do but somehow did something else.

I finally realized that there is an innate, emotional side to us. This side is powerful. It overrules the rational mind.

Often when I felt as though I was in control of behaviors, I justified behaving according to the emotional side. In other words, I acted one way and then convinced myself why it was right.

But I am not unique. We all do this. How many times do we know that we are trying to lose weight but opt for the donut in the office? Or we decide to take free time today to relax and watch TV instead of cleaning the house?

But we don’t have to become ruled by this emotional side. We can take control. But it takes a different approach than simply thinking more.

What we have to do is to create patterned behaviors. We all have habits. We all have routines. We use these to keep taking the same actions over and over again.

Those usually form because of past decisions. Those decisions were likely emotional ones. If we want to gain control of the behaviors, we have to find ways to create rational behaviors and then ingrain them in our life.

Hot-Cold Empathy Gap

This will help us overcome the emotional state. The Hot-Cold Empathy Gap says that it is very different making a decision when we are in a hot, emotional state. If we decide, in a cold state, to do something, we will likely crumble when the pressure kicks in.

If we decide to start a diet after eating a big meal, the real test comes the next time we are hungry, not now. If we commit to exercising daily when in a cold state, we can promise all sorts of things. But wait until we wake up and have to go to the gym. In that hot state we will likely stumble and quit.

Systems and habits approach

By taking the systems and habits approach to improvement, we start with small, repetitive behaviors. We adjust our habits and routines rationally. We design them.

This allows us to break away from the hot or cold state having so much influence. It isn’t about motivation to keep going. It is about automatically following the pattern and doing what we have always done.

We can start incredibly small to make that hot state less impactful. Try exercising for 4 hours a day after being very inactive. It is just about impossible. But try exercising for 4 minutes every day and you might have some success.

By setting the step at something easy, we give ourselves the ability to do it and follow through with it. This isn’t about results yet. It is about creating the fundamental habit. Once it is automatic, you can keep adding more and more until you see the results you crave.

To get control of the emotional side sabotaging our improvement, we have to learn how to build new behavior patterns. We have to design those behaviors. We can’t assume that they will form naturally without much influence from our emotions at the time. But by doing this we can start to connect the rational and the emotional to achieve a better version of us.