2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
We humans love to create mental categories and then assign objects, experiences, and even people to them. When we become too comfortable and familiar with rigid predetermined categories, this is called premature cognitive obligation, in the sense of the usual inflexible reaction to ideas, things, people, and even ourselves. These quick and easy rules are called heuristics. Heuristics range from rational prohibitions to judgmental blinders (racial or class bias) or self-restraint of the unsociable.
Regarding the tendency of our thoughts to mix with emotions, to sort things out and then make quick and impulsive decisions, then its development has its own meaning. Life becomes much easier when you don't have to analyze every choice. We will get bogged down in analysis if we do not have our own practical skills that make it possible to overcome the routine without spending a lot of mental strength.
But when heuristics begin to dominate information processing, we misapply practical skills, which impairs our ability to notice unusual differences or new opportunities. Therefore, experts or authorities in a particular area are often hooked on their arrogance. Heuristics promote hook formation!
People who cling to a particular way of thinking or behaving do not pay enough attention to the world as such. They are not sensitive to any context, because they see the world according to their categories, which may or may not relate to a specific situation. Being emotionally nimble means reacting, feeling the context and reacting to the world as it is. … After all, when we do not act of our own free will, with the full range of choice and intelligence, then we are hooked.
The ancient Greek master of the paradox, Heraclitus, said that you cannot enter the same river twice, meaning that the world is constantly changing and creates new opportunities and situations for us. To take full advantage of this, you need to constantly abandon old categories and form new ones. The most interesting and fresh solutions appear when we approach the matter from the position of a neophyte, with an open eye looking at innovative experience. This is the cornerstone of emotional agility.
To be emotionally agile means to know to perceive all your emotions, to consider the most difficult and contradictory ones as a lesson for yourself. This means going beyond conditioned or programmed cognitive and emotional responses (your hooks) to live with a clear understanding of the circumstances at any time and respond and act accordingly with your most precious values.
And the bonus is the 4 most common hooks.
Hook number 1 "I am my thoughts / I am my past" … Thoughts do not condition behavior. Long-standing stories do not condition behavior. We ourselves condition our behavior.
Hook number 2 Monkey thinking (a term taken from the field of meditation) is an endless internal chatter, jumping from topic to topic, like a monkey from tree to tree. By spinning all these virtual dramas in his head, a person ceases to live in the present.
Hook # 3 Old neglected ideas. Ideas that were once functional and helped us may stop working as conditions change.
Hook # 4 Lost Justice. Since ancient times, people have held to the idea of justice, revenge, or proof (without a shadow of a doubt) that they are right. And that need can take your best years away.
To be continued…
The article appeared thanks to the book "Emotional Agility" by Susan David
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