This week's challenge
how much are you a rabbit in the headlights?
Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash
Happy Thursday, Substackers 🙋🏻♀️
We can think of our human selves as having three systems, here is a picture of it!
We move between these systems constantly, throughout our waking day. There is not a linear, or set movement, we just jump, often with no awareness from one to the other, hence the double ended arrows.
Threat System, this is our evolutionary response to threat, the old grizzly bear at cave we talked about last week. You can see the emotions like anger, fear and disgust in the red box above.
Once we are in threat, this system directs our bodies physiology, our mental attention, how we think, behave and the emotions we need to find safety. This can often be mental safety, like avoidance, procrastination and so on.
When we feel fear linked to situations it can often lead us to avoid them as well, even when its thing we have to do. This is a safety strategy, eg “if I don’t do that I won’t be disappointed or feel a failure or found out as being no good at my job”.
Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash
We are like that rabbit in the headlights when we are in this system and we are focussed only on escape. It is rare that we are able to think clearly when we are in the red.
Drive System, this is like our reward system! That lovely and can be addictive feeling (dopamine linked) of achievement. Getting that thing that your drive system made you strive for. Like writing on Substack for a year and suddenly seeing subscribers find you! You can see the emotions we really love in the blue box. These emotions motivate us to move towards resources and goals that might be helpful to us, and leave us feeling good when we achieve them. We can sometimes get stuck in this system and overwork, as just one example.
Soothing System, this is our down time system. It ia so important and we often lack enough of this system. Added to which, ‘society’ does not approve of ‘not doing’, more pressure to be doing all the time. You can see the emotions in the green box. This is when we are not trying to achieve, not feeling threatened. It is important to have a strong soothing system so we can approach the motivation system in a balanced and healthy way. We often associate this system with giving and receiving care from others.
Generally, we do better in every way, physically and mentally when we have a strong balanced system. Equal circles in effect, in our daily lives.
The challenge:
Start to notice which system you are in.
Notice how much of the day you are in each system.
What have you discovered? Are you in one more than another?
Why is this important? We can think that when we need to achieve things, need to get a business off the ground, earn more money, that doing more and more and more, is the only way. Sometimes we do have no choice but to work a lot of hours, but sometimes we do have a choice or a choice about how we do it. Whichever it is, we can actually improve our productivity by changing things up. Even if this feels like an alien concept to you, it is something that is worth thinking about. If you open your mind when you are in your soothing system, you may come up with a brilliant idea or two.
I would love to hear your experiences of this.
Have a lovely rest of your day
Jane
(I need to design a fancy signature, on the to do list, coming soon!)
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