Overcoming the mental obstacles that come in the way of our happiness
The world is a safer place right now than it has ever been. We are better prepared to tackle health issues, are safer from the threat of predators, have better protocols to tackle natural disasters and our average life expectancy is almost double of what it was a century ago. Ironic as it may seem, even in current times, the biggest threats to our own survival are anthropogenic. We live relatively safe lives, yet our minds are heavily focused on every potential for danger around us. Three aspects of our mind, in particular, distract us from being happy.
Let me tell you a little story about our brains and evolution. Once upon a time, many generations ago, our ancestors were cavemen and hunters. Nature gave us a very helpful part of our brain called the ‘amygdala’. This part of our brain was extremely beneficial to our ability to survive. It was and is always on the lookout for danger.
When we saw a snake or in this case a saber-toothed tiger — the amygdala would activate areas in our brain that would trigger a fight or flight response. It would talk to other parts of our brain and trigger a part of the brain to flood our body with hormones that activate us to react quickly — cortisol, the stress hormone. Cortisol makes us get sweaty palms, makes our heart race; all in preparation for a quick reaction. Another part of our brain creates a memory of this, which sort of acts like a post-it or a highlighter in the brain. So, if ever anything similar crops up — the same brain activation, hormone flood, body reaction will occur. The amygdala helped humans stay alive through various life-threatening situations and periods.
There is only one big problem. We no longer have an environment that is physically dangerous but we still have the amygdala, and it is still perpetually on the lookout for danger; searching for something to fear. It has us on the look-out for danger more than it does for pleasure; in those dangerous times, it was more important to see the snake first than to see a luscious fruit on a tree. If you missed the fruit, you would still survive, but not so likely if you missed the snake or tiger. This is the reason the brain has a negativity bias. It is literally hooked to paying attention to fear and anything that could be negative.
Another area where the amygdala plays an important role is in our scarcity bias. We needed to watch out for things that were scarce rather than abundant. So, if water was scarce where you lived, you were on the alert for water. Furthermore, since being a part of a tribe was important for our ancestors’ survival, we developed a need for approval and belonging as well as a fear of rejection.
These three aspects, namely our disposition to look out for danger, our scarcity bias and our tribe mentality, play havoc in our lives. They drive fear, scarcity and rejection, which come in the way of our happiness. And often, these three drives are exploited by marketing firms, news agencies, e-commerce companies and political parties to motivate action in their favour.
Scarcity is why we want more, especially when there is less. De Beers, the diamond company, created a fictional story that diamonds are scarce; they would hold back supply to drive up value. This is just one of many examples of how the marketing and commerce world play to our scarcity mindset.
Experiments and research show that when presented with identical cookies in two jars; one full to the brim with cookies and the other jar with only four — almost everyone picked out a cookie from the near-empty jar, even though our logical response would tell us to pick it from the fuller jar. Scarcity drives up value. That is why when you shop online you will always see a red ‘sale’ flash! Only 2 left, and 1 already in someone else’s basket! This signals scarcity to your brain and triggers the need to buy.
Scarcity makes people do crazy things. There was a cabbage patch doll craze where parents would get violent to get their hands on one for their kids. It made people stand in long queues, overpay, over desire, over want. If we have grown up feeling too much scarcity, as adults we will tend to hoard. We will keep trying to fill voids that we have felt as children.
So, the marketing world sells us scarcity. The media world uses the fact that our brains are addicted to looking out for danger. Given that once upon a time the news was an hour a week, to then 30 minutes a day including weather and sport, and now it is 24x7. Out of 375 news channels in India, 82 broadcast news 24x7.
Fear sells — so if you kept watching the twin towers come crashing down or the bad economic news around COVID-19, you are provoking the primitive part of your brain — the amygdala. Terrifying headlines and negative news do nothing other than stimulate your amygdala, which is known as an amygdala hijack — putting you in a fearful and depressed state of mind. It usually evokes one of three responses: fight, flight or freeze, none of which are good for our emotional health.
An amygdala hijack usually exhibits three signs:
1. Welling of a strong emotion
2. An abrupt and overwhelming irrational reaction
3. A post-episode realization that the reaction was inappropriate
Imagine you see your child playing in the house; painting on a piece of paper on the table. Suddenly, you see your child reaching out for a paint bottle, only to drop it. Colour splashes all over the table. An immediate need to scold or reprimand the child would be indicative of an amygdala hijack. Especially when you realize that the paint can be easily washed off the glass table and no one was in any danger of being hurt.
During this pandemic, if you are watching or reading a lot of news on COVID-19, you may go into a heightened state of cortisol release. Your brain and body will be flooded with hormones that affect your emotional, mental and physical health. Release of cortisol over long periods of time causes stress and trauma. This is a major reason why we need to teach our children to self-regulate. If the same experience happens to two different people — one who has learned to self-regulate their emotional state and one who has not — the amount of cortisol released and the duration of release will differ. So, it makes sense for us to work with our children to strengthen their EQ.
If we truly want our children to thrive, we need to parent them to self-regulate their amygdala and to think in terms of abundance not scarcity, about possibilities and not limitations. The research and findings in the area of neurobiology demonstrates that our thoughts shape our beliefs and our beliefs shape our reality. There is a part of your brain called the RAS that focuses your attention based on your thoughts. So, it is a fulfilling prophecy. If you think about scarcity, it is what you will see more often, feel more often and experience more often. If you think abundance, you will see it more often, feel it more often and experience it more often. What would you prefer for your children?
We could nourish our children’s minds to see the world as a safe place; as an abundant place. Today, the world has less poverty and war, it has more literacy and life expectancy. We should parent our children for an abundant mindset, not a scarce one. If we change their mindsets from competitive to collaborative and from thinking about how to survive to working on ways to thrive, we will build mindset habits that will allow our children to aspire, grow, persevere and be successful.
Whatever is planted in their minds will decide whether they think in terms of survival and scarcity or abundance and flourishing. However, this can only start when we stop thinking in scarce ways. If we stop thinking about limitations and start thinking about possibilities, we will be able to parent our children for it. If we start making a change in our thinking, we can change the way our children will think. We can help our children be happy with what they have, rather than worried about what they do not.
