How We Do Things that We Regret Immediately

Have this ever happened to you?

• Ever become suddenly angry at someone and done things that you regret?
• Ever been aware while a situation was unfolding that you want to behave differently?
• Do you find yourself unable to avoid the same unfortunate situation?
• Found yourself addicted to food, drugs, or sex?

Introducing Miggy and Courtney

How is it possible to lose control of yourself?  How can you find yourself an observer while it seems that someone else has taken control of you?

We talk about the mind as if it is one thing, but the reality is that here are at least two parts to the mind. Just like we use the term car as a single thing doesn't prevent it from being composed of an engine, passenger compartment, trunk, etc.

One of the oldest parts of the brain is the amygdala (Miggy for short); it is responsible for the flight or fight response when we are exposed to danger.  Miggy receives all stimulus (visual, auditory, etc) from the outside world and if it perceives patterns of danger then it goes into fight/flight, otherwise it does nothing.

We used to live in a dangerous world, so Miggy's behaviour is what kept the human race from extinction.  It is a good thing to react to dangerous stimuli and take action to fight or flee.

In a modern world we are not facing dangerous like tigers and lions.  Instead, we react to criticisms, insults, and other things as if they were real dangers. There is plenty of literature on this, so I won't go into it (see 'Amygdala hijack').

Miggy is designed to give you fast answers based on simple pattern recognition. Miggy leads you to make the same decisions when you get the same stimulus:

• You see food that you like and you get hungry
• You see someone attractive and you want to stare at them
• Someone cuts you off with their car and you get angry

The thinking part of your brain that can sort out impressions and come to conclusions is the prefrontal cortex (Courtney).

Survival depends on fast decisions to danger, otherwise, you can be hurt or killed before you have a chance to react (see Dodo).  This is why Courtney is not in control of the bus.  Miggy gets first crack at inputs to the brain because he can can save your life in the presence of danger, however, if he starts executing, then Courtney becomes a passenger along for the ride.

When Miggy decides not to do anything then Courtney gets a crack at what to do next.  Courtney is the part of the mind that can think through situations, look at alternatives. The problem is that Courtney is very, very slow compared to Miggy.

Situations that get you angry or cause you to react and 'lose control' are all situations where Miggy has sprung into action leaving Courtney as a passive observer.  When Miggy is no longer in control, i.e. the threat has passed, Courtney reasserts control and this is when you experience regret.

The worst thing is that Courtney is aware when an automatic reaction by Miggy is taking place. Sometimes you  know how you are going to react, but feel that you are powerless to stop it.

What Does This Mean?

It is important to know how Miggy is programmed in the first place and then what it takes to get bad habits out.

Every time you receive a stimulus the mind dissects the patterns and stores the information.  This is why you never get a chance to make a second impression, there is always some part of the first impression that is stored up.  So any bad first impression will take quite a bit of sustained effort to make it go away.

Every time you react to a situation, especially negatively through anger, Miggy records this.  Every time you have the same angry reaction to the same stimulus you reinforce Miggy and make it that much easier for you to have the exact same reaction when the situation presents itself again.

For example, the first time that you have an angry reaction to a situation there is generally some confusion and Courtney has a crack at preventing you from getting angry.  If you give in to the anger then the impression is registered.  If you give in enough then Miggy will always take over in those situations and you will always get angry.

However, each time you give in to Miggy and become angry it becomes more ingrained.  You will find yourself getting angry faster and faster when presented with stimuli that frustrate you. Frustration leads to anger, anger leads to violence.

Any activity that you repeat often and automatically will get driven into your amygdala.  Each time you do this you give more control to Miggy.

What Can You Do?

The only way to get Courtney back in control is to go through a process of recognizing dangerous stimuli before Miggy takes action and choosing not to take action.  This is really hard.

The reality is that you need to go through the following process:

1. Miggy springs into action and Courtney recognizes it afterwards
2. Courtney is aware that Miggy is acting but can't intervene
3. Courtney becomes aware that Miggy will act but chooses not to stop Miggy
4. Courtney is able to prevent Miggy from acting

Point of No Return

Most people are not even aware that they are ceding control of Courtney to Miggy.  But the more you allow Miggy to take control the harder it gets to take control back.  

The point of no return is where a stimulus causes an automatic reaction where Courtney is not even aware that the action is taking place, such as:

• Something contradictory happens and you get angry immediately
• You see a particular food and you must eat it
• You see an attractive person and then your mind is consumed by them
• You are taking drugs compulsively

Once you hit the point of no return it is virtually impossible for Courtney to reassert control.  Short of hitting rock bottom where you realize the sheer danger of the automatic action, you will have lost control.

After Thought

We all develop behaviours or buttons for automatic behaviour as we get older.  But unless we are vigilant and keep Courtney firmly in control, we will eventually cede control in some situations to Miggy, and will then have to live with the consequences of automatic actions.

The Illusion of Control

We like to believe that we are in control of our destiny, but this is only an illusion. The illusion of control exists only when you restrict your attention to the few things that you can influence.

Trying to get control of everything will lead you to lose control, but more importantly, lose time and the ability to appreciate life.

What you control is small compared to what you can't control

You can't control when it rains, you can't control the way other people drive, and you can't control if a downturn in the economy wipes out your company or personal wealth.  As much as you try, you really only influence things -- you do not control them.

We confuse the fact that we can influence a few things with the notion that we can control everything.

For example, we like to believe that we are in control of our bodies, but are we?  People that learn to control some aspect of their bodies (athletes, ballet dancers, martial artists, contortionists) spend about 5 years with full time training to develop that level of control.  B

ut learning precise control of the body does not translate into other kinds of body control, i.e. ballerinas can't break boards and martial artists can't do swan lake.

The average person thinks he controls his body because of restricting attention to day to day activities. Most of our day to day activities do not require much in the way of body control.

The easiest way to see that we don't control our bodies is to expand our vision to include old age.  Old age makes us lose control of different body processes regardless of how much control that you believe that you had in your youth.  It may be different for each person, but we lose sharpness in our vision, clarity in our hearing, and control over our limbs.

We can filter out images of old people with walkers or electric wheel chairs to give ourself the illusion that we are in control, but the reality is that we are not.


You may influence your body, but you do not control it.

People seek control to avoid pain and get what they want.  There is no doubt that through education and skill building you can do this to some extent.  But when the pursuit of control dominates your ability to appreciate the world you can easily lose years of your life without realizing it.

Devoting your energy to getting control of things is likely to cause you to lose control.  Some people like getting directions, but very few people like to be controlled.  Try to control all the people around you and you will lose them.

Seeking to control people is the fastest way to lose them 

Parents who try to control their children will often lose them and wonder what happened.  It only takes one half of a couple to try to control the other person before the relationship becomes doomed to failure.  The irony is that the controlling person will often assume that the relationship failed because they were not controlling enough!

As Stephen Covey suggests, every relationship has a value, just like a bank account.  Do something for the other person and the value of the account goes up.

When you attempt to control other people you are making a withdrawal from that account, and continual attempts to control someone else will bankrupt that account.

Remember, that others can see constant suggestions as a sign that you are trying to control them.  Instead wait for people to ask your opinion rather than just volunteering it all the time.  It does not matter whether you are able to see ways in which other people can improve their lives, worry about your life -- it is up to them to work on theirs.

The way to a happy and productive life is to understand the illusion of control and to move to a position of wanting to influence others but accepting and being happy if that does not happen.

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