How To Achieve A Zen Attitude To Cope With Every Day Problems

People usually have trouble responding and coping with every day problems. For a long time, I, myself, had trouble with my daily “problems”….

Why? Because we tend to react the same way every time. Our brain is lazy when it comes to problem solving. It has a “tried” response, that is usually easy to implement, and fast, you don´t even need to think, you just react to a stimulus.

For a lot of people this “tried and easy response” is anger. They react with anger to everything and everyone, and the reaction is an impulsive reaction, because there is no thought involved, just  emotions.

But, there is another type of response, a “more elaborate and custom response” to each  situation that we have, we could  create a new reaction in that instant. A response that requires our brain to take action “thinking”, and not just reacting.

Our brain is very complex. If we could simplify it in order to understand its functions towards problems, we could say that our brain has various types of responses. It has a double response, which is the fastest, and a triple response (these are my words, just to simplify things. A note of caution, I´m not a neuropsychologist, nor a neuro-something…I´m just a psychotherpist, trying to explain in simple words, so please bare with me, and if I´m mixing something please clarify in a comment.)

This double response process takes place in our brain and nervous system. It is caused by a  division in our brain in which our brain is divided into different reactive and thinking parts. According to neuroscience, we have three brains merged into one. Neoroscientist Paul D. MacLean (1913-2007) proposed that the human brain is really three brains in one, a “Triune brain”. A Reptilian Complex (Or sometimes called Croc Brain), a Limbic System (Central Area), and The Neocortex (The rugged part of our brain).

If we just react impulsively to a problem, we are actually using an Action-Reaction loop. For instance, I used to react with anger towards my daughter (She is seven now), every time she walked without shoes, and her socks ended black with soil. It happened every day, various times each day. She took her socks off – out came an angry  shout, from my mouth, towards her. My brain just reacted without thinking.

What I needed was a tripple phase loop, or action-PAUSE-reaction. The double loop is used by our reptilian brain, or croc brain, and it usually helps to protect us. It is why you take away your hand from fire. You react without thinking, BAM! But the triple reaction I needed, takes time, because it needs thinking. It takes our neo-cortex of our brain to carry out the action, so we can have an action-PAUSE-reaction setting for a problem, or in other words, your brain receives the stimulus through the senses, it processes the stimulus, sends it to the Neo-cortex, and the neo-cortex decides what to do ( Hence the PAUSE time), you decide what to do with your neo-cortex, and then you DO it…

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/achieve-zen-attitude-cope-every-day-problems/