117 Highest Potential: How to Stop Overreacting
Ever overreact? If you're like me, you've had your fair share of regrets. We all have times when we overreact, and most of the time, it's not in our best interest. So how do we slow down and get more control over our own reactions?
In this episode, my awesome friend Fiona Murden joins me to discuss the reactionary brain and what steps we can take to decrease overreacting. We're going to talk about evidence-based exercises that we can do to train ourselves to gain control over our habitual reactions to situations and people.
Fiona Murden is a great friend, awesome mom, award-winning author, and host of Dot to Dot Behind the Person Podcast. We discuss the science and real-life applications of topics that help us perform under pressure and achieve our highest potential without burning out. Fi and I hit it off immediately! We are both passionate about teaching the science of resilience, and as parents, we both have a special interest in teaching kids how they can positively influence their brains. We are on a mission to widely share practical cognitive and motivational research tools with curious people who want to fulfill their potential and ultimately lead happier lives. Fiona is a Chartered UK Organizational Psychologist who coaches top performers and C-suite individuals to achieve optimal performance. Juna teaches high-achieving students of all ages at the Juilliard School and has taught at NYU, Columbia, Barnard, Achievement First, and at many other organizations.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Juna Bobby 0:00
Our brains are powerful. We have the potential to shift into a positive mindset, but it's not as simple as it sounds. To access a positive mindset and mental toughness under pressure and during setbacks, we need self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking skills. So if you're curious about science-backed tools to strengthen your mental resilience, you're in the right place. Welcome to the mind-body space podcast, where I aim to share actionable tools you can use to reach your highest potential. I'm Dr. Juna Bobby, I'm a mom of two kids who love challenges for the most part, and I'm also a physician, and my specialty is teaching the science of resilience. In this episode, my awesome friend Fiona Merton joins me to share her expertise on human performance. Fiona is an award-winning author and chartered UK organizational psychologist who works with top-level executives and leaders. Today, we're discussing one of my favorite topics, the reactionary brain or how not to overreact. This is one of my favorite topics because I tend to overreact sometimes. So we all have times when we overreact and most of the time, it's not in our best interest. So we're going to talk about evidence-based exercises that we can do to train ourselves to decrease overreacting to things that are not actually a threat, and probably not the wisest thing to do in the moment, and things that don't really help us with our overall goal and where we want to go in life. Of course, sometimes we need to overreact in order to catch things that may be a danger to us. So our brains would much rather look at a garden hose and think it's a poisonous snake than the other way around. Because otherwise, if we didn't have this sort of reaction to dangers, we might miss something. And that wouldn't serve us in the long run, evolutionarily in our survival. This is what psychologists call negativity bias. In other words, our brains would rather be safe than sorry.
Hello, Fi, how are you?
Fiona Murden 2:08
I am good. Thanks. How are you?
Juna Bobby 2:12
I'm good. So lovely to see you, as usual.
You look gorgeous, as usual. Alright, so today, we're going to talk about the reactionary brain and how not to jump to conclusions or get into our overreaction brain? Because obviously, we all know it's hard to do that sometimes because psychologists call it negativity bias, right? Where we kind of jump to negative thoughts naturally. Yeah. So when you're working with C-level executives, which is what you do, how do you assess how reactive people are? And what are your recommendations when, you know, leaders become more over-reactive in situations, and it can throw them off their focus?
Fiona Murden 3:10
So there isn't a specific test, but you say a collection of behaviors that would lead to someone being more reactionary. And I think the first place we would look would be decision-making styles. So if someone is very action-oriented, for example, rather than reflective, they're more likely to be reactionary, but there are different forms of it. Because there's what we would say is you can be action-oriented. I don't know if you have this expression in the States; shoot from the hip. Oh, yes.
Juna Bobby 3:49
Yeah. So that was an American thing. But I guess it's
Fiona Murden 3:54
no, as I said, it probably is actually an American thing, isn't it? It's cowboys shooting from the hip. But it's, that's when it gets into the more negative space, because you can have someone who's very action-oriented, and they get things done. But you can have someone that lets the reactive brain or emotional brain lead their decision-making or their behavior. And that's when it becomes problematic.
Juna Bobby 4:21
And how can you tell about yourself? How do you become self-aware of how reactionary you are on a scale?
Fiona Murden 4:31
I think we know because I think it's that feeling of, oh, I wish I hadn't said that. Or I could have handled that differently. Which we'll get to an extent, but I think if you're getting it, I mean, like everything with behavior and mindset. It's all on that sort of spectrum. And if you're getting it to the extent that it's really problematic, or if other people are feeding back to you that it was problematic. That's when you need to look at it because we're all going to say things we wish we happen sometimes or do things we think; oh, it's making it less frequent is that is the key? Do you
Juna Bobby 5:09
use any kind of scales to measure that? Would you use a scale of one to 10
Fiona Murden 5:14
not specifically, I mean, what you do is if you've got a leader who is, is being really emotional, and not really thinking through the way they're responding, I mean, we'd call it being childish. There's another, well, there's something called the transactional analysis, which is parent adult child. And if you've got someone in parent or child, they're not behaving in a rational way that they're either telling and sort of directing from parenting mode or if they're in child mode, they're just very emotional. And you do see with a lot of leaders; they are emotional because that emotion has helped drive them to where they're at. But with some, it becomes exaggerated in leadership because no one is giving them feedback or they're not giving them the right feedback they need, which means it becomes reinforced, or they actually learned to moderate it. And that's the route you want them to take. But it's often the founders, so people that have set up their own companies. And this is a really massive generalization. But it tends to be the founders that are more reactionary and more emotional than it is the people who work for corporates.
Juna Bobby 6:24
Because founders generally are probably more emotional, because they need that emotion to drive, founding something, which is usually very difficult and challenging.
Fiona Murden 6:35
And also, they get less feedback because they don't have the structure to work within—that you do in corporate where someone will say to you, look, you know, you want to go up to the next level. But if you behave like this, you're going to just annoy everyone. And that's not going to help. Whereas if you're a founder, it's your company, you're leaving, if someone says something you don't like, you don't do business with them, or you know, that's true. Just plow on doing it your way. And so it can get really, it can get quite problematic.
Juna Bobby 7:05
Interesting, interesting. And now when you say childish, you know, I work with many teenagers and tweens. And so, how would you go back to that age group and set some standards or mental exercises that they can do to strengthen this? Basically, we're talking about executive brain functioning, right? Because it's emotional regulation. Yeah. Would there be anything that you do as a parent and seeing executive-level professionals that you would recommend?
Fiona Murden 7:34
I mean, I think mindfulness is just brilliant for it's finding the root to use mindfulness that works for you. That's the key thing quickly, teenagers, you know, they'll try mindfulness. Having said that, same with Chief execs I work with, and they'll be like, no, no, no, that doesn't work for me. I can't sit still for that.
Juna Bobby 7:52
Okay, you know what? Mindfulness has gotten such a bad rap because there are a lot of people who are just so turned off by that word. Now, because it has become such a buzzword, I think it has had a backlash.
Fiona Murden 8:05
And people misunderstand what it actually means exactly. If you do use it effectively, like through the sessions that you run, for example, Juna, if it's used effectively, and if you find the one that works for you, and if you stick with it, because it's like a skill, it's not something that you just give a few goals, and suddenly it works, it's something you have to because in effect, you're exercising your brain. And if you want to strengthen that connection between the executive function of your brain, which is the bit that makes the nice rational decisions, and they'll bet you don't sort of think oh, my goodness, I wish I hadn't said that, because it's already decided what the best outcome would be, and they helped you think it through, it strengthens that connection with the limbic system, or the emotional centers of the brain, which makes it easier to manage your emotions.
Juna Bobby 8:52
So kind of slowing down and doing that as a practice. Yeah. And going back to people having a reaction to it. So just last weekend, when I started my classes, I always have one person who's like, I can't stand mindfulness. No, I can't do that. And then one person who absolutely loves it. So I tend to stay with the science a bit so that it could appeal to both of those people. How do you present it to executives?
Fiona Murden 9:22
When I'm working with them, I tell them they have to do it.
I send them off with something like Headspace, and then I pester them every day, saying are you doing it? Are you doing it yet? I do explain the science. Yes, I do find that's a really effective way of helping people understand the point of doing it. But I also think it's finding the way that works for you. So it might be that headspace works. It might be that doing some breathing work helps, or it might be like, No thank you. Or it might be that Yoga works, or it might be again, it might be not really me, but it might be even something like going for a run And using that consciously as the space to separate yourself from your emotions. But the quick, the quick tips to doing this are to name your emotions. So I think we've talked about this before, Juna. So you know, and that's I'm not telling you I'm just sharing with your audience, of course,
Juna Bobby 10:17
But I always get something out of our conversations as well.
Fiona Murden 10:21
Oh, thank you. So, if you name an emotion, so for example, your little brother or sister comes in, you want to yell at them, you think if I yell at them, I'm going to get privileges taken away from me by my parents, so I really shouldn't yell at them. What do you think? How are you? How do you feel? I can think of a few swear words, but we're not going to use those. So how do you feel? You think I am really; I feel really angry, frustrated, I feel annoyed because they always come in and whining when I'm trying to do something; they're always trying to get attention. But you label those emotions. So it can even write them down or somehow frustrated, angry, irritated, annoyed. By doing that, firstly, you've slowed yourself down; you've stopped yourself reacting. Secondly, from a neurological, psychological perspective, you've stepped away from the emotion, which gives you enough of a space to then think through how you're going to respond.
Juna Bobby 11:25
Yes, absolutely. Just to add to that, you're literally moving your brain processing; we call that bottom-up processing your limbic system, your emotional center, and moving it into your language processing centers, which are called Wernicke's and Broca's area. But those are, you know, technical terms, but it's nice to know this anatomy, even as a child to know these words because it does help to know that there are different parts of your brains that you can activate, you know, and I sound like Spock when I'm talking like this, but
Juna Bobby 12:00
it's, it's a type of distraction, almost, where you distract yourself out of your bottom-up overreaction brain; as you were talking about, it's so important to label your emotions. And there is another trick that I learned from a Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, the Google mindfulness group; it's basically saying, I am feeling this emotion in my body. So you say, I feel angry in my stomach, I feel anger in my head, you know, and because neurosciences have shown that emotions occur at the same time in your body, as in your mind, in your brain, at the same exact time it's occurring. So that's another way to step away from that emotion. Of course, it's hard to do when you're in the moment,
Fiona Murden 12:42
it is hard to do. And it's particularly hard when you're a teenager because we know that that connection between those two areas if we're taking it in broadest terms, the executive function and limbic system are not fully developed. Yes. So it makes it harder for a teenager than it does for someone who's in their late 20s.
Juna Bobby 12:59
I know it's hard for me even now.
Fiona Murden 13:04
Yeah, me too.
Juna Bobby 13:04
So I usually say, I mean, it's so cliche, but taking that deep breath really works. Take those breaths, and step away from the situation; if you can. And, again, with the executives, I mean, you can't force them to be mindful because it's such a mental process; you can't really check in on them. Is there any way to measure it? Or do you have them subjectively measure themselves before and after a mindfulness practice, maybe to convince them
Fiona Murden 13:33
there is the subjective measure, and then there's also feedback. So the type of leader that will want a coach working with them, who isn't a coach that just tells them what they want to hear, I guess, I am not one of those.
Juna Bobby 13:46
What use is that kind of coach anyway?
Fiona Murden 13:49
It just makes things worse and reinforces behaviors, but it's to get feedback from colleagues. And that feedback can be all sorts of things. But I mean, fundamentally, it might just be on a scale of one to 10. How reactive Do you think I am? And then you go away, do some mindfulness, or you do some work on it? And then you come back and say, on a scale of one to 10, how reactive Do you think I am now? Or it could be that you use the, you know, an official 360 leadership, send it out to colleagues, and you gather that information, but you should see a change occurring if someone is consciously working on that. And
Juna Bobby 14:29
what is the timeframe? Like, when do you get that baseline? And do you see I give you two months or three months? Do you have a timeline before you test them? Again, with a
Fiona Murden 14:38
360? It would usually be six months, but you can, but we do the mini 360. So the mini check-ins, sometimes they're called Pulse surveys. Those are sort of really short, sharp. So if, for example, you've done, I don't know, say a set of ninety questions. The ones in between would just focus on the area you're working on. So you might have ten questions that just go out to those people again. And those could be all around. How do I react in meetings? How do I respond when something makes me stressed? You know, some things that are very emotionally big?
Juna Bobby 15:13
What is the timeframe for those?
Fiona Murden 15:16
Yeah, that can be every four weeks every six weeks?
Juna Bobby 15:19
But I like that, that the longer version is six months; you give them time to really change and work on things. I love it. I want to try that in my household. With our kids, do 360 at family dinners. Yeah. Or maybe it's not good to eat and talk about the stuff at the same time as it probably causes indigestion and irritable bowel syndrome.
Fiona Murden 15:41
All of the above. Yes.
Juna Bobby 15:44
Okay. Thank you. That was so helpful. It's wonderful. I love our conversations. So I'll see you next time.
Fiona Murden 15:52
See you next time.
Juna Bobby 15:53
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you got as much out of it as I did. To support the creation of this content, subscribe and share this podcast with anyone curious about achieving their highest potential Gosha fell fees website, Fiona merdan.com. To find out more about her podcast and award-winning books, and then go on over to mind-body space.com to sign up for my newsletter, who get tips from a unique neuroscience space planner and courses developed from over 10 years of experience teaching high performing students of all ages at Juilliard, NYU Columbia, achievement first and many other organizations. Thanks again for spending this time with me. Until next time, this is Dr. Juna wishing you and your family wellness.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai