The Malfunctioning Mind

I talk about a wide variety of topics in my blog each month, including “Why You Can’t Always Be At Your Best”, “Training Deep Focus”, “Being Your Own Coach”, and the surprising link between procrastination and perfectionism. 

Sometimes, however, it’s important to review one of the most important concepts of the mental game – the one that explains why and how emotions can cause so much chaos. I call it the malfunctioning mind, but it’s more widely known in research circles as the Yerkes-Dodson law.  

If you are not aware of this concept, or if you forgot about it, your approach to improving your mental game will not only be less effective, it might actually keep you stuck in a bad cycle. And if there was one thing within the mental game that you could tattoo to your brain so you never forget it, this would be it. For those who have been following my work for some time, that should say something. 

Even if you are familiar with the material, it’s worth reading again to get the ink on the metaphorical tattoo more pronounced.

In short, the brain is organized in a hierarchy. The first level is where all of the most important functions of the brain are stored, such as heart rate, breathing, balance, and sleep and wake cycles. Skills you have mastered, like riding a bike, are also there. The second level of the brain is the emotional system, and the third is the mental level, containing all of the higher brain functions such as thinking, planning, self-awareness, organization, and emotional control. 

But the hierarchy has a catch. And it’s a big one.

 

The Demise of Higher Brain Functions

The way the brain works is truly amazing when you stop to think about it. And those higher brain functions are what put us at the top of the food chain. 

But the catch is that when the emotional system becomes overactive, it shuts down higher brain functions, limiting your ability to process information, make correct decisions, translate your thoughts into action, access things you’ve learned recently, and even control your emotions. 

You heard that last one right, intense emotions make it harder to control your emotions! How crazy is that!?

When emotions are overactive, the loss of higher brain functions is something that no one can control and both positive and negative emotions can cause this breakdown in mental functioning. Examples include:

You’re aware that what you’re doing is wrong, but you can’t stop yourself; it’s like you’re compelled to take excessive risks.Your mind moves so fast that you miss key pieces of data,so your decision-making process is incomplete.You overweight the importance of some factors when making decisions and fail to consider relevant ones.You know the right answer, but can’t access it—as if your head is in a fog.You fall back into bad habits that you’re surprised to find you’re still doing.When emotions are at their highest level—shock, euphoria, blind rage—your mind goes completely blank and you stop thinking altogether.

The nuance in this concept comes into play when you consider that emotion is essential for performance. Problems only start when there’s too much or too little of it. 

 

The Tipping Point

The scientific principle that describes the relationship between emotion and performance, the Yerkes-Dodson law, states that your performance improves as your emotions rise, but only to a certain point. 

According to this law, your threshold is the tipping point on the right side of the curve, where emotions start to become overpowering. At this point, performance declines, because the emotional system begins to shut down higher brain functions as I mentioned before.

The further you pass your emotional threshold, the worse your thinking, processing, self-awareness, and ability to control your emotions becomes. 

Of course, everyone’s threshold is different. It’s a very personal metric. Keep an eye out for when your biases start to pop up more, your decision-making ability starts to change, and your access to certain information starts to shrink.

On the left side of the curve, the opposite happens. When you don’t have enough energy or emotion to think, as occurs when you’re tired, bored, burned out, or lacking discipline, you need to build up enough emotion to kick the thinking part of your brain into gear.

The sweet spot is to keep your emotional level at the top of the curve, so your performance can be at its highest level more often.

 

Some Practical Advice 

On the surface this concept may seem simple, but it has massive implications for how you address emotional problems. While you can’t control the fact that the emotional system has the power to shut down your ability to think, you’re not powerless—you just have to work within this limitation.

Start trying to control your emotions before they have gone too far past your emotional threshold. Timing matters a lot. You must catch the rise of emotion early, when you still have the mental strength to control them. If you don’t, and it becomes too intense, you’ll be in an uphill battle for control.

If your energy is lacking, use your goals to power more energy and/or change things in your routine, even on a situational basis. It doesn’t have to be every day. On a bad day choose lighter exercise vs. an intense workout, meditate, watch inspirational videos. If you don’t have enough energy powering the mind, your performance will be worse off as a result. 

On the flip side, when you are dealing with intense emotions that can cause you to underperform, you need a good map of the escalation of that emotion so you can take action quickly while still retaining enough emotional control.

If your emotions go from calm, stable, performing well to OMG, raging, freaking out, euphoric – 50 mph to 90 mph in a flash, that indicates you are dealing with accumulated emotion. It could be that it has built up recently over the last few days or it could be a long-standing problem. If bigger issues have built up over a longer period of time, you need to chip away at the old emotion in order for your mind not to malfunction in the present.

Emotion is a powerful energy source but in order to be at your best, or prevent your worst, you need to learn to harness it or take command of it.

 

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