The majority of our actions are autonomous, that is instinctive and automatic. There is nothing wrong with that, so long as life is working out okay, this is the most quick and efficient method. When things do not go well, it is time to take manual control and do Intentional Actions. Using Intentional Actions is how we retrain our brain from instinctive behaviours that are not good, and thus we retrain our brain.
Changing habits, instincts and autonomous behaviours is simple in concept, but takes hard conscious effort to do.
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The Instinctive Loop to Intentional Loop
Mindfulness is the act of being conscious of what is happening around you, recognising a possible need to do something and then intentionally doing specific actions for a desired outcome. Mindfulness allows us to be present to both good things, allowing us to appreciate the beauty of this world, and bad things, when things are dangerous, harmful or messy. Mindfulness allows us to verify, understand, plan and implement thought out, logical and wise actions – these are Intentional Actions.
Most people do not have enough energy resources (Spoons) to be mindful all of the time. Being mindful takes time, takes energy and is tiring.
Most of what we do is manage through automatic processes. We breathe automatically, our heart manages on its own, we eat when we are hungry, we sleep when we are tired. If we are about to be harmed, we automatically act to avoid or decrease harm. Our autonomous overt actions are Instinctive.
When our automatic actions are resulting in good outcomes, we can allow them to continue. When our actions result in not good outcomes, we need to take manual control, becoming mindful and have Intentional Actions.
The Instinct Loop
Habit and instinct are formed from prior successful actions evolved from biological defaults, learning from others, and our own trial and error.
When we come across a situation, our brain attempts tries to solve this problem by look at solutions to similar problems:
- Similar circumstances, where this problem is like another problem we have encountered
- Similar feeling, where our Reaction Feeling to this situation is similar in another situation
If that “similar situation” had a solution that worked before, then we will first try that solution before trying something else. This is generally a good an cheap solution. Sometimes the prior solution is not good, or it is not transferrable to this situation, leading to undesirable outcomes.
When we don’t have a viable solution in our memory bank, our brain defaults to the Fear Emergency Reflex, the 4 F’s:
- Freeze
- Fawn
- Flight
- Fight
Ideally we default to these actions in that order. We evolved this strategy as it defaults to us having the greatest chance of surviving. Surviving does not mean happy, and we can often spend significant time and energy fixing the solution afterwards.
We need to recognise, at some point, that we are about to do something that doesn’t seem right. At that point, we need to pause, reconsider and do better.
Let us look at the Instinctive Loop process.
- An Event / Incident has occurred
- Memory / Perception: Our senses take the event / incident in and compares it to our past to get an understanding of what it means, which flavours our perception of what we sense
- Reactive Feeling: Our amygdala gives us a type of feeling about the thing, and an intensity of that feeling
- This is a simple feeling of “safe” or “not safe”
- “Not safe” is often interpreted as the primary feelings of Fear, Anger, or Disgust
- “Safe” is often interpreted as Joy, Contentment, or Optimism
- Default Action: our Primary Feelings have default Actions attached to them, depending on the type of feeling and the intensity of that feeling
- Reinforcement: If we survived, we store this solution, which increases the chances of it being the default Perception, Reactive Feeling and Default Action next time
The Intention Loop
To enact the Intention Loop, we need to break out of the automatic Instinct Loop.
We cannot change the Event / Incident, Memory / Perception or Reactive Feeling. What we can do is insert a question between our Reactive Feeling and our Default Action.
That question is “Where is the harm?” which prompts us to Assess Danger.
Clear and Present Danger: When physical harm is actively being done right now, we should be able to identify that and generally doing our automatic action is the best move to survival. In this rare situation, we go back to the Instinct Loop. Optimising the Instinct Loop in these situations takes some specific specialist training, which is beyond the scope of this article. Consider self defence classes, emergency services classes or other specific classes that deal with that kind of specific harmful action.
Not Clear, Not Present: When physical harm is not being actively done right now, then we have time to do something. We may not have much time (you may need to speed run the next bits), or we may actually have lots of time available (you could do research on this problem). On average, though, you have “some time” between “not much” and “plenty”. We’ll mainly focus on that fuzzy “some time”.
- An Event / Incident has occurred
- Memory / Perception: Our senses take the event / incident in and compares it to our past to get an understanding of what it means, which flavours our perception of what we sense
- Reactive Feeling: Our amygdala gives us a type of feeling about the thing, and an intensity of that feeling
- This is a simple feeling of “safe” or “not safe”
- “Not safe” is often interpreted as the primary feelings of Fear, Anger, or Disgust
- “Safe” is often interpreted as Joy, Contentment, or Optimism
- Assess Danger: Is their clear and present danger, is someone actually being physically hurt?
- If yes, do the Default Action. Specialist classes can help you learn how to do better in these special situations.
- If no, even if it seems highly stressful, then you have time to do the next steps.
- Most people can be negotiated with, so even if they are threatening to do harm, the fact that they are not currently doing so means they want something instead.
- Animals and objects can’t be reasoned with. If a car is imminently about to hit someone (or similar), you should go to the Default Action. By “imminently”, if no action is taken the person is about to be hurt, and to prevent that, you need to act right now, and acting in a few moments would be too late.
- Slow Down / Calm Down: most likely we have received an adrenaline spike to help us deal with the Incident. It is hard to think through adrenaline. If you are panicking, we need to settle this down first.
- Breathing Exercise: simply slow your breathing down – this slows your heart down and signals to your body to decrease the amount of adrenaline in your blood stream
- Grounding: reorient your presence of mind to here and now
- Mindful: switching your brain from Instinctive / Mindless / Automatic thinking into understanding, planning and enacting
- We have a page about how to calm down and get back to yourself.
- Think it Through: We need to build a real understanding of the situation. Our first impression is likely wrong, so we need to move through that.
- What is really going on?
- Where is the harm?
- Check facts, discover assumptions, challenge the defaults
- Make a Plan: You are going to have to do something about this situation, choosing inaction is a choice of action
- Will this matter resolve itself okay if you do no action?
- If yes, do you need to be present?
- Yes, Monitor it: watch and be ready to get involved if needed. Best to have a few options pre-thought up, not too many; and be ready to restart this process if the situation goes beyond your guesses.
- No, walk away.
- If it won’t resolve itself:
- What outcome do you think is going to be best for this situation?
- How will you get that to happen?
- What do you need to do to trigger that outcome?
- If yes, do you need to be present?
- Will this matter resolve itself okay if you do no action?
- Action: Do the plan. Don’t forget to Adapt as things proceed – no plan survives past the first 5 minutes without adaptation.
- Review: This is where the real learning takes place
- Did it work?
- What did you learn from this?
- What could you improve next time to get better outcomes?
- It is fine to have no real improvement you can spot.
- Spotting things that you can improve on does not negate the fact that it worked.
- It is okay if the plan failed.
- We can be ignorant of key information
- We may not have the resources to enact a better outcome
- The “least bad option” is better than the other options
- Other people don’t necessarily have the same goals, ideas or thoughts as us
- Abusive people are generally going to be abusive
- “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life.” Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek The Next Generation
- Reinforcement: If we survived, we store this review and solution, which increases the chances of it being the default Perception, Reactive Feeling and Default Action next time
The Combined Chart
