Emotion only lasts in our bodies for about 90 seconds. After that, the physical reaction dissipates, UNLESS our cognitive brain kicks in and starts connecting our anger with past events.
Interpretation
Emotions are temporary physical responses that can be prolonged by our thoughts and associations.
This quote by Jill Bolte Taylor highlights the transient nature of emotions, suggesting that they typically only last for approximately 90 seconds in our bodies unless we allow our minds to dwell on them by linking them to past experiences. This understanding emphasizes the importance of emotional awareness and the power of our cognitive processes in shaping how we feel over longer periods.
In practice
During a workshop on emotional intelligence, one could use this quote to illustrate how to effectively manage emotions.
Unfortunately, as a society, we do not teach our children that they need to tend carefully the garden of their minds. Without structure, censorship, or discipline, our thoughts run rampant on automatic. Because we have not learned how to more carefully manage what goes on inside our brains, we remain vulnerable to not only what other people think about us, but also to advertising and/or political manipulation.
We have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world.
The better we understand the choices we have been making, either consciously or unconsciously, the more say we will have in the world we create. Neurocircuitry may be neurocircuitry, but we don't have to run on automatic.
Just like children, emotions heal when they are heard and validated.
The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.
True humility-the basis of the Christian system-is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues.
The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.
The duty of holding a Neutral conduct may be inferred, without any thing more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of Peace and amity toward other Nations.
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not / You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
But who can remember pain, once itβs over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.
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