The theory of the three brains

So you want to know why you abused that guy in the car in front of you in a split second without logic kicking in? Maybe you want to know why you are attracted to certain men/women and not others? Or even why your dog does the crazy things he does? It all comes down to the three brains theory, which explains why we humans are the most highly evolved species on this planet yet sometimes act like lizards and why we still make irrational decisions when we’re in love, and then think they’re completely wrong. logical.

The three brains theory is a theory created to help us figure out why we do the things we do, even though they may seem completely illogical at times. The premise of the theory is that human brains have not simply evolved to the next level from our animal ancestors, but simply built more evolved brains on top of each other. The first brain is the physical brain, this is essentially the fight or flight response found in everything from ants to lizards to humans, basically their most basic core survival mechanisms: surviving and replicating. The second brain is the emotional brain, it is found in most mammals and allows us to emotionally connect with things and do more than just have fight or flight responses. The emotional brain is found in everything from cats and dogs to other mammals with larger brains, like cows and horses. Of course these brains are ordinary and illogical, most of us hardly know how they work and how they make us do illogical stupid things from time to time. Now the third brain is the brain that only humans on this planet fully have (the apes and our close ancestors have very small versions) and it’s what really separates us from the animals, it’s the logical brain. The logical brain is the most widely understood brain, as it is often thought to be the most important and the one that does most of our thinking. However, what most people don’t know is that the other 2 brains are actually more powerful and many times they make our decisions for us instead of the logical brain, then simply through the process of backward rationalization they make us feel as if we had made a logical decision.

These three brains come into conflict in our daily lives, and by default, without much effort put into controlling you, the more primitive brain always wins. This is why we often run away by yelling at people when we feel threatened without even thinking about it. It is also why we often make foolish decisions chasing after the love of our life by doing things that don’t make any logical sense but make a lot of sense to the emotional brain. I often liken them to having 3 different people inside your head telling you different things all the time, yet telling you things in very different ways. The emotional brain reports information to you through your gut feeling, whether you are feeling happy, sad, anxious, etc., it is your emotional brain telling you that it thinks something is good or bad about your current situation. His physical brain informs him mainly through fear, his duty is to keep him protected from harm, so whenever he senses danger, he freezes us or tells us to run away. The physical brain is also what controls our sexual urges and desires, and this is why we often get completely distracted when we see an attractive member of the opposite sex, that is our mating instinct kicking in from our physical brain.

You will also find events where it doesn’t make any logical sense to be afraid, yet your emotional and physical brains scare you anyway, usually these are events where thousands of years ago when your physical and emotional brains began to be created, it would make sense to be afraid, but these days we have safety measures in place to prevent you from harming yourself. Such things include skydiving, working on a very tall construction site, or approaching a girl at a club. In the past being high off the ground meant you had to hang on for dear life or you were going to die, these days with all our safety equipment this is not the case but our physical brain doesn’t realize this and tries to stay alive by any means possible (usually making you hold on for dear life).

So how does this help us? We will now realize that we have 3 brains that are essentially totally different people living inside our heads, we can learn to tame these brains. Unfortunately, most people do this the wrong way. They don’t realize there are 3 brains and when their physical or emotional brain tells them to do something, they completely shut down their logical brain and just follow their orders, thinking they are following logic when in fact they are not. This is why you often see others doing the weirdest things (throwing insults at the TV, anyone?) and if you ever ask them about it they get really defensive, then later in the Day they remember what they did and sometimes see it in a new light and see where they went wrong and how stupid they looked (when their logical brain comes back online). So the key to managing your other 2 brains is to realize that your logical brain often shuts off when certain events occur and you need to turn it back on (thinking rationally and taking into account everything that everyone is telling you without defenses) and think about the situation that just happened.

Once you’ve turned it back on, you can also start training your other brains to respond differently, stop your other brains from taking over when a situation occurs and think about what you’re doing and then try to change it so that do something else. Like when I visit my parents, I notice how often they get upset when they watch football and someone drops the ball or does something stupid, while I laugh at the exact same event. It’s not that I don’t think it’s a bad move, I’ve just realized that it’s just a game and not worth getting mad about, and over time I’ve trained my emotional brain to think the same way.

Of course you can’t train your brain overnight, it will take time, just every time an event occurs, realize your emotional or physical brain is taking over and stop it dead in its tracks, then think rationally (do you really Is it worth getting angry about this?) and take steps to replace those bad emotions with better ones. Over time, your emotional and physical brains will begin to behave like naughty children who are now given strict guidelines, allowing you to live a much happier and more enjoyable life.