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Don't get sucked in by the "it's all an emergency" mindset
Monday, 6 March 2006
What is one of the biggest obstacles standing between most people and what they want? Other people of course.
From the moment we're born, we understand the fundamental fact that getting others to do our bidding is a great way of getting what we want. Any parent can see their children's attempts to manipulate. Children will hold their breath, beat their fists on the floor, and deliberately do what they know is wrong in order to get what they want.
Most of these aren't very good strategies, they soon learn. There's one trick, however, that's very effective. Pretending there's an emergency.
"I'm hungry!"
"I feel really sick!"
"I'm going to run away!"
And watch mother jump.
Many of us have an inner switch that gets turned on when we can be convinced that we're facing a crisis. We get short of breath and anxious. Our nervous system goes on high alert . And we're prepared to act quickly and without too much thought. Normal rationality and thoughtfulness goes out the window as we rush to fix the problem.
What a great way of manipulating someone!
Many people find this method so effective that they even use it on themselves. If you're a generally lazy person, pretending you're facing an emergency can seem a great way to motivate yourself.
There's only one problem with this strategy. Our minds and bodies aren't really designed to be in a state of constant crisis. The burst of adrenaline and anxiety we get from an urgent situation is a short-term fix. Relying on it longer term makes us miserable, tired, and unlikely to perform well.
Running around like a chicken with its head cut off is no way to deal with the world. It can lead to terrible mistakes.
Take for example if you had to be at a certain location an easy three hours drive away. If you were driving after a relaxing swim in the ocean, with some calm music playing on the radio, would you be likely to make it safely to your destination? How about if your partner had just divorced you, your boss was yelling at you down the phone, and another driver just cut you off?
The truth is that most of us in modern life face very few real emergencies. Having to wait five minutes for a coffee instead of one minute, isn't a crisis. Your boss deciding that a report from you is due this week instead of next just because he thinks that will motivate you, isn't an emergency.
Missing your flight home for Christmas is a real inconvenience, and may mean spending the holidays away from your family. But it's not the end of the world. In one month you'll have forgotten about the whole thing.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to do things on time, or motivate yourself. I'm simply saying to get some perspective. Beating yourself up, firing yourself up, and making yourself miserable over things that - in the big picture of your life - are relatively meaningless isn't a good way to get by.
There are better ways of getting yourself and others to do things. The best of all is getting organized. Start things early and give yourself plenty of time to reach the end point. Take a relaxed approach, by building up small wins over time rather than making life one dash after another towards an imaginary finish line.
Most of us, in the modern world, face very few real emergencies. Pretending that day to day living is a crisis debases the value of real life and death situations. If everything's an emergency, then nothing is.
Worse, if we use up all our time and energy on "pretend" crises, when a real one comes along we'd be unlikely to be able to deal with it. And that would be a true disaster.
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