So you want to know why you abused that guy in the car in front of you in a split second without logic coming into play? 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 boils down to the three-brain theory, which explains why we humans are the most highly evolved species on this planet and still 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-brain theory is a theory created to make us realize why we do the things we do, even if sometimes they seem completely illogical. The premise of the theory is that human brains have not simply evolved to the next level from our animal ancestors, but have 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: survive and replicate. The second brain is the emotional brain, it is found in most mammals and it 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, such as cows and horses. Of course these brains are ordinary and illogical, most of us barely know how they work and how they make us do stupid illogical things from time to time. Now the third brain is the brain that only humans on this planet fully have (apes and our close ancestors have very small versions) and it’s what really separates us from animals, it’s the logical brain. The logical brain is the most 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 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 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 yelling at people when we feel threatened without even thinking about it. It’s also why we often make dumb decisions chasing after the love of our life by doing things that don’t make any logical sense but make perfect sense to the emotional brain. I often compare them to having 3 different people inside your head telling you different things all the time, yet they tell you things in very different ways. The emotional brain reports information to you through your instinct, whether you feel happy, sad, anxious, etc., it is your emotional brain telling you that it thinks something is good or bad in 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 that is why we are often completely distracted when we see an attractive member of the opposite sex, that is our mating instinct being activated 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, They would make sense to be afraid, but these days we have security measures in place to prevent you from getting hurt. Such things include skydiving, working on a very tall construction site, or approaching a girl in a club. In the past being high off the ground meant you had to hold on for dear life or you were going to die, these days with all of our security gear this is not the case but our physical brain doesn’t realize this. and tries to keep you alive by any means possible (usually by making you hold on for dear life).
So how does this help us? Now that we 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 that 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 commands, thinking they are following logic when in fact they are not. This is why you often watch 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 on 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 realizing that your logical brain often shuts down when certain events occur and you need to turn it back on (thinking rationally and taking into account everything everyone tells you without defenses) and thinking about the situation that just happened.
Once you’ve turned it back on you can also start training your other brains to respond differently, keep 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 mad 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, simply every time an event occurs, realize that your emotional or physical brain is taking over and stop it in its tracks, then think rationally (do you really is this worth getting mad about?) 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.