Name: How to Stay Sane
Rating: 4.3 (123 reviews)
Author: Philippa Perry

What’s in it for me? Learn how to keep your cool and stay sane during tough times.

During a stressful time in your life, have you ever felt like you’re about to lose it? Have your emotions been so frayed that going insane seems the next obvious step?

We’ve all experienced these “breaking point” moments, and it can be terrifying. So how do you avoid going crazy amid a crazy world?

These blinks give you the tools to keep your cool even when it seems the world is falling apart around you. Learning to observe yourself in the moment is crucial; equally so is encouraging moments of “positive stress.”

In doing so, you’ll find healthy ways to maintain your mental health and reassure yourself that you’ll never “lose it” again.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

how your overall sanity is linked to your personal relationships;
why it’s so hard to overcome feelings with reason; and
how your left brain sometimes tricks your right brain.

Your emotional right brain trumps your logical left brain when making decisions in life.

You might think of yourself as a reasonable person who makes fairly logical decisions. Yet this perception is mostly an illusion!

We’re not as reasonable as we might think we are, as we’re mostly ruled by our right brain, the home of human emotion and instinct.

At the age of two, the brain’s right side, as it develops, becomes more active than the left side. It’s in this right brain that your personality is formed, guided by cues from your environment.

When we’re young, our social environment is largely made up of our main caregivers. So your personality, in terms of whom you trust and with whom you bond emotionally, is formed early on based on these social surroundings.

The brain’s left side, home to language, logic and reason, develops mostly from around age three. By this time, however, it’s long in the shadow of the right in terms of influence. This is why it’s so hard to overcome strong emotion with cold logic – your right brain remains dominant.

Why then do we think we are inherently reasonable creatures? Well, it’s because the left brain essentially “tricks” us into thinking this way.

When our right brain makes an emotional decision, our left brain in retrospect comes up with a reason that makes the decision seem logical. This process is called post-rationalization.

Neuropsychologist Roger Sperry conducted an experiment in which he triggered the command to “walk” in a subject’s right brain, in a way so that the left brain was unaware.

Interestingly, the subjects walked when instructed. Yet when asked why they decided to walk, they came up with random reasons, such as wanting to get a drink of water or stretch. The subjects weren’t lying, of course – they believed the justification offered by their left brains!

So now you know that how you reason may not be totally reliable, given the relationship between your right and left brains. Let’s examine in this context then why we act the way we do in stressful situations.

Stories or narratives shape the way we think, for better or for worse.

Whether it be fairy tales from our childhood or the latest drama series on Netflix, we’re all fascinated by a good story.

What is it about stories that capture the imagination? Stories, or narratives, help structure our thoughts as well as aid us in interpreting our daily experiences, allowing us to find meaning in our world.

Key ideas in How to Stay Sane