Alvin Toffler was probably correct in his main prediction in Future Shock. The cascading mental overload we are all presently experiencing is an undesirable by-product of this nano-second, multiple-choice, force multiplier information age that we have been unexpectedly hurled into.

There is more tension in the air these days and there is an imbalance of negative emotionality floating around in the atmosphere contaminating us—everybody scurrying around, getting frustrated and angry, raising their voices, running out of time, and losing it. And more distinct, harsh battle lines are being drawn everywhere. Chaos is on the increase.

If we recognize all this imbalance of negative emotionality and resulting chaos as being harmful and undesirable, it is important to stop and analyze what is going on, understand why, and implement a few reasonable solutions.

Thoughts drive emotions and together they motivate behavior (and themselves) in highly complex, interactive ways. Sometimes you can’t even see where a thought stops, an emotion kicks in and behavior takes over, or where one of these things stops and the other starts all over again. Negative emotionality is a mighty treacherous vicious circle that can take even relatively normal people to the point of no return before they even realize it. Negative emotionality is born through negative thoughts which are almost always incorrect or at least incomplete.

When you take the time to study and understand how your brain is actually designed and how it works, and then get to know perception and thinking processes better, you begin to realize that what you think you know may not necessarily be so and that you may be getting upset over nothing.. Nobody has ever taken the time to measure truth and correctness of the information in our minds, but I suspect a large percentage of the present day overload is invalid or incomplete at best. Consider just a few of the following well-researched mental processes and how they may be contributing to incorrect/incomplete thoughts or beliefs, which erupt with unnecessary negative emotionality, which can in turn result in insane, destructive behavior:

THE UNDER-WIRED MIND

We can’t possibly grasp all the infinite interconnections and complexities of the real world. We are mentally wired to oversimplify things and compress what really is into a micro artificial representation that our limited consciousness can grasp. Think about trying to describe the full reality of the meaning of very complex concepts like “love,” “true ,” and “good” with just four simple letters. You cannot possibly do this with single words and then when those words fail and the others that follow, all kinds of incorrect and incomplete misunderstanding occurs—like the dualistic nature of thinking which conveniently categorizes everything into either this or that—which can multiply all sorts of negative misunderstanding, which in turn just perpetuates itself ad nauseaum.

The real problem is with the mind’s wiring. We only have the equivalent of about 10 megabytes of “RAM” to handle the process that is required to think about our own thinking—to separate our ongoing stream of consciousness and our well-entrenched point of view from erroneous thinking, illegitimate feelings, and insane behavior. This is the greatest challenge to use what critical thinking ability you do have, to sort through this interacting, complicated mess.

MENTAL BIASES

Cognitive biases are mental errors caused by the over-simplified information processing that our minds use. For example, information that we experience personally and directly bears much greater importance and truth than secondhand information even when it has greater accuracy and value.

Another example is that we tend to be oversensitive to the importance and truth of something that is consistent with what we already know. This excludes any correct possibilities that aren’t necessary consistent to the incorrect beliefs we already have. Still another example is our apparent intolerance of ambiguity in which we will invent causes and explanations to events whether they are true of not, just to passively accept the best possible answer.

FAULTY PERCEPTION

Much of what we are most convinced as being true comes from our perceptual processes which are riddled with faults that filter out correct information and allow incorrect, incomplete information to come in. Just consider the following facts established by cognitive psychologists. We tend to perceive what we expect to perceive. Furthermore, all new information is assimilated into already existing images in our brains and initial exposure to “blurred” stimuli interferes with accurate perception even after better information becomes available. Also, the manner in which we perceive things is affected by a host of personal biases ranging from up-bringing to education to past trauma.

THE LIMITS OF MEMORY

This is the limited RAM problem partially described above and is the basis for telephone numbers being represented by only seven digits. When the post office asks us for 9-digit zip codes we are in trouble! Then just imagine the difficulty of trying to retrieve trillions of digits from long-term memory that have all been oversimplified and conveniently stored by rules that you will never know or understand.

On top of that problem, if incorrect or incomplete information forms a memory, it is not even likely to be recalled accurately and is certainly impervious to being corrected even with new, correct information. The safest bet here is to consider venturing out of your comfort zone and to not rely too heavily on your memory. That can be unnerving, but if you are serious about changing things for the better, it may be the only path.

SITUATIONAL JUDGEMENT

When a problem or conflict occurs, we attempt to understand it in isolation from everything else seen and unseen that may be contributing to it directly or indirectly. For instance consider how your own point of view that has been shaped by all these other questionable mental activities may be holding you hostage and acting like a faulty gatekeeper. Taking things to a personal, situational perspective rarely allows you to see things as they really are. This type of logic keeps you from considering new more correct and complete information—mainly a different viewpoint than the one you have that may be true r. This includes foreign values and assumptions and even misunderstandings and misperceptions.

ILLUSORY CORRELATION

Many of our incorrect conclusions come about by faulty assumptions as to the relationship between two things—especially one causing the other. For instance, we may oversimplify the similarity of a past situation with a present one, missing a plethora of other relevant dissimilarities, and conclude that something we are doing or the other person is doing is causing the whole problem. The correct analysis may be that nothing in these scenarios is causing anything, except our incorrect belief that it is. And another bad habit we have is that we wrongly assume a connection between any two things that happen contiguously, when they are really random and unconnected in any way.

THE CLOSED MIND

Creativity is a process than runs contrary to our over-simplifying, convenient brains. After all, creativity results in new and unusual information that doesn’t seem to belong anywhere and won’t fit into what we already “know” to be so. The problem is, that without creative thinking, all we may really be doing is reinforcing all the incorrect and incomplete thinking that is overloading our minds and driving all the negative emotionality and insane behavior.

Somehow and somewhere along our journeys, we have to begin to open up to the inevitable and likely possibility that everything we are convinced we know, may not be necessarily so. Maybe then we can begin to restore some balance to the damaging effects of rampant emotional negativity. And, given all these and other revelations about how our brains actually work, this shouldn’t be that much of an undertaking. It is the most logical conclusion anyone can make.

To stop any undesirable habit, there are a few things that have to occur. First you have to fully appreciate that the habit is not productive. Secondly, you have to see, confess and own your part in perpetuating the bad habit. Next you have to increase your awareness of continuing the bad habit and the discomfort associated with it, buy repeatedly catching yourself with your hand in the cookie jar so to speak. Unfortunately, you have to become very uncomfortable with any bad habit before you are motivated sufficiently to do anything about it. Lastly, you have to build your repertoire of antidotes—in this case, increasing the delivery of positive emotionality to others so they can return it.

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA. He is author of You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too, a self-help and professional development book that is guaranteed to boost your thinking IQ. He can be reached at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer.pssp.net