Back to baseline
1.
A great measure of emotional regulation and your ability to think rationally is the amount of time it takes you to transition from an emotional reaction and mindset to a detached, calculated one.
This is something I have been actively trying to work on since I was in high school. Back then if something didn't go my way it could take me two or three days to get over it and approach it with a rational mindset.
Leaning on evolutionary psychology/neuroscience again to explain why this emotional reaction is our go to. I have gone more in depth about the amygdala in previous posts but for this just know that it has a very fuzzy view of the outside world and has a hair trigger for activating our fight or flight mechanism. When we feel we are under threat the amygdala sets off a cascade of hormones that flood our body. These hormones help us to use the excess glucose dumped into our bloodstream to either fight the threat or run away from it , very useful when the threat is a rival tribe or a leopard. When the threat is mental however this manifests as anxiety, anger, frustration or any other strong negative emotion.
We have all of this pent up energy that is supposed to be used for survival, without a release it can build up and begin to affect our mental state more than our physical. This emotional state can be unfortunately quite sticky, it tends to be difficult to wash off even when you attempt to approach it with a rational point of view. The visceral feeling of anger, anxiety, or frustration can persist even though you have objectively reasoned through the problem at hand.
Take note of how long it takes you to come back to baseline.
2.
One of the most effective tools I've been able to use when trying to come back to a rational approach vs an emotional one is by noticing the physical manifestation of the emotion and limiting it to its physical state. The immediate emotional reaction can quickly be recognized as such and the more logical conclusion can normally be reached soon after, the issue however is the emotional reaction prevents you from following the rational decision.
The emotional reaction acts almost like a bungee cord attached to your back. You try to jump off the bridge and fall into rational waters below but just as you are about to splash into the river, the bungee cord yanks you back up. This pattern repeats itself slowly, bouncing back up towards the bridge of hyperemotionality and back down towards the rational river, until you are left dangling just above the water and can unclip yourself to fall in.
One way to decrease the amount of bounces it takes is by relegating the emotion to a purely physical state of being and letting the rational thought process feel uncomfortable or against your natural inclination. By thinking of your emotional state as just the physical sensation it causes, you can “feel” the emotion while simultaneously thinking logically.
Feel with your body, think with your brain.
3.
In my experience I find that there are two voices in my head in the moments after an outcome doesn't go my way. It is split between emotional and rational.
It feels good to give into your rage or anxious feelings, the emotional side is seductive and almost indulgent like ordering a gluttonous chocolate dessert after a big meal. You know you shouldn't but it just feels so right. The rational side however is rather cold and unenjoyable, it is having a glass of ice water after a salad. Not nearly as fun but will probably help you reach your goal a lot faster.
The difference is that unlike at a restaurant, where you only have to tell the waiter you are good on dessert once, the mental battle is like a waiter who asks you if you want the dessert every other minute and holds it out right in front of you letting the smell of the chocolate pull you in. The rational side is the one that we all know we should follow. One way to help us do this is by dissociating the emotional voice from our self identity and viewing it as a separate identity.
If we cannot control this voice that tells us to give in then it must not be our true self, it only makes sense then to treat it like your friend that is a bad influence. You can still hang out with him but you are cautious to take his advice. This is not to say that you should never let yourself experience emotions, just that you should be aware of when you are in order to decide if it's a good time to do so or not.
I don't have an exact ratio of how much emotion vs rationality you should use but I do know that, much like the chocolate cake, you should not indulge all the time. Still be a human and enjoy experiences but maybe eating the cake by yourself at midnight is not the best.
Cool guy from history:
Shinzo Kanakuri is one of Japan's most famous runners. As a child he would run close to 4 miles to and from school every day, by 20 he was a competitive runner with Olympic dreams. He set the marathon world record in 1912 at the Stockholm Olympic trials but the track was only 25 miles vs the now standard 26.2. Kanakuri was the first Japanese athlete to qualify for any Olympic games, as such the Japanese Olympic committee was not very helpful in getting him to Stockholm. His trip took 18 days and included a ship and then a train through the trans-Siberian railway. On Top of his long journey which took a lot out of him, his coach had tuberculosis so his training suffered and the local food was not agreeing with him. In addition the race was held during a heatwave causing the Olympics first ever fatality, Francisco Lazaro of Portugal, who collapsed due to heat exhaustion. Kanakuri was also on the verge of heat exhaustion and decided to leave the course 16 miles in. He happened upon a garden party and bothered them for a glass of OJ. he ended up being so ashamed of failing to finish the race he left then and there without ever notifying officials. Many years passed, eventually a Swedish reporter tracked him down and offered him the chance to finish his race. In 1967, Kanakuri finished the Stockholm marathon with a world record slowest time of 54 years 8 months 6 days 5 hours 32 minutes and 20 seconds. He even went back to the house of the garden party he crashed and had another glass of OJ with the hosts. If you just keep running eventually you will finish.