In a popular Hindi film by Aamir Khan, 3 Idiots, when he is stuck with a panicky situation or crisis, he says ‘All is well’ to himself and shares this unique mantra to his friends as a way of escape from tricky situations. It is a way of faking our brain saying everything is fine. It limits action and asks your brain to cool down. It is acting against our evolutionary instinct of fleeing when in danger. In the modern world, we are encouraged by people to take more risks to achieve bigger things.
Behavioural scientists say we always act in panic, calling it action bias, like a goalkeeper moving in either direction while the ball is coming towards him, there is only 50% chance – left or right. Imagine he is standing still, it would annoy the audience but the chances of the goal are the same. Doing nothing perhaps might help. But an excessive ‘All is well’ mantra is like we are pretending. We have to stop pretending and start thinking of solutions. A certain amount of nervous energy can help to reallocate all the resources in our body to the brain for it to consider the different possibilities to solve it and allow it to use the intuitive power at its best. Fear, guilt, jealousy, lust, anger or any emotive responses are considered to be unsophisticated in a civilised environment, making it difficult for people to express real emotions.
Pretensions create a civilised world and it creates huge stress. We must stop pretending and do what is natural and intuitive. It helps a lot.
