Humans will never be robots. It can be a blessing or a curse, but we’re stuck with a complex system of instinctive emotional responses that drives us to act in certain ways, often against our conscious wishes. 

The bad news is that many of these instincts and emotions are totally outdated in today’s world, causing great heartache and misery. But the good news is that, with the right awareness and technique, we can restore balance to the system. 

The past month covered this idea in quite some detail. In fact, it could really be useful to quickly revisit the recap posts from the three previous weeks on primitive emotions, the emotion safari, and positive emotions. 

The checklist

If you do that, this week’s checklist will have the best chance to restore emotional balance in your life:

1. Recognize the value of the Big Five primitive emotions.
   • Craving, Ego, Sloth, Frustration and Worry all have good intentions.
   • But it’s up to us to keep them under control in our modern world. 
2. Be aware that we can have too much positive emotion.
   • This issue will only become relevant when you have trimmed the Big Five herds.
3. Develop the habit of taking emotion safaris as a ranger.
   • Accept responsibility for early identification of imbalances in you mental ecosystem.  
   • Take strong proactive action to restore balance like a good wildlife ranger.

Next week, we’ll be designing environments that automatically weaken the Big Five and strengthen the Great Five. This will give you another effective tool to maintain balance in your mental ecosystem. 

But before that, I’ll see you tomorrow for another edition of Getting 1% Better.