Most people today live in environments where their Big Five primitive emotions are out of control. In this state, there’s little we can do about all those self-destructive tendencies responsible for the global obesity and stress epidemics, the looming pension crisis and our serious global environmental problems.

As we’ve all found out multiple times, trying to control these impulses through sheer willpower doesn’t work. It could even make things worse by agitating the Big Five even more. 

But once we start making some good progress with intelligent environment design, the Big Five start calming down. 

This is the time to step in and start taming your primitive emotions…

The technique

The best technique for taming the Big Five combines humor and visualization. In this technique, you turn each member of the Big Five into a vivid character that you can interact with whenever necessary. 

It’s a bit weird at first, but it can genuinely transform the Big Five from a major source of pain and suffering into some pretty good entertainment 🙂

The characters you choose are completely up to you. Anything that embodies that particular emotion will do. This previous post on the nature of the Big Five can be a useful read before you choose your characters. 

My characters are shared below as an example. 

Craving

I see Craving as a young dog. Like most young dogs dogs, Craving really loves its master, but it often gets overly excited in its quest to bring instant pleasure through consumption. 

Thus, whenever Craving jumps up against me and licks me in the face, I must instill some discipline. Sometimes when I’m alone, I even say “down boy!” out loud. 

As ridiculous as it sounds, it genuinely works. Do this consistently whenever an irrational Craving jumps on you and see what happens 🙂

Ego

We have plenty of seagulls (a.k.a. flying rats) here in Norway. When those things are nesting and you walk by minding your own business, they will swoop down on you screeching at the top of their lungs. 

Their young are safely up on the rooftop, but they keep making lots of unnecessary noise about any perceived threat that comes near. 

This is my picture of Ego. Whenever my Ego starts screeching in my ears for no good reason, I just walk by as if it wasn’t even there. Like a seagull, Ego will stop pestering you soon enough if you just keep moving forward.  

Sloth

For someone who spends as much time working as me, Sloth is actually quite important to protect me from burnout. Thus, my chosen character here is a cute little miniature sloth that I carry around all the time. 

When I experience laziness for no good reason (which happens quite often), it means my cute little pet is becoming too fat and is weighing me down. 

That means it has to exercise. Have you ever seen a sloth running on treadmill? Neither have I, but the visualization is hilarious 😀

Frustration

Frustration is the most primitive of the primitive emotions. I therefore see it as a typical dumb caveman with a big wooden club. 

Whenever Frustration starts running around with its big club trying to smash a sophisticated or totally out-of-reach problem. I pull out my tazor and make it go to sleep. 

Tazing a caveman is good fun! Try it 🙂

Worry

Worry becomes a problem when it keeps showing you some cataclysmic future scenario you have no control over. Such Worry drains your mental energy for no good reason. 

Given Worry’s ability to suck all the mental energy right out of you, I visualize it as a mosquito (one of those huge ones you get on the Swedish wetlands). 

Whenever a useless Worry starts draining my mental energy, I unceremoniously squash it. There will always be more Worries, so killing off a couple doesn’t hurt. 

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So, there you have it. Very weird, but weirdly effective. 

But remember that this technique will only work well if you have committed to calming your Big Five by intelligently shaping your environment. 

Do that first and then give this fun visualization exercise a try.

See you tomorrow for the wrap-up of this week’s topic!