How Can We Not Overdo it During the Holidays?
We often struggle with what we want to do versus what we want to have done. Recently, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, the Director of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Lab at Northeastern University, wrote an article in The New York Times entitled, “Your Brain Is Not for Thinking.” Instead, our brain is very good at keeping us alive and well. All the time, it is monitoring how things are going in our stomach, liver, lungs, heart, skins, etc. If anything is amiss, it urges us to fix the problem, often, right away. So if I feel hungry, I may get up and go get something to eat. During the pandemic, working at home in a room right off the kitchen, that is a problem! Unfortunately, the brain is not as good at keeping our long-term objectives in mind.
Dorothy Parker, a wonderful 20th century writer and wit, reportedly said, “I hate writing, but I love having written.”
In contrast, many people love to eat and drink but hate having done so after the fact. This has been a particularly difficult problem during the pandemic, and it is not about to get easier during the holidays.
Excerpted from Psychology Today
