Order Dr. Roger Hall’s New book: Staying Happy Being Productive
Now, I’m not going to read this book, but Plato talked about the tripartite view of the soul. He said the human soul is split up into three parts: A charioteer, and one good horse that always does everything right, and then one bad horse that’s always kicking and bucking and biting. And this is the basic way we view humanity.
Every time a cartoon character has a moral dilemma, how does it go? Angel on one shoulder. Devil on the other shoulder. So, we know that we’re at war inside of ourselves. And what our basic neurophysiology tells us is that the bad horses, the amygdala, fear and anger. The charioteer is this prefrontal. And because of the re-representation I told you about, higher levels of the brain limit and control lower levels of the brain. Your brain is designed so that the charioteer can manage that bad horse, but it takes practice in rehearsal. You can’t just wake up one morning and go, I’m gonna have self-control. No, you have to grow those neuro-pathways. You’ve got to grow…they’re called descending fibers from the prefrontal down to limit and control the Amygdala. Those got to grow. So you’ve got to practice and rehearse it over and over again. And will you be good at it at first? No, but it’ll take time and you can do it.