How to Control the Emotional Switch in Your Brain To Make Better Choices

The difference between those who succeed and those who feel stuck in life is not whether they feel emotions, but how they perceive and respond to them.

Every human feels emotions—it’s completely natural. Even the most successful people experience them.

There’s a switch in your brain that determines the actions you take based on the situation you’re in. It controls your operating mode.

It decides whether you act rationally, staying focused on your goals no matter what happens,

Or if you lose control, letting your emotions take over and acting impulsively.

Maybe you say something you shouldn’t out of anger

Do something you know you’ll regret out of fear

Or simply avoid engaging in the goals you’ve set for yourself, because anxiety holds you back

If you want to become the best version of yourself, you need to be in control of the switch

Otherwise, emotions control you, your relationships, career, and life will suffer

And in this article I’ll explain how you can take control of that switch to make better decisions and achieve your goals.

Emotional Hijacking

An amygdala hijack is an immediate, overwhelming emotional response that’s out of proportion to the actual situation because it triggers a much deeper emotional threat – as explained by Daniel Goleman.

In simple terms, it’s when your emotions take over your thinking and behavior. This can be triggered by a range of negative emotions, but in my experience, it often comes down to anger, fear, or anxiety.

The trap is that emotions are designed for survival. They are almost entirely focused on the short term, and they don’t really care about your goals or dreams.

Your emotions will tell you to smack the guy that walked into your shoulder on purpose

They’ll push you to go out partying when you’re feeling lonely.

They’ll make you crave sugary foods after a discouraging day at work.

The danger is in letting your emotions dictate your default mode of operating your life. This is a recipe for regrets and powerlessness.

This is especially true for young men, who experience more hormonal fluctuations. Your testosterone levels to name an example are affecting your emotional system.

Beyond that, the part of your brain responsible for rational thinking - the Prefrontal Cortex, located just behind your forehead, helps you step back and manage your emotional responses.

But, it doesn’t fully develop until your mid to late 20s, which makes it harder to control emotional hijacks.

This part of your brain is what allows you to rationalize, like saying, "Yes, that guy bumped into my shoulder, but getting into an argument isn't worth being late to work or ending the situation in a fist fight"

Now, the sad reality is that most people live their lives ruled by their emotions without always being aware of it. They feel like they’re drowning in them, with no option but to either avoid or act them out.

Again, you have to be cautious if you’re still a teenager or a young adult and particularly male, it is biologically more tricky for you as you tend to have a higher emotional reactivity.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn to make better decisions. It just means you need to prepare yourself ahead of time and understand those concepts.

In today’s society, where poor emotional regulation can cost you thousands of dollars, jail time, or even your reputation, mastering this skill is crucial.

Without it, you won’t be able to build healthy relationships, land your dream job, or get in shape.

Take getting in shape, for example. The first step is to develop rational dominance.

If you let your emotions guide you, you’ll cheat on your diet, skip the gym, and ruin your chances of achieving your goals…

And if you’re wondering where to start your self-improvement journey, trust me—it should begins with physical exercise but I’ll explain why in a later section.

Find the Switch

The real challenge is that sometimes you need to go against your natural instincts. Against what your brain is wired to do, which is to react before you even have time to think.

If you’re wondering how someone could commit murder, cheat on their partner, or get hooked on reality TV, it’s because they let a burst of emotion drive their behavior instead of using rational thinking.

We all have a switch in our brains—a switch between rational and emotional modes of operating.

When you watch a movie, whether it’s a drama, comedy, or blockbuster, you turn off your rational side and immerse yourself in emotional thinking.

You’re not sitting there calculating how to save the Titanic. Instead, you feel the despair of those freezing in the water, hopeless. You experience their sorrow on an emotional level not on a rational level.

But in certain situations, when an intense and potentially destructive emotion arises, like a surge of anger, you don’t want to flip the switch to emotional mode. You want to stay in control of the ship.

Otherwise, you might end up doing something you’ll deeply regret. The truth is, we don’t live in a primal society, and some instincts have no place. You can’t assault someone just because they cut in line at the grocery store.

So the goal is to be in control of that switch you want to be flexible, you want to be able to respond in the best way possible according to the context.

Now, this doesn’t mean you should suppress or ignore your emotions or that they are bad. That’s not true at all, they are as important as your rational thinking, they are the core of your human experience.

You should listen to and acknowledge your emotions, but when it comes to taking action, in most cases, rational thinking should have the final say.

Imagine seeing some random guy hop into a Mercedes, feeling a wave of envy, and acting on that emotion. You could end up rushing to the bank to take out a loan with a 10% interest rate just to buy the same car. This would just ruin your finances.

You need to be in control of the switch. When strong emotions arise, you should be able to stay in command but when it’s appropriate you also want to be able to flip the switch to emotions.

The real power lies in smoothly transitioning between emotion and rationality when the situation calls for it. That’s where true strength comes from.

It’s not easy, but self-regulation is a skill you can learn. At any stage of life, you can train your brain to switch between the different modes of operating whenever needed.

Take Back Control of the Switch

It all starts with the body.

The most effective tool I’ve found for training your brain to stay calm and rational is physical exercise and specifically strength training, but you need to train with the right mindset.

You have to be mentally present and focused. I’m not talking about just doing 10 minutes on the treadmill or trying some random Instagram exercises on a Bosu ball.

If you want to increase the control that you have over the switch in your mind. You need to deliberately put your body under stress, endure that state, and keep your mental focus sharp.

I mean, that’s why I created Fitness Autonomy—because no one is teaching people how to work out in a way that builds both the mind and the body.

The thing is that when you experience physical stress, it becomes a mental battle to stay focused. Your cortisol levels spike, which can shut down a bunch of systems, including your ability to think rationally.

That’s why training in the gym is so potent. It’s basically deliberately putting external pressure on your body and staying focused on keeping the technique pristine.

But it’s not the only that helps regulating the switch. You also need to pay close attention to your inner narrative, what the voice in your mind is telling you.

We all have a mental narrative that changes depending on context, mood, personality, and the activity we’re doing.

For example, I’m not a runner, and if I go for a run, my internal dialogue might sound something like this: “Why are you even running? This was a bad idea. Your shins are already hurting, you won’t last 20 minutes…”

This narrative shows up automatically, but your job is to reframe it. I call this stoic reframing. In my case, I tell myself: “This is an opportunity to test myself and get better whatever the outcome”

No matter what your narrative tries to tell you, you can reframe it and choose not to act based on it. You have to understand that your narrative has no direct control over your actions.

By understanding that, you can stay in control of the switch.

But sometimes, when an emotion hits hard and fast, like a burst of anger or frustration, you don’t always have the headspace for a reframing like this in the moment.

Take driving, for example. Someone brutally cuts you off, and in one second, you’re scared. The next second, you’re fantasizing about their car crashing at 90 mph into a roadblock.

In moments like that, reframing may not be possible because the emotion is too intense and too quick. What you need instead is to lean how to pause.

A simple pause can change your life, it changed mine. All you need is to tell your brain to give you 3 seconds. Just a few precious moments to distance yourself from the emotion and avoid acting irrationally.

This technique is especially useful for handling impulses, frustrations, temptations. I often teach it to my clients who want to manage their weight better and stop snacking impulsively.

Find your North Star

So self-regulation, being able to control the switch is the superpower but as you may have seen it around you, there’s a lot of people who don’t seem to be able to do it.

I’d argue that it’s because they lack a reason why, they lack a long term vision, what I call your north star.

As a human being, you seek purpose and you need to see yourself evolving to be fulfilled. The majority of people that are not in control of their emotions are profoundly stuck in their lives.

And Without your north star without a clear plan to follow, you’ll end up wandering through life. Wandering is dangerous because it drains the one resource you can’t get back: time.

Your plan doesn’t have to be ultra-detailed. It just needs to guide you enough so you know what your next step is or should be.

In modern life, there’s potential to do almost anything:

• You can fly to another country.

• You can make money independently.

• You can connect with people all over the world.

But this freedom comes at a cost—the risk of being paralyzed by anxiety because there’s so much to do, and you realize you’re unsure of what to choose.

That’s when your north star comes in, it is the best remedy against this modern anxiety.

I don’t have a clear path in front of me but I have a sense of direction, I know that I want to be in shape, I know that I want to write, I know that I want to keep studying psychology.

And if you have no idea about what you want, start with what you don’t want and explore from there.

The goal is to engage in actions you find meaningful, not just pleasant, meaningful…

I don’t exercise because it’s always pleasant; I do it because it makes me feel alive and it builds mental resilience. That’s meaningful to me.

This vision will fuel you, it will give you enough energy to be able to regulate your mode of operating.

If you don’t know why you wake up every day or why you’re doing what you do, you’ll get lost. And when you’re lost, you won’t control the switch—it will control you, pushing you into your default mode.

And for most people the default mode is the emotional mode. But if you do the work and keep looking for you north star, you’ll be just fine

And as always, I hope this helps, trust the process.