People With High Mental & Emotional Sharpness Usually Avoid 5 Things In Everyday Life
zorotoo's Images | Canva Do you ever feel like you're mentally all over the place? Like your moods ping-pong around erratically and unpredictably? If so, you probably wish you could feel a little less at the mercy of external events — able to stay cool and keep your calm no matter what is happening.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with feeling any emotion. And it’s normal for our emotions to fluctuate. However, some people can control their emotional reactions and stay emotionally sharper than others.
While there are many reasons for this, from genetics and upbringing to how much sleep you got last night, here’s what matters most: The ability to be sharp as a tack as you get older comes down to better habits.
If you want to stay mentally and emotionally sharp as you get older, avoid these habits:
1. Obsessing over every thought
Yaroslav Asyakhov / Shutterstock
Metacognition means thinking about your thinking. More specifically, it’s the ability to be aware of and figure out what’s going on in your mind: thoughts, emotions, beliefs, moods, expectations, self-talk, etc.
Most of the time, our minds are on autopilot — stuff happens, and we react:
- Your spouse gives you a nasty look, so you fire back with a nasty comment.
- Your boss sends a passive-aggressive email that you don’t know how to respond to, so you distract yourself on Facebook.
- A painful old memory pops into your mind, and you end up lost in ruminations and regret.
The more you ignore your mind, the more your behavior becomes reaction rather than choice. And this leads to a lot of emotional volatility and stress:
- If your default self-talk is to catastrophize negative events and go straight to the worst-case scenario, you’re going to feel pretty anxious all the time.
- If your default response to criticism is to criticize back, you’re going to find yourself pretty frustrated and angry all the time.
- If your default interpretation of negative events is to criticize yourself and internalize things, you’re going to end up with a lot of shame and fake guilt.
On the other hand, if you can learn to pause and observe what’s happening in your mind, you allow yourself to act intentionally and purposefully. Emotionally sharp people stop trying to control their emotions and instead become curious about them.
2. Doom-scrolling
Most people spend their time thinking about whatever grabs their attention. Whether it’s doomscrolling social media or fantasizing about a new car, our minds are easily pulled from one thing to the next, often with very little deliberation on our part.
Here’s the problem with that: The contents of your thoughts determine the contents of your moods. Think about it:
- If you’re always worried about the future, you’re going to feel pretty anxious.
- If you’re always dwelling on past mistakes, you’re going to feel pretty ashamed.
- If you’re always ruminating on how you’ve been wronged, you’re going to feel pretty angry.
If you want to be sharper, you’ve got to change what you spend your time thinking about. Unfortunately, this can be tough:
- When you’re caught in a worry spiral, it can be difficult to refocus your mind on your work.
- When you’re stuck ruminating on some slight against you, it’s hard to be present with the person sitting next to you.
- When you’re trapped in obsessing about how you feel, it’s hard to take action on the things you know will make you feel better.
To free yourself from unhelpful thinking patterns — and the painful feelings they produce — you must learn to control your attention. But here’s the thing: Your ability to control your attention is a muscle. And if you don’t exercise it, it will remain weak. This means your mood and emotions will be at the mercy of whatever comes to mind.
3. Beating themselves up
insta_photos / Shutterstock
Self-compassion is a somewhat technical-sounding term for a very simple idea: When you’re struggling, treat yourself like you would treat a good friend. Most of us have this strange habit of beating ourselves up and being overly self-critical anytime we make a mistake. This is especially ironic since we’re usually incredibly compassionate and understanding when other people make mistakes!
Unfortunately, most of us learned, growing up, that the “secret” to success and happiness in life is to be hard on ourselves. Like the tough drill sergeant yelling at his recruits, we mistakenly learn that being tough on ourselves prevents failures. Except that’s not true.
Most people succeed despite their self-judgment, not because of it. Most people could be both far more effective and far happier if they stopped beating themselves up for every failure or misstep.
Because when you beat yourself up for making a mistake, you only add more pain and stress to the original frustration or sadness that comes with making mistakes. If you want to avoid these spikes and spirals of painful emotion, mentally sharp people learn to practice self-compassion instead of self-judgment.
4. Ruminating on things they can't change
Much of mental sharpness involves learning better ways to respond to difficult emotions and moods so that they don’t explode out of control. But the initial difficult feelings are often inevitable:
- No matter how self-compassionate you are, making mistakes still stings and will likely lead to some amount of guilt or shame.
- No matter how self-aware you are of your painful emotions, they will still hurt when they show up unannounced.
- No matter how good you are at managing your attention, you will still get stuck in worry from time to time, and that will lead to anxiety.
All of which means you have to get on with life despite feeling bad. Just like a runner needs to be able to keep running despite feeling tired if they want to finish the race, you need to be able to live your life despite feeling difficult emotions.
Because really, what’s the alternative? You can’t wait around to do important things with your life until you feel perfect. That’s a recipe for chronic procrastination and regret.
But even small things can be tough when we're feeling down, no doubt about it. The trick is to build up your emotional tolerance. The only way runners can keep going for so long even though they’re tired and in pain is because they’ve built up their tolerance and strength. They started by running a couple of miles until they got stronger, then worked up to 5 miles, then 10, and on and on.
A lack of emotional tolerance, often referred to as low distress tolerance, can lead to several negative consequences, including increased risk of substance abuse, maladaptive coping mechanisms like avoidance or suppression, difficulty managing stress, and potential development of mental health issues like anxiety and depression, especially when intense negative emotions are poorly tolerated or avoided altogether.
Well, emotional tolerance works the same way. You have to practice feeling bad if you want to get better at feeling bad and getting on with your life anyway. So, the next time a difficult emotion hits you, instead of asking How can I not feel so bad? ask yourself this: How can I use this as an opportunity to improve my emotional tolerance?
5. Avoiding conflict
Most people hear the term "assertive" and think of it as rude or pushy. But in reality, assertive communication isn’t rude or pushy at all. Assertiveness is the healthy middle ground between passive communication and aggressive communication:
- Aggressive communication means failing to respect other people's wants and needs (e.g., manipulation).
- Passive communication is when you don’t respect your wants and needs(being a “pushover”)
- Assertive communication is when you honestly express your wants and needs while being respectful of others.
Why does this matter for sharpness? Here’s the deal: When you habitually avoid external conflict, you end up creating internal conflict. This happens most often when people are overly passive in the way they communicate:
- You usually just “go with the flow” when group decisions need to be made.
- You chronically hold back from voicing your opinions or ideas.
- You give in easily to avoid conflict.
Here’s the problem with being so passive and overly accommodating of others:
- When you constantly give in to other people’s wishes — and ignore your own — you start to feel bad about yourself and your self-esteem drops.
- Your frustration and anxiety levels also tend to go up because you’re never getting your needs met.
- Finally, you end up resenting other people because they always get what they want and you never get what you want.
Now think about it: if your self-esteem is low, you’re full of frustration and anxiety, and you’re resentful of your most important relationships, how effective are you going to be trying to manage more difficult emotions on top of all that? Yeah, not very.
On the other hand, when you learn how to be assertive, your ability to stay sharp in the face of difficult emotions goes way up because your self-esteem and confidence are much higher.
Nick Wignall is a psychologist and writer who shares practical advice on emotional health and well-being. He is the founder of The Friendly Minds newsletter.
