Two tiny habits to stop overreacting
Rewire your brain in seconds
Tiny Habit #1:
Borrowing from a core principle of meditation, learn to observe your thinking patterns. That’s easier said than done. It’s a paradox that has occupied philosophers for thousands of years. How do you use your mind to observe…your mind? Here’s an easy technique:
Insert a mini-pause between the stimulus (someone said something mean about you, or your socks get wet) and your reaction (you question your entire self-worth or fly off the handle).
Use the mini-pause to ask yourself: is this worth a strong reaction?
Recognize when you’re overreacting.
Before you try to fix the problem, dispassionately tell yourself, “I’m overacting.” Just observe. If you try to stop yourself from overreacting, you’ll add fuel to the fire.
My son’s friend used to suffer from panic attacks. Once, I took them both snowboarding. They were 12-years-old.
It was his friend’s first time snowboarding, minus a couple of perfunctory lessons. After he found himself stuck on the side of the slope for about the tenth time, I noticed that he was about to lose it. The tears, the hyperventilation, were about one second away. I had seen him have panic attacks before.
Then, something remarkable happened.
He said: “I’m so frustrated right now!”
Immediately, his mind went the other way. He started problem-solving. I was glad he had developed the habit of observing his thinking patterns. I suspect he was coached to do this by a mental health professional.
When we finally got to the bottom of the slope, his clothes were drenched in melting snow. He was exhausted, shivering, and in a fair amount of pain.
What did he do next? He insisted on going back up the mountain. His goal was to learn to snowboard. Everything else was noise. This kid will go far in life.
Tiny Habit #2:
Lastly, for the tritest piece of advice I’ll ever give in this newsletter: take a deep breath.
That’s overused, cliché advice, right?
I used to think so until I read James Nestor’s book “Breath,” in which he explains the science (and a bit of pseudoscience, too…but we’ll let that pass) of the connection between breathing and biological functions like blood pressure and heart rate.[1] Nestor explains that how you breathe impacts your brain activity and your mind.
Almost all pro athletes use breathing techniques. It’s the only physical pathway between what we can control (air intake) and what we can’t control (heart rate, sweating, blood pressure). Swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, has struggled with anxiety and depression. He credits breathing techniques –outside the pool– as part of a mental health routine that saved his life.
And if you’re a basketball fan, here’s a riddle: what do Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kobe Bryant have in common? They all use, or used, meditation and breathing techniques learned from the same meditation coach, George Mumford. They credit Mumford for improving their game.
In an ABC News interview,[2] Mumford recommends breathing techniques to get into a state of Flow:
“First, I talk about being a warrior, like a samurai...but also about ‘the zone’. They know what ‘the zone’ is, they know what ‘being in flow’ is, so when I talk about that, they’re all ears.”
If I were prone to hyperbole, I’d say that meditation and breathing techniques are like performance-enhancing drugs, except legal and without side effects.
There’s also a rumor going around that breathing is a critical part of remaining alive.
Sébastien has more than two decades of leadership experience. As an author, he believes breakthroughs often happen when experts venture outside their field. That is why, in "The Psychology of Leadership," he went beyond finance and economics to study research in psychology.
He is currently Head of Global Multi-Asset and Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price. He oversees a team of investment professionals actively managing over $500 billion in assets under management.
Sébastien won research paper awards from The Journal of Portfolio Management in 2003, 2010, 2011, and 2022 and the Financial Analysts Journal in 2010 and 2014. In addition to The Psychology of Leadership, he is the author of Beyond Diversification: What Every Investor Needs to Know About Asset Allocation (McGraw Hill, 2020) and the coauthor of Factor Investing and Asset Allocation (CFA Institute Research Foundation, 2016).
Sébastien is also a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Portfolio Management and the Financial Analysts Journal, and the Board of Directors of the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance (Q Group). He regularly appears in the media, including Bloomberg TV and CNBC, and was recently named amongst the 15 Top Voices in Finance by LinkedIn.