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Emotional response

This week chapter 5 of Search inside yourself talks about emotional response, and how to develop the skills of “From Compulsion to Choice”. It's been an insightful read, and i have already put some practise into mastering some of these skills, which has already been beneficial.

The first question i was asked to write about was "When programming, what are some of your triggers? What causes a disproportionate emotional response?" Three things that sprung to mind where:

  • Feeling over whelmed with too much new information at once.
  • Not being clear of my objective.
  • Not knowing where to start.

stick man demo of mindfullness past present and future

Siberian North Railroad exercise

The practice called the Siberian North Railroad was designed for dealing with emotional triggers that causes disproportional emotional responses. with the 5 key factors being:

  • Stop - Pausing if even for a moment gives you the chance to choose how you response to a situation.
  • Breath - By focusing on slowing down our breath we create more time for contemplation of response.
  • Notice - Our body is responsing physically, take note that this is a physical reaction as much as anything, and we have control over that.
  • Reflect - Can you understand why you responded in such a way, are there historical patterens with this behaviour, and if so why?
  • Respond - Try and establish a why of coming through this situation with a positive outcome.


I found this exercise a great way of preventing a stressful situation becoming so over whelming that i get cross and then become unproductive and ultimately i would of lost time by mentally shutting off for a period of time.