Cognitive hijacking – Are you Ducking or Doing?

“Died of embarrassment” has never been recorded as an actual cause of death.

Our emotions and feelings ‘drive’ our behaviour to protect us from fear, embarrassment and other negative experiences. Our feelings step in to protect us from what we think will be a negative experience, and as a result a common response is avoidance. Are you ducking rather than doing?

Ironically, we are protecting ourselves from ourselves, which in the long run is NOT protecting us in reality. Our feelings make us feel a certain way but they are biased to protect us at all costs and they don’t make good decision makers.

This probably explains why so many people avoid planning for later life, death and incapacity: it makes them and those around them very uncomfortable, so they put it off for another day to ease the discomfort.

I have a degree in Psychology and after 16 years advising clients believe that some clients reluctance to discuss death or incapacity is a protection mechanism which leads to avoidance and putting off meaningful actions which ironically protect us and those around us in the long run.

Sadly, the actual outcome in reality is very different.

Short term protectionism = long term uncertainty