Monkey Braining

Anyone who has attended one of Marc or Rory’s class or read their books, has learned about the “Monkey Brain”

For those of you who have not, the “Monkey Brain” is the limbic system part of your brain.

The limbic system is the collective name for structures in the human brain involved in emotion, motivation, and emotional association with memory. Emotions and feelings, like wrath, fright, passion, love, hate, joy and sadness, are mammalian inventions, that originate in the limbic system.

Strong emotions or threats to your well being will make your Monkey Brain take over your Neocortex aka your Thinking Brain. This takes priority over any kind of thoughts until you have found a proper response to the threat or what you perceive to be a threat. In a life endangering situation, this is a good thing as it may save your life. In a lesser threatening situation, aka someone did something that you perceive as insulting or damaging to your feelings, the lack of being able to use your thinking brain can prove to be a problem as it can make you react in irrational way. That’s why you sometimes see grown men literally acting like apes. I am sure you have all been the witness to this display: puffing of the chest, wild gesturing, excited loud tone of voice, facial grimace, throwing stuff. Someone in their Monkey Brain is only concerned about the “ME”. If the other person gets into their Monkey Brain as well, the escalation will keep going into a fight until one of them backs down, walks away or someone breaks them apart. This is not meant to be a life threatening fight, more like 2 rams fighting and butting heads. But when things get out of control one can never predict how they will end.

This is typically very much of a male behavior. But women will do this as well

Here is a video of 2 women showing a text book example of Monkey Brain behavior escalating into a fight . Study it and see how things could have went differently. How would YOU have handled the situation.

And guys, contrary to popular beliefs, walking away from someone displaying this type of behavior will NOT make you look like less of a man. It makes you look intelligent and in control… much sexier in most women’s book. If you ever date a woman who pushes you into this type of behavior… drop her like a bad habit.

Fighting on a bus