Cognitive Reappraisal - I'm So Nervous, I'M So Excited?

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If we're interreceptively attuned to all our bodily signals, we can have the benefit of feeling our emotions more intensely. You can kind of get in on the ground floor in the construction of your emotion. And so as long as you've but the bodily sensations that your feeling are congruent with the emotion that you're constructing for yourself, you can think of yourself as excited just as easily as you can Think of yourself as nervous.

Modern life has not been easy on our brains. Average IQ scores rose steadily throughout the last century. Now they appear to be leveling off. The problem, according to neuroscientists, may be that we have reached our neurobiological limits. Our brains simply can’t work any harder. Luckily, science writer Annie Murphy Paul has a solution. In her bold new book, “The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain,” she draws on a wealth of scientific research to show that we’re smarter when we get out of our heads. By offloading our memories onto our phones, making decisions based on our bodily sensations, using tactile tools to solve abstract problems, drawing inspiration from our surroundings, and arguing with our friends, we can access intelligence that exists beyond the confines of our craniums. In this episode, Annie explains how to do it.