The 90-Second Rule

When something unexpected happens and you have an emotional response, how long do you typically hold onto that feeling? On average, because every such event is different in myriad ways. Say, someone says or does something unexpectedly rude or hurtful. Do you find yourself stewing and replaying the event, going on tangents, round and round? I’m raising my hand, because, hello, we all do this! Today I’m giving us all an exit from that, freedom in the form of the 90-second rule.

Described by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, the 90-second rule basically states that our bodies experience a 90-second chemical response when we have a reaction to something. After 90 seconds, the chemicals have cleared unless we mentally choose to keep replaying the feeling.

WHOAH! We can actually simply let stuff go. Our bodies have so why not get our minds on board, too?

Here is the 90-second rule in Taylor’s words:

When a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there’s a 90 second chemical process that happens in the body; after that, any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop.

Something happens in the external world and chemicals are flushed through your body which puts it on full alert. For those chemicals to totally flush out of the body it takes less than 90 seconds.

This means that for 90 seconds you can watch the process happening, you can feel it happening, and then you can watch it go away.

After that, if you continue to feel fear, anger, and so on, you need to look at the thoughts that you’re thinking that are re-stimulating the circuitry that is resulting in you having this physiological response over and over again.

– Jill Bolte Taylor

Supporting Words of Wisdom

To recognize that my upsets come from myself is the first step to remedying them.
– Anthony De Mello

90 Seconds

We cannot control everything that happens to us in life, but we can control how we respond. If we can sit with the moment, take a breath, and let the 90 seconds pass, we can choose to move out the other side whole, undisturbed. The choice is ours. Isn’t this interesting?

The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…
– Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4–5