The Heat Of The Moment

A common expression you hear is getting “caught up in the heat of the moment”. It’s when tensions run high and often leads to actions born from emotion and passion. In some cases people step up to the moment and alchemize the ‘heat’ to find flow and elevate their performance, but more often the ‘heat of the moment’ causes people to lose their cool and do things they later wish they didn’t do.

This happens all the time on the soccer field. I played college soccer and have seen it countless times. Someone slides in with a hard tackle, whether it was a foul or not the other guy has an issue with it. He gets in his face and starts talking smack. One guy headbutts or pushes or spits on the other as an act of claiming their dominance and physical presence, and they get a Red Card.

This is the heat of the moment. The game is competitive so people are already running hot. It’s high stakes and the game is on the line. So when something questionable happens that sets someone off, tensions can escalate quickly.

The irony is, these are professional athletes. You can imagine they’ve been trained how to regulate their emotions, and have been instructed not to do anything stupid that jeopardizes the team. Yet, in the heat of the moment, they lose control and make a mistake that hurts their team. 

I imagine you’ve found yourself in high stakes, highly emotional, passionate moments. Maybe even you’ve done things you weren’t proud of that you apologized for. What happens psychologically is our emotions take us out of the highly-developed prefrontal cortex and activate more primitive structures in the Amygdala. This makes us act more instinctually and seek to defend ourselves out of self-preservation and protection. The defense is intended to secure both our physical and psychological safety.

That’s why we say things we don’t mean and act violently in ways we’d never want to. It’s because our primitive brain takes over, dominates our thinking, and influences us to act in ways we later regret.

The key to navigating the heat of the moment is to deescalate emotions. When we need to slow down our nervous system, breathe, and then assess. That’s how you can take all factors into account as you decide how to respond rather than impulsively and reflexively react.

It’s easier said than done, but the next time you find yourself in the heat of the moment, you can use this understanding to navigate the situation in a way that represents who you want to be.

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