4) Don’t Let Your Emotions Control You
The prior rule talks about ensuring you’re prepared for anything. Doing so can help you to stay calm. The game is designed to rattle you, but you can’t let it do that.
This rule addresses both “positive” emotions, like friendship, and also “negative” ones, such as anger. Let’s address the positive first and then move on to the negative.
Under normal Big Brother circumstances, most or all of the people in the house with you are strangers. You will be stuck with them for up to three months, but you have to remember that this is a game. Of course, people aren’t robots (well, except when Sam was), so emotion will certainly play some role, but you can’t let inside friendships or enemyships control the game. We had enough “Friendship” controlling the game a while back, thank you very much.
Friends are great, but this is a game show. I know that a number of winners made friends. The key is that they didn’t allow their friendships to interfere with game play. Using Derrick as an example again, every person in the final four said they were so glad Derrick had their back. But he said, “I have to play this game with my head and not my heart.”
A good season to use for comparisons is way back in Big Brother 5. Everybody expected Drew to take Diane with him into the final two, but he understood that he had a better chance against Cowboy. And Drew still got Diane’s vote to win at the end! Meanwhile, earlier in that season, Jase let emotions get in the way, which led to the evictions of Holly, Scott, and Jase himself.
Then we have the flip side of emotion – anger. Way back in the second season, Nichole let her anger and bitterness get the better of her and by the end of it, she was barely recognizable as the same person who had entered the house. Even worse for her, people chose Will as the winner! We’ve seen other people degenerate into meanspiritedness as well, often over trivial things. And some of them seemed to come into the house that way. No matter what, it’s ugly to watch, and it’s even worse to live with. People will target you if you are horrible to be around.
Contestants need to achieve the proper balance and remain objective. This is a game. You wouldn’t allow emotion to rule in a game of Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune, so don’t do it when half a million dollars are on the line.