How to Navigate the Map

You stand on one square at a time. To move, you have to answer one question: what did the last square have to do with this one?

That question is the whole game. Every answer shows you a link: how a thought became a feeling, how a feeling hit your body, how one belief drives all three. Over time the links show your patterns, and patterns can be changed.

Every time you move on the map, you answer what the last square had to do with this one. Those answers are your chain, written in your own words.

After a few moves, read them back. You'll start to see the same links, the same triggers, the same belief underneath, again and again. That's your pattern.

Naming how one state led to another forces your thinking brain to look at your emotional brain from the outside. That's cognitive reappraisal, one of the best-studied ways to regulate emotion. You stop being inside the reaction and start reading it.

Sources: Ochsner, K; Lieberman, M

Nobody lives on one side. The skill is noticing which side is driving right now, then choosing whether to let it. Run the drill below: sort each thought into fear or faith.