How the Mind Creates Patterns

Your Head row is your thinking: the stories you tell yourself about what's happening, what it means, and what's coming next. Thoughts feel like facts. They aren't. They're intel reports, and some of your sources are compromised.

Your mind's job is to keep you alive. To do that it would rather be wrong about a threat a hundred times than miss one real one. That bias saved lives downrange. At home it fills your head with threats that aren't there.

• Worst case: jumping straight to the worst outcome and treating it as certain.
• All or nothing: it's perfect or it's a failure; they're with me or against me.
• Mind reading: deciding what people think about you without asking.
• Shoulds: running on rules about how you, and everyone else, should be.
• Control: believing that if you let go for a second, everything falls apart.

On top are your thoughts: "Nobody's going to hire me." Under those are your rules: "Never ask for help." At the bottom is a core belief: "I'm not enough."

Core beliefs are rarely said out loud. They were installed early, in childhood, in training, or in a single moment downrange, and they drive every square you land on.

Your brain is a prediction machine. Core beliefs are its deepest predictions, and they shape what you see, feel and do before you choose anything. Change the prediction and every square downstream changes too.

Sources: Clark, A; Beck, A