How cognitive illusions prevent you from building the life you want (part 1)
In the intro to this series, I told you how cognitive illusions systematically prevent people from building the lives they want…
By causing them to make decision after decision based on faulty thinking.
And how, once you know what these illusions are, you can combat them with signposts that let you know when you’re in the cognitive illusion zone…
And external structure to help you navigate through the illusion.
So let’s dive into what some of those illusions are, WHY they cause you to accidentally build a life you hate, and what you can do about it :)
Cognitive illusion 1: Anchoring to the negative
In any situation or problem or challenge you might be facing, there are…
Things you know and things you don’t know
Things that are working and things that aren’t working
Things you’re clear on and things you’re confused about
Things that are simple & easy and things that are complex & difficult
Things that are in your control and things that are out of your control
Ways that you have power & privilege and ways that you face injustice & structural disadvantage
BOTH sides exist, in all situations.
But your automatic brain will anchor to the negative FIRST.
It will FIRST notice:
What you don’t know
What’s not working
What you’re confused about
What’s complex & difficult
What’s out of your control
All the ways you’re unfairly disadvantaged
This is because your brain has been honed, over generations of evolution, to notice threats and scarcity FIRST.
This is a feature, not a bug. It’s a trait that kept our ancestors alert and alive.
So why does this lead to people accidentally creating lives they don’t want?
The positive and the negative both exist. It shouldn’t matter which one you focus on first…right?
If your automatic brain was a perfectly rational scientist, it wouldn’t matter which one you started with.
But your brain is NOT a perfectly rational scientist. It is a confirmation bias machine.
Once your automatic brain has latched onto a belief, it systematically calls up ALL the evidence that supports that belief…
While simultaneously suppressing or discounting any evidence that disproves the belief.
Your beliefs are the filters through which you look at the world.
Whatever you already believe, that’s all you see.
Which means that the premise you START your problem-solving with matters tremendously.
Here are the 3 ways that anchoring to the negative leads you to create the life you DON’T want.
1: You give up before you begin.
Let’s say that you really want to start a company. You’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and you finally have a product idea that you’re excited about.
But then your brain anchors to the negative.
Here are all the potential problems with your product
Also, it’s going to be really hard to get funding
Plus, it’s so scary to not have a steady income
What if you pick a bad cofounder?
It’s going to be so embarrassing if you fail
Your brain paints such a scary picture of the future that you say, “Okay, forget it! This is too risky. I’ll just stick with my stable job.”
Boom! Life you DIDN’T want: created.
2: You make progress, but it’s painful, and you don’t do your best work.
This was something I ran into a lot when I started my business.
I wanted to do a great job of marketing and selling coaching.
But my brain anchored to the thought: Coaching is complicated.
(My brain anchored to this thought so strongly that I didn’t even realize it was a thought. I thought it was a fact.)
When I started from this premise, my brain (just like a Google search!) helpfully gave me all the evidence that supported this belief.
You can’t necessarily predict where a client session will go or what a client journey will look like.
Different tools work on different people. You can’t guarantee what will work on who.
We talk a lot about “soft, vague stuff” like feelings.
It’s hard to quantify the exact results. “Feeling better”? “Making better decisions”? “Having your own back”?
I wanted to explain coaching simply and powerfully.
But I was thinking about all the ways coaching is complicated and hard to explain.
And it’s really hard to explain something simply…when YOU think it’s complicated.
I still published pieces. I still got clients. I still made progress.
But it was HARD and confusing and not as effective as it could have been.
I kept rewriting my Instagram bio and worrying my niche wasn’t specific enough and changing my mind about what I offered and buying marketing programs and feeling like I was doing something wrong.
I was doing what I wanted and making progress…but it didn’t feel very good, and I could tell I wasn’t doing my best work. I always felt like I was missing something.
Uh oh… Life I DIDN’T want: created.
3: You succeed! But you don’t feel like you’ve succeeded.
Imagine you’re going on a vacation that you’ve been looking forward to all year.
But on your way there, things get totally screwed up. Your flights are delayed by multiple days. You can’t stay in the nice hotel suite, so you have to stay in a smaller room. Half the attractions you wanted to see are closed.
Your brain instantly anchors to the negative.
I’ve lost so much time.
It’s so unfair that they gave my suite to someone else.
I can’t BELIEVE these attractions are closed. What am I going to do now??
My vacation is ruined.
And you walk around for your whole trip with a cloud over your head, fuming at how unfair life is and noticing all the ways the trip has gone wrong.
You’re AT your fantasy destination! The place you’ve been dreaming about all year!
But when your brain is busy anchoring to the negative, you can’t enjoy it.
All you see are the gaps and the problems, and you can’t relax and feel like you’ve arrived.
Sigh. Even though the life you wanted has been created tangibly, in the real world…
In your mind, you’re still living the life you DIDN’T want.
So how do you combat this cognitive illusion?
Remember, you need signposts to let you know you’re in the cognitive illusion zone…
…and external structure to help you navigate through (you can’t rely purely on your intuition).
Signposts
Think about a few specific times when you were anchoring to the negative. Get the examples very clear in your mind.
The write down:
What emotions were you feeling? Frustrated? Confused? Tense? Inadequate?
How did your body feel? Was your throat tight? Your stomach clenched? Your shoulders up?
What did you do? Did you keep flip-flopping on decisions? Work frantically for hours and hours? Drink wine and binge-watch Netflix?
People have different physical, emotional, and action-based reactions when they anchor to the negative.
Find yours. These are your signposts to let you know that you’ve entered this cognitive illusion zone.
Take your time and keep adding to this list as you go.
It’s very worth it to spend time cataloguing your signposts.
The faster you can spot when you’re caught in cognitive quicksand, the faster you can start to get out.
External structure
Once you realize you’re under the illusion, here’s how you combat it:
Consciously anchor to the positive. Do this FIRST, before you do any other problem-solving or analyzing or decision-making.
What DO you know?
What IS working?
What ARE you clear on?
What’s simple and easy here?
What IS in your control?
How DO you have power and privilege here?
Put on your “Things are overall good” sunglasses FIRST.
And THEN look at the problems to be solved and the gaps to be filled.
This isn’t about ignoring problems.
It’s about approaching problems from a more confident, more capable, less defeatist perspective.
When you want to start a company but your brain is giving you all ways it could go wrong, ask it:
What are all the ways the product could succeed?
How is it going to be easy for me to get funding?
Why is it not that big of a deal to not have an income for a while?
How do I already have the expertise to ensure I pick a great cofounder?
How will failing raise my status and credibility?
Anchor to the positive. See the world through the lens of your advantages and capabilities and expertise.
And THEN assess the problems.
When I was getting confused about how to sell the “complicated” product of coaching, I kept asking myself one question:
How is coaching simple?
Any time I got confused, I would ask myself that question and then write a post or have a conversation based on the answer.
When your flights are delayed and everything is closed and your vacation is off to a rough start, ask yourself:
How do I have plenty of time?
How is my new room actually better?
What interesting new things am I going to find when I can’t go to the standard attractions?
How is my vacation going to be great?
Anchor to everything that’s going WELL. And then plan the rest of your vacation.
Remember, cognitive illusions are persistent.
Which means that you can know your brain tends to anchor to the negative and the effect that has on your life…
But it will still automatically anchor to the negative.
And its negative-focused assessment will still FEEL very true to you.
It takes sustained effort to keep combatting this illusion on your own.
So let me suggest another external structure: Hire a coach.
The most valuable thing a coach does is create space between you and your automatic brain.
Your automatic brain spins stories all day long. And those stories FEEL like facts.
But a coach is trained to SEE your story for what it is — just a story.
And to SHOW you — Hey, these things you’re saying as if they’re cold, hard truths? They’re actually subjective stories your brain is telling you with cherry-picked evidence.
And to brainstorm with you — Your current story is 100% optional. If you don’t like it, you can change it. What’s a different story, that might serve you better? What do you really want, and how do you need to see the world in order to get it?
And to structure an implementation plan — In the heat of the moment, your brain is going to go back to its old story. How can we interrupt it and deploy the new story?
And over the course of a coaching package, you get enough reps on this process to take it with you for life.
I don’t want you to need me forever. I want you to learn this skill and get out :)
So if you’re ready to get started, come talk to me and let’s go.
⬅️ Intro || Part 2A ➡️
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