Maybe you’re at home right now, sitting there reading this with a coffee, thinking about all the things you should have done but never got around to, or maybe you’re thinking of the things you should do but you find it difficult to take the first step. You’ve got dreams, plans and good intentions. Possibly…
You know those people who always seem to find evidence that the world is against them? The ones who can turn a perfectly decent day into a catalogue of disasters? The ones who, no matter what happens, somehow manage to prove to themselves that yes, life really is as terrible as they thought it was?…
This lesson is here to make you see your problems a bit differently. Here’s a question for you that I can guarantee that nobody has ever asked you before. Can you physically put your problem that’s holding you back into a wheelbarrow? I’m serious. Could you pick it up, carry it outside, dump it in…
This lesson talks about a common expression people use when describing someone’s outlook. You know the one — is your glass half empty or half full? It’s one of those phrases that’s been repeated so often it’s almost lost its meaning. Almost. I’m sure you’ve heard this expression before. You already know that it’s used…
This lesson is about visualisation. Not some mystical, mind-over-matter nonsense you might have heard from self-help gurus, but something more practical and, done properly, more useful than most people realise. The reason is practical. It gives you a destination. It gives you something mentally to work towards rather than letting your mind get stuck in…
Nine out of ten owners say their cats prefer it. That’s the tagline. That’s what sells cat food. Not “one in ten cats don’t like it,” even though statistically that’s exactly the same information. Same data, different frame, completely different response. Previously in the foundation course we talked about the Affect Heuristic and how emotion…
A paradox is a strange thing. It’s a statement or a situation that seems to contradict itself, yet might still be true, and it turns up far more often in ordinary life than most people realise. Take the old liar’s paradox as an example: what would happen if Pinocchio said “my nose is going to…
You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take. Wayne Gretzky said that, the famous ice hockey player, and it’s one of my favourite quotes. Not only because it’s true, but because it gives us a perfect example of how omission bias affects us every single day. For some people, omission bias is…
By now I hope you accept that the majority of our automatic day to day decisions are affected by cognitive biases. In this lesson we’re going to discuss the effect that our perception of comfort and safety has on our lives, because here’s something most people don’t realise. Comfort and safety are not the same…
He still wanted the purple pills. He was adamant they worked far better than the cheaper, non-purple generic alternative. The pills were chemically identical in terms of the active drug, but the non-branded ones, he told me, just didn’t work at all. Most people are already aware of the phenomenon called the placebo effect. The…