That cup of tea tastes so much better after you’ve been out in the cold and wet for an hour. Not because you made it differently. Not because the tea changed. You changed. You went from freezing to warm, from miserable to comfortable, and now every sip feels like a small miracle. That’s your brain…
You trust old information more than new information. You believe the way you’ve always done things is better than trying something different. And that belief, comfortable as it is, is probably keeping you stuck. Welcome to Conservatism Bias, one of the most common cognitive biases you have. It’s the mental shortcut that makes you hang…
You were born open-minded. Watch a child encounter something new. They don’t filter it through decades of assumptions. They don’t immediately categorise it as impossible or inappropriate for someone like them. They just accept it, explore it, and try it out. That’s what you used to do. Somewhere along the way, you lost that. You…
Would you rather have £90 today or £100 in a month? Have you ever thought about how long it would take for that decision to change? Most of you would take the £90. Right now. Guaranteed. In your hand today. And honestly, that’s exactly the response your brain is designed to give you. It feels…
In the last lesson, we talked about habitual inertia and how we want to build good habits that trigger automatically, without thinking. This happens when our mind connects a trigger with a practised response or behaviour. If this habit or response is practised enough, it happens under the radar of our consciousness. You don’t think…
Sometimes the only way to move forward is to first let go of what’s holding you back. And what’s holding you back isn’t usually what you think it is. It’s not the lack of opportunity. Not the missing motivation. Not even the circumstances you blame. It’s the negative event from last week, last month, or…
You consistently label yourself. Maybe you don’t realise you’re doing it, but you do. You look at yourself through the same stereotypes you use to judge everyone else, and in doing so, you can inadvertently put yourself in a box that you’ve never consciously chosen. Let me explain the problem with this in a little…
You’re driving forward whilst staring backwards. That’s the problem. People often tell me they want to change their life, lose weight, quit smoking, sort out their anxiety. Great. Brilliant. Let’s do it. We make a plan, and weeks later I ask them what they’ve been doing since we last spoke. They look sheepish, because they…
Often, it’s easier to blame others when bad things happen rather than blame yourself. It’s easier to look for someone external to carry the can than to accept it’s actually your fault you’re in that situation to begin with. This is a self-protective conditioned response. It’s a recognised thing most of us do from time…
I want to tell you about a patient I saw in my consulting room. He was a smoker, had been for decades, and wasn’t interested in stopping. We’d had the conversation more than once. The health risks were well established and he knew them. But he had an answer ready every time. His grandfather had…