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…
Sometimes when a person gets stuck in a problem, it’s because having that problem gives that person some form of benefit. This effect causes a cognitive bias called primary gain, which can often influence a person’s decision making whilst also making it harder to get rid of that problem. And here’s the uncomfortable truth you…
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…
We touched on this in the previous article when we talked about primary gain. Still, I think it’s really also important to discuss pain avoidance in a bit more detail, simply because it is one of the most instinctual and powerful instincts we have. It’s hardwired into your DNA, it’s running constantly in the background,…
Why You Keep Taking the Same Road and Expecting a Different Destination I’d like to talk about stubbornness for a moment. Stubbornness can work for us or against us. I often see people disadvantaged by a stubborn tendency, people who carry on doing what they’ve always done yet possibly expecting a different result. I also…
Reactance bias can help or hinder us in life. Use it the right way, and it’s a powerful driver. Get it wrong, and we’re going to stubbornly hang on to the bad stuff in our lives just because we can. Let me tell you a story that shaped my entire career. When I was a…
One of the general underlying trends for the last few chapters has been about taking action (or the lack of it). This problem is confounded because often we don’t realise this is what we need to do, or what it is we have to do. There’s another bias that needs to be discussed with this…
The last lesson talked about worry, and this feels like an ideal time to discuss the four big emotional drivers behind our worry and how these can affect our thinking more broadly. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: your emotions are running the show far more than you’d like to admit. The four emotional drivers that…
You know them. Maybe you are one of them. The naysayers, the pessimists, the complainers, the negative people who cast gloom around them everywhere they go. These unfortunate souls live in a world seeing only what’s wrong and what could go wrong. They’re constantly scanning everything around them for something negative to comment on, and…
You’re stuck, though maybe you don’t realise it yet. Maybe you’re convinced you’re making progress, working incredibly hard and wondering why nothing’s changing. Either way, something’s not working, and that’s why you’re here. Here’s the uncomfortable truth I need you to hear. Getting the life you want almost always means making changes, and inevitably you’ll…