In my last post in this series I focused on how we can use a simple formula for change to make learning easier and improve our lives. Today we’re looking at the flip side, some of the major obstacles we face when we try to change. One of these is the nature of the brain itself.
The brain you’re carrying around today is pretty similar to the one your ancestors had 50,000 years ago. Those Stone Age brains were very good at keeping them alive to survive a harsh world and pass on their genes, but they’re not so well built for modern life. One of the main reasons for this is the negativity bias.
Think about your day for a minute. Every day a hundred things happen, most of them pretty small. Some are good, some are bad. But what do you think about when your head hits the pillow? For most people, it’s the negative stuff - the person who cut you off in traffic, that thoughtless thing your boss said, an anxiety about the future. The brain’s negativity bias made sense for our ancestors, who lived in a world where missing a threat could easily lead to death. Forgetting to reply to an email or getting left on read doesn’t carry the same existential risk, but try convincing your amygdala of that.
There’s a great metaphor about the negativity bias from psychologist Rick Hanson:1 we’re like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones. Negative experiences stick to us while positive experiences slide right off. The brain constantly scans the world for negative information, fixates on the bad news it finds, generalizes conclusions about the world (and the people in it) from that bad news, and fast-tracks all of it into memory. That negative information becomes the mind’s database, the foundation for our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about the world.
Practically, this means we need to go out of our way to notice, focus on, and internalize the good aspects of life. Not because we’re trying to wear rose-colored glasses, but as a deliberate way to balance the brain’s bias. A huge place where this shows up for people is in their self-appraisal.
Why We Don’t Feel Good About Ourselves
We experience our own lives as a complete movie. We see every moment, every weird thought, every time we failed to live up to our expectations. We then compare this to the highlight reels other people show us. People are often more than happy to share their wins, and usually less happy to share the messy journey that got them there. When they’re asked to reflect on that journey, that reflection often includes a lot of survivorship bias. They emphasize their own efforts, how they “attracted everything they wanted,” but they’re less likely to see their advantages, the ways they got lucky, the circumstances that supported them. People usually compare up, not down, which makes it easy to lose perspective, and maximizes self-criticism.
Over time, this wears away at our self-worth and self-efficacy: the belief that “I’m a person I can rely on.” This is one of the most important resources we have, and it’s based on evidence - we believe we can learn things if we remember learning things. But there’s a big problem here: your memory is not reality.
In 1936 Jean William Fritz Piaget, a Swiss psychologist known for his work with children, proposed a theory of cognitive development that explained how children gained an understanding of the world around them. The theory is based on three big ideas:
The notion that we use mental models, built from schemas, to understand and react to the world. Think of this as a kind of “script” for a given idea or interaction (e.g., when I say “elephant,” an image pops into your head, when I say “ordering food at a restaurant,” you can think of the script for that interaction).
His stages of cognitive development which include sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.
The understanding of learning as an adaptive process based on interaction with the outside world. This adaptation is driven by two key processes: assimilation and accommodation.
Assimilation occurs when we can use an existing schema to deal with the world around us, or take in new knowledge without violating that schema. Accommodation occurs when the existing schema doesn’t work to solve the problem in front of us, and we must significantly update it in order to reconcile the issue. Bottom line, your brain wants to assimilate, it doesn’t like accommodation. This means that when the brain is faced with information that doesn’t match it’s preexisting model, it tends to ignore it.2 Those models are themselves built from underlying beliefs and assumptions we have about ourselves and the world. You can find them in your:
Values: “Should-s,” “must-s,” self-imposed rules, and priorities. Views attached to what is “good” or “bad.”
Mental Models: Assumptions – validated or otherwise – about the common structures that govern the way the world “is” or how the world “works.” (e.g., the model of how men and women are “supposed” to act in a relationship)
Expectations: The scripts we automatically activate during interactions, and our assumptions about the future.
Self-concept: Who you think you are, and what you think that means.
Narratives: The stories we tell about ourselves and others.
These beliefs inherently limit us. While it’s common to hear people refer to negative beliefs as limiting beliefs, even positive beliefs tend to orient us toward some possibilities while excluding others. If you’re told over and over that you have a unique gift for algebra, you’re probably going to feel some pressure to pursue math even if you’d rather be playing the tuba. My point here isn’t that talent is a burden, but our beliefs about that talent certainly can be.
One of the biggest contributors to the beliefs we have about ourselves is how we were treated by other people when we were young. Kids are little sponges, and their early experiences set the template for everything that comes after. We see people treating us a certain way, or hear them repeat stories about the way we are over and over, so it’s natural to go “Oh, I must be that kind of way.” Those early relationships aren’t everything - sometimes when people talk about psychology, it sounds like the only thing that matters is your relationship with your mom - but they cast a long shadow over the rest of our lives.
Those beliefs have a huge impact on how we act, and they dictate the material the brain easily internalizes vs. the material it struggles to accept. If you have a mental model that you’re a lazy person, or you aren’t able to solve certain kinds of problems, or you struggle in relationships, it’s going to highlight the information that confirms those stories and ignore the information that pushes on them. The beliefs we have rapidly become self-fulfilling. If you think of yourself as being lazy, you’re less likely to have experiences that could contradict that belief because you’re not going to put yourself in situations where the belief could be tested. Even when you do have disconfirming experiences, they’re filtered through the lens of the belief. You succeeded not because you are capable and worked hard, but because of some other explanation. Or sure, you succeeded, but it was so difficult for you! It must be easier for other people.
This negativity bias changes what we remember, and by extension how we interpret our history. Our beliefs are based on those memories, and our behavior is based on those beliefs. The result is acting in a way that is simply not based on reality.
Building a More Accurate View of Self
It can be radical to realize that most people should experience more self-worth, self-confidence, and self-efficacy than they do. If you’re reading this, your life already contains a long record of follow-through, small moments of courage, and ordinary kindness. Even on days when you feel like you do nothing you complete dozens of micro-goals: you answer the email, show up for the friend, keep the promise you made yesterday. It’s not narcissistic to recognize this, it’s a more accurate appraisal of reality.
Developing self-worth, confidence, and a sense of efficacy depends as much on countering the negativity bias as it does on changing behavior. Here’s a simple framework to help you do that, and develop a more accurate view of who you are along the way.
Catch the bias in the act
We tend to be pretty wrapped up in our thoughts, particularly the negative ones, and it’s easy to experience them not as thoughts but as statements of fact. Cognitive defusion, a skill emphasized in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy,3 helps us learn how to see thoughts as thoughts and feelings as feelings: they’re passing events, shaped by our stories, and not literally true. When a thought like “They don’t like me” or “I’m unlovable” comes up, what happens next? Do you immediately believe it, or can you pause and think, “Huh, there’s that thought again. How interesting.”
We can use this approach to catch the negativity bias in the act. When you get a small piece of information from the world, what happens next? What assumptions start forming? When someone leaves you on read, does your mind jump straight to the worst-case scenario? When you fixate on one bad thing, can you widen your view enough to hold it alongside the good? And if someone you cared about were in the same situation, what advice would you give them?
Get less certain.
The negativity bias loves black-and-white conclusions: I blew it. I’m not cut out for this. The world is a scary place. I’ll never learn.
A simple antidote is to move from verdicts to estimates. When you’re spiraling around a fear, ask yourself: How likely is this, really? If you had to put a number on it, what would it be? We shift from certainty - which is another indicator that we’re fused with a belief - to possibility. One way to get some space is by generating alternative explanations: “I’m 60% sure that they’re mad at me, but I guess it’s 40% possible that they’re busy.” Write it down, and keep track. How often do your fears really come true?
Our fears are usually realized less often than we think. Recognizing this can help us shift away from all or nothing thinking, and start replacing words like always and never with often, sometimes, or this time. Combined with some cognitive defusion, we can start swapping identity claims for behavior claims. Even just going from “I’m bad with people” to “Aw that conversation went a little sideways, bummer,” is real progress.
Accumulate evidence.
We build self-belief from evidence. We see ourselves as effective because we experienced ourselves as being effective. Sometimes just noticing the ways we’re already being effective is enough, but it doesn’t hurt to deliberately go out of our way to stack up wins.
Go back to my last post on committable effort. What’s the small activity you can commit to, day-after-day? Define “done” before you begin. Spend five focused minutes on the hard thing. Then when you’re done, for god’s sake, let yourself feel good about it. Keep a log, check the box each day, and over time you’ll have a record of real evidence that you can do the thing.
Install the good.
Because the brain is Teflon for positives and Velcro for negatives, you have to let ordinary wins land. Otherwise, they’ll fly right through.
For all its excesses, American culture can be strangely prudish about actually feeling good. But every small good thing - the time you followed through, the smile from someone you like, whatever it is - is a data point that disconfirms negative self-beliefs. So hold tight to them! Let the moment sink in for 15–30 seconds. Notice where you feel it in your body. Name why it matters: “This is me being dependable,” or “This is evidence I’m valued.” You might even write it down, or find another way to log it that’s more reliable than memory.
Advocate for yourself, both in and out of the mind.
We don’t just advocate for ourselves with other people. We need to be able to stand up for ourselves inside our own minds. This means actively pushing back against the parts of ourselves that keep us stuck and work against our best interests. One way to meet the inner critic is with a strong, credible internal voice. This voice doesn’t deny reality, it’s caring, firm, and specific. “Yes, I got a bit defensive. But that doesn’t make me a bad person, and I did a a good job of staying relational. I’ll practice pausing before responding for next time.” There’s also a place for speaking directly to the inner critic, “Hey, you can flag risks, I appreciate that, but you don’t get to insult me. You can highlight things to improve, but you can’t ignore what went well.”
This was the third part of my (somewhat) Short Guide to a Good Life. Next time we’ll focus on cognitive defusion, experiencing out, and how to release some of the beliefs that are the basis for our frustrating behaviors.
If you’re new here, Rick is my dad.
This is a pretty good explanation for why political discourse has gone to such a dark place - people ignore what doesn’t fit their pre-existing model.
Pretty much every modern therapeutic approach includes some version of cognitive defusion
Very clear & helpful - Thank You!
Forrest, I appreciate your writing style. It is understandable and relatable. Thanks for all you do, especially "keeping it real". Your podcast is great, too. I like your interviews with your Dad and Elizabeth. I hope you also interview others.