5 Common Thinking Errors That Hurt Your Decision Making (And How To Overcome Them)
Hey Fam!
I’m soaking up the last week’s of summer in NYC. I hope you’re well and making time to do things you care about.
This Week:
🎨Visual Of The Week: Words Are Energy
⚡️5 Common Thinking Errors That Hurt Your Decision Making (And How To Overcome Them)
🧘🏽♀️Mindful Dose: 2 Quotes From Sylvia Boorstein on Life and Suffering
🍅Sauce: A song that reminds me to be
I’m grateful for you. Have an amazing weekend,
Kyle
Visual Of The Week🎨
Words are energy🙏🏾〰
5 Common Thinking Errors That Hurt Your Decision Making (And How To Overcome Them)
I imagine you’ve seen someone share something on the internet you disagreed with.
You may even have a family member who’s views you can’t wrap your head around.
There’s a lot of gray and a lot we really don’t know.
Researchers have also uncovered mental errors that lead humans to make irrational decisions.
Below I shared 5 common ones, as well as ways to be more aware of when the brain’s mental shortcuts aren’t helping you.
5 Common Thinking Errors:
All-or-Nothing Thinking:
Life is complex, but sometimes we see things as black and white.
Maybe you label your projects as successes or failures and overlook the different things you can take away from an experience.
Personalization:
It’s common to assume other people’s actions are in response to something you’ve done.
If a friend hasn’t responded to a message, you might wonder what you did wrong or label them as a certain person, without acknowledging there can be other factors at play.
Loss Aversion:
Our tendency to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains.
I got free air pods with my laptop and my response was, “that’s nice, but I don’t really need new headphones.”
I lost one of my Beats earbuds and it legit ruined my mood. I was so upset.
This causes us to make decisions to avoid losses and keep things we own + overvalue what we have in comparison to other options.
Availability Heuristic:
Common error our brain makes by assuming the examples that come to mind most easily are the most prevalent.
If you watch the news or follow certain accounts on social media you may feel like everything is on fire and there’s no good in the world.
Confirmation Bias:
Tendency to search for and favor info that confirms our beliefs, while ignoring/giving less weight to info that contradicts our beliefs.
As I’m sure you’ve witnessed with today’s political climate, changing someone’s mind can be really hard.
The more you believe you know or are correct about a given subject, the more you filter or ignore contradictory info.
The brain needs shortcuts; they’re important for processing all the stuff we experience in our day.
But it's valuable to bring awareness to some of the mental shortcuts, so we can be mindful of when they’re not helpful.
3 Ways To Bring More Awareness To Your Thinking Errors:
Mindfulness
Practice being present throughout your day
Aside from a meditation or yoga practice you can take moments to be present while cooking, listening to music, exercising, having a conversation etc.
The more awareness you bring to your day, the more you’ll be able to observe your thoughts and body’s responses.
Get curious about alternatives:
One Harvard study showed the brain can only observe a limited amount
If your focus says something is impossible, your mind will ignore contradicting thoughts.
Create systems that allow you to measure what’s important:
Our lives are made up of how we spend our time each day
The more we understand how we're using our time the more we can live lives that are aligned with who we want to be.
Write down your goals, values and other things you care about
Measure from a place of curiosity, not judgement—It’s about getting to know yourself better.
Of course there are times we want to flow with life, and there are things that aren’t worth measuring.
P.S. If you want to bring more clarity to your thinking and focuses in life, so you can be more aligned with the person you want to be, click here to check out our Creator Dashboard.
Sources:
10 Mental Errors That’ll Crush Your Mental Strength
5 Common Mental Errors That Sway You From Making Good Decisions
Mindful Dose🧘🏽♀️
Sylvia Boorstein’s writing was one of my first introductions to meditation and Buddhism.
Here are 2 beautiful quotes from her:
1.
“Mindfulness meditation doesn't change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart's capacity to accept life as it is. It teaches the heart to be more accommodating, not by beating it into submission, but by making it clear that accommodation is a gratifying choice.”
2.
“... the moment in which the mind acknowledges 'This isn't what I wanted, but it's what I got' is the point at which suffering disappears. Sadness might remain present, but the mind ... is free to console, free to support the mind's acceptance of the situation, free to allow space for new possibilities to come into view.”
Sauce🍅
I might have had this song by Tems on repeat for 72hrs straight—I’ll let you determine the validity of that.
It’s about freedom to be. Imagine you’re staring at the ocean as you listen.
Tweet Of The Week🧠
Thanks for your precious attention. Until next week!❤️
-K