A COGNITIVE MAKE-OVER

Now make-overs are common these days. There are home make-overs—a re-modeling of a home to give it a whole new look and function. There is the personal make-over— an updating of one’s wardrobe— hair, dress, and public presentation. A make-over cleans things up, updates what is out of date, eliminates what is non-functional, introduces more effective and efficient techniques, and establishes what will be more solid and robust. Sound good, right? Well, what if we did that for your mind— for your thinking capacities?

Cognitively we all need regular make-overs in order to keep our minds highly efficient for processing information, solving problems, creating highly desired innovations, connecting effectively with people, negotiating conflicts smoothly, and much, much more. With a Cognitive Make-Over you will be able to avoid being deceived by a cognitive bias and/or experiencing the misery of the cognitive distortions. Is that enough reasons for getting a cognitive make-over? If not, then consider the biggest reason of all.

The quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life. There’s a reason for this. It is because thinking— both what and how you think— governs everything. It governs your communications to others as it governs your communications to yourself. It governs your emotional states which, in turn, govern your skills and performances. It governs your ability to solve the problems that life throws at you and your flexibility in adjusting. Now that’s a thought about thinking!

When it comes to thinking, that’s something you already do. You have been doing it from your beginning. And that’s also why you now have thinking habits— and some of them are undoubtedly poor thinking habits, and amazingly, you are also probably not be aware of them. These habits can lead to sub-optimal beliefs and actions thereby making life unnecessarily stressful and miserable. And all along, you may not even be aware of your thinking or your thinking habits because they are usually not conscious. Given that you may also be unaware and lacking the most important cognitive skill— meta-thinking.

Meta-thinking, the ability to think about your thinking, gives you the capacity to quality control your thinking, to update it, and to make sure it serves you well. Without that ability you can be easily influenced and duped by those who know how to play to the basic human cognitive biases. And that can be a formula for personal catastrophes, failures, and disappointments. Without that ability, you cannot “run your own brain.”

So, do you need a cognitive make-over as you start this new year? Do you ever— Assume that you know what others are thinking or intending?

Over-react to a trigger (when someone pushes your buttons)? Assess probabilities incorrectly so you think your chances are higher than they actually were? Test hypotheses inefficiently? Violate your own values and premises? Let irrelevant contexts affect your choices? Ignore alternative hypothesis when evaluating data? Display information-processing biases that blind you to a situation? Are absolutely sure about something and then get surprised? Find it difficult to solve the problems of everyday life? Struggle in figuring out how connect with someone or influence someone?

Where there are poor thinking habits, there are all sorts of other things that happen that make life miserable— broken marriages, ruined friendships, tricked by a mortgage lending scandal, caught off-guard by an economic bust, surprised by a technological accident, deceived by a pyramid sales scheme or a telemarketing fraud, fall for religious fanaticism, psychic scams, etc. All sorts of unpleasant, and even disastrous, things happen when we fail to effectively think through things or do effective information processing.

Now the good news is that the way you’ve been thinking up until now does not have to continue to govern the way you think. You can change your mind, you can renew your mind, you can get a cognitive make-over and get upgrades on all of your current thinking styles and patterns. And it is not as difficult as it might seem at first glance. It is what we do in NLP. It is what we do in Neuro-Semantics and especially in Meta-States. It is our speciality.