Taylin John Simmonds

Your brain is lying to you.

After 40 years of research, Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman found the shocking truth:

Most of your decisions aren’t yours.

Here are 8 powerful lessons he teaches on how people actually make decisions (use to reclaim your mind): 

1/ You don’t think the way you think you do

Your brain runs on two systems:

System 1 = fast, automatic, emotional
System 2 = slow, deliberate, logical

Most of your decisions are made by System 1.

Most people rationalize with System 2 after foolish decisions from System 1. 

2/ Your brain is lazy

Slow, deliberate thinking is reliable but exhausting.
So your mind prefers to let fast, error prone thinking run the show.

This is great for dodging an oncoming car.
But terrible for life-defining decisions. 

3/ You are biased

Cognitive biases are mental shortcuts that save energy but distort reality.

Your brain twists memories and cherry-picks facts.
Without deliberate mental rewiring, you're your own worst deceiver.

Kahneman identified over 100 deceptive biases. 

4/ Don't blindly believe confident people

People who feel most certain are often most wrong.
Why?

System 1 creates the illusion of coherent stories even when they’re false.

Overconfidence bias leads to trusting feeling over evidence. 

5/ Wins feel kinda good. Losses utterly destroy.

This is why you're wired for loss aversion.

You'd rather stagnate than risk failure - not starting an online business to avoid rejection.

This fear is why most people never truly live. 

6/ The truth behind conspiracy theories

Your brain liked to jump to conclusions with limited data.

This leads to conspiracy thinking, gambling addictions, and false confidence.

Like seeing sinister plots in random events or betting big on a “lucky” streak. 

7/ Don't always trust your gut

Your intuition is your best guess based on past experiences.

Most experts shaped and sharpened their's through years of failure.

But if you have not explored, lived, and learned than your intuition might fail you. 

8/ People don’t choose. They compare.

Your decisions are shaped by persuasive framing.

Want someone to pick Plan A?
Show them a terrible Plan B.

You’re not as rational as you think. 

This is why marketing, politics, and media work: they hit System 1 where it hurts.

Even Kahneman admitted:

"These errors are hard to avoid, even when you know about them."

You can’t out-think the brain, but you can train it...

Kahneman spent his life studying the invisible errors in our thinking.

Slowing down will lead to better decisions.

System 1 thinks first.
But your thinking improves if you pause, reflect and engage System 2.

Awareness is the first step to training for better decisions. 

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I hope you've found this thread as useful as I did.

Follow me @TaylinSimmonds for more on clear thinking and ghostwriting.

Like/Repost the quote below if you learned something.

One pattern I’ve noticed in all miserable people:

They overthink and underact.

The system I use to escape the cold, dark prison of overthinking:

“Energy goes where attention flows”

Your energy gets stuck when all your attention is on the thoughts in your head. This creates a downward spiral.

Pull your attention elsewhere to escape the vortex.

This is how: 

1/ Develop meta-awareness

(Your ability to notice when you’re overthinking).

Understand that you are not your thoughts; you’re the thinker

I meditate 20 minutes a day, bringing my focus back to my breath whenever I catch myself thinking. 

2/ Untangle energy knots

Overthinking is a byproduct of unprocessed trauma and negative emotions.

It’s like when your grandma’s kettle boils; the steam builds up until it screams.

Energy that you push down, corrupts your mind. In order to heal, you need to feel.

3/ Overthinking stems from indecision

We fear the pain of making the wrong choices. And worse, we fear regret.

But once you understand that every decision has consequences, you can make a choice with certainty.

Choose the path that aligns with your values and don’t look back. 

4/ You don’t have a thinking problem, you have an action problem

Miserable people try to think their way out of problems that can only be solved with action.

Make action your default mode. 
(This tip alone saved my life) 

5/ Overthinking is the opposite of focus

Overthinking = scattered consciousness 
Focus = single pointed consciousness

If you allow yourself to be distracted by social media, messages, emails, calls, and cheap media…

You are training your mind to be chaotic. 

If you can take control of your mind, you've joined the 1%.

Where your attention goes, you give power.

Do you want to give it to politicians and meme accounts who don’t know you exist?

Or do you want to use it to make your dreams come true? 

6/ Abolish pesky thought loops

Looping = bouncing between 2 or 3 dark thoughts

Most people try to think their way out of a thought loop.

Thinking only creates thought loops. Writing breaks them.

Grab a journal and brain dump your thoughts… 

The longer you journal the more stories you will notice.

Separate these stories from the facts.

Most of the stories you tell yourself are based in emotion.

They’re created by your mind to validate your feelings.

Once the story is on the page, you realize it isn’t always true. 

Writing brings order to the chaos of your mind.

And it might help you bring order to someone else’s.

Write in your journal to free your mind. 
Write on social media to free the world.

PS: Want to turn BIG ideas into micro-content?

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http://taylinsimmonds.com/waitlist

Thanks for reading.

Follow me @Taylinsimmonds if you like hard shell tacos and audience building advice.

And if you learned something, share the 1st tweet.

Until next time, 
TS
https://x.com/TaylinSimmonds/status/1838935797002539347

The hilarious behind-the-scenes story of writing this thread (only for the creators who care about writing viral content) 