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.







