Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success

Chapter 6

Reality Reframes

The frustrating thing about so-called reality is that we don’t agree what is real and what is an illusion. You might see the hand of God in all things important, your friend might see reincarnation as the dominant model of reality, and I might believe we are simulated creatures—basically software—created by some other entity. Most of the time it doesn’t matter which model you choose. You can still eat, sleep, work, and procreate.

But sometimes it does matter what is real, and the quality of your decisions depend on it. I’m not the final authority on what is real, so I suggest you favor whatever filter on reality helps you predict the best. If the reframes in this chapter do a better job of predicting the future than your current filter on reality, consider making these your default beliefs. If your existing worldview predicts better, keep that. Our tiny human brains probably can’t know the full nature of reality, but sometimes we can tell what works and what does not. Let’s dig in.

Nuclear Power

In February 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that the European Union was attempting to reframe nuclear energy as “green” to make it easier to gain public and government support. A similar evolution was happening in the United States at the same time. The most dangerous form of energy in the world—said the critics—was being transformed into one of the safest via the miracle of . . . words.

This book will not argue the merits of nuclear energy. The short version is that every assumption about the risks of nuclear energy turned out to be wrong. The modern nuclear power plant designs—usually referred to as Gen 3—have been widely used for years, have never had a meltdown, and have never been associated with a single death. (Earlier designs did have issues.) The nuclear waste problem shrunk when it became obvious it made sense to simply store the waste at the nuclear sites where it was produced, in special containers. Best of all, the newest versions of nuclear power plants—Gen 4—can use that nuclear waste for fuel.

Everything I described has been true for years, but the old assumptions about nuclear energy risks still dominated the public’s thinking, including government officials. What changed it all was a combination of three things:

Energy shortages and accelerating fears about climate change triggered a more flexible attitude about nuclear energy. The alternatives were plainly insufficient.

Skilled American nuclear power advocate Michael Shellenberger almost single-handedly educated governments and the public on nuclear energy benefits and risks.

Years passed without major issues in any Gen 3 nuclear power plant. Time fixes a lot of things.

I give you this example to demonstrate how a reframe can change the world. In the case of nuclear energy, the reframe might literally save civilization, assuming it helps nuclear energy get public support. All of that is possible on the back of one word: green.

Usual Frame: Nuclear Power is risky.

Reframe: Nuclear power is green.

It’s true that one person can sometimes change the world. So can one word if that word is a well-chosen reframe.

You might be tempted to ask me why, if I know how to change civilization with one word, haven’t I already done it? That’s a good question. Now I have a question for you.

What makes you so sure I haven’t?

Human Rationality

The most meaningful reframe of my life happened in my twenties when I studied to become a hypnotist. My hypnosis teacher taught the class that humans are not rational creatures; they are creatures who rationalize decisions after they make them.

The first time you hear that reframe—either from a hypnotist or anyone else—it’s reasonable to be skeptical. After all, you don’t FEEL irrational. You are sure you make most of your decisions based on logic and facts. But then you start noticing that some OTHER people are indeed irrational (according to you), and they do seem to rationalize after the fact.

Then you notice it’s most other people.

Then you notice it’s almost everyone except you.

Then, grudgingly, you start to understand it’s you, too. Because you are human, and that’s the way we’re wired.

But we did not evolve to understand reality. We only evolved to survive. It was once assumed that understanding your reality gave you a survival advantage in evolutionary terms. But that has since been debunked. It turns out that understanding reality is closer to a disadvantage than an advantage in evolutionary terms.

That said, humans can be rational in limited situations in which the playing field is small and well-defined. For example, humans might shop for the best bargain or choose the shortest route to a destination. That’s rational. But most topics in life are not clear and not simple. In those cases, we retreat to our biases and never leave. I try hard to escape that trap with mixed results. Roughly speaking, I now experience the world through this reframe.

Usual Frame: People are rational 90 percent of the time.

Reframe: People are rational 10 percent of the time if that.

Two Movies, One Screen

For most of my life, I believed that if I disagreed with someone on a social or political issue, one of us had to be wrong. Perhaps we could both be wrong, but since our opinions differed, only one of us could be right, at least under normal conditions.

That filter on life was maddening. I would try to “win” every disagreement by using my so-called rational mind to find out where we differed in facts, logic, or bias. I reasoned that if I could identify the root cause of the disagreement, I could easily find common ground.

That almost never worked.

It took me decades to figure out why something as straightforward as checking each other’s logic and facts would consistently fail to create agreement. It was as if the other person became temporarily insane when presented with a superior argument. Even weirder, they thought the problem was on my side. And I wasn’t entirely sure they were wrong.

Eventually, I came to see the human relationship with reality as so subjective it is nonsense to discuss who is “right” in situations that can’t be reliably measured. And most things can’t be measured in ways we would agree are sufficient. I mean, we can try to measure anything we want, but the next observer will say it was measured wrong. You can rely on that. So what do you do to stay sane in such a world?

I developed this reframe to help. I started using the reframe in 2016, when the political news in America became absurdly partisan. I often hear from my followers on social media that it helped them get past the frustration of dealing with people who seem trapped in their own bubble reality.

Usual Frame: One of us is right, and one is wrong.

Reframe: We are watching two different movies on one screen.

The only two facts humans know for sure are that we exist and that some things appear to be predictable. For example, you know that every time you hit your so-called funny bone just right, it hurts. But perhaps everything about that except the predictability of it is manufactured by our minds. You might think you are petting a stray cat on the sidewalk, and I might see you picking up something from the ground. So long as your story and mine never need to be consistent—which is generally the case—we can experience different subjective realities. In your reality, you were petting a cat, and in mine you were picking up something from the ground. Yet we both witnessed the “same” event. I call that two movies playing on one screen.

The power of this reframe is that it releases you from any obligation to make others bend to your way of thinking. Others are often aware of the same events and facts as you, but while they’re looking at the same screen at the same time, they see a different movie based on their biases and expectations. Once you understand this as the dominant model of all our disagreements, you won’t feel any pressure to “fix” people who disagree with you. Simply accept that you’re watching the same screen but a different movie. It is oddly freeing.

Having Kids and Passing on your Genes

If you are grappling with the question of having children and don’t feel the calling to do so, you might feel bad about your decision. Society encourages parenthood, and you’ll probably have to answer a lot of well-intentioned but annoying questions about why you are choosing not to reproduce.

Some good reasons to have kids include religion (if that’s your thing), personal satisfaction, a sense of purpose, and a stronger society. The weakest reason—but often the one that has the strongest pull on us—is the innate desire to spread our genes and not be “forgotten” in time. You might have no conscious thoughts along those lines, but the instinct lives in most of us. If it did not, we’d easily talk ourselves out of having kids because of the inconvenience and expense.

This reframe is limited to helping you suppress your natural impulse to spread your genes. Civilization needs more babies, not fewer, so don’t use this reframe unless you are sure about your decision.

Usual Frame: You should spread your genes.

Reframe: No matter what you do, your genes will be diluted with each generation until your contribution nears zero.

A secondary use for this reframe is if you experience the tragedy of losing a child. You’ll have many negative thoughts about the experience, but if one of those thoughts involves carrying your genes forward for eternity, you can reframe that thought out of your mind: It wasn’t going to happen anyway. After a few generations of dilution, your contribution could be limited to how waxy those future children’s ears are. That isn’t the sort of legacy you need to build a life around.

Predicting Versus Understanding Reality

If every time you said the word “sunshine” a stranger appeared from a nearby hiding place and punched you in the face, would you keep saying the word? Don’t answer too quickly. In this imaginary example, there is no science or logic to tell us why it happens. You’re a rational person, and you make decisions based on evidence and reason. And in my example, there is no evidence to suggest there could possibly be a correlation much less causation between an ordinary word and the unknown assailant.

So . . . do you say “sunshine” again?

Much of life is like my weird example in the sense we don’t know how to explain anything we experience. But we think we do. We think we know why one thing happens versus another, but usually we don’t. We don’t know why loved ones act the way they do. We don’t think the news is necessarily true. And even science is looking a lot like guesswork because of its notable misfires in recent years.

Oh, I’m not done yet. Don’t take this personally, but you usually don’t know why you do things either. The part of your brain that explains why you do stuff doesn’t even engage until after you decide. Humans are rationalizers, not deciders.

Given all that we puny humans do NOT know, is there anything we do know? Yes, as I said in the last section, we know at least two things:

We know we exist.

We know some worldviews predict better than others.

Most of the rest of our so-called reality is our subjective interpretation of who-knows-what. And that leads us to this reframe.

Usual Frame: The best worldview is the true one.

Reframe: The best worldview is one that predicts the best.

In my “sunshine” example, any human in that situation who kept saying the trigger word would likely start imagining they know why the punch-in-the-face kept happening. Some would say God is angry. Some would come to believe they must be crazy, they’re imagining it, or they’re dreaming. Some would assume a nemesis of some sort is behind it. Others might say poltergeist, a curse, or magic of some kind.

None of those explanations would matter so long as the pattern was predictive. All you need to do is avoid saying that one word—sunshine—and your problem is solved. Most of your life is like that. I don’t know why electricity works—at least not in any detail—but I know the lights come on when I hit the switch. It is predictable. And predictable is the nearest our little brains can get to truth.

Understanding People

The best example of a worldview that predicts well is “follow the money.” I already mentioned this in relation to predicting the fate of a marriage, but it works in almost any domain. People can be expected to act in ways that maximize their money, at least as they see it. The weird part of this worldview is that it seems to predict even when you think it should not.

Usual Frame: Predicting people’s actions involves many variables.

Reframe: Follow the money. That’s all you need.

For example, if you knew a trusted member of a religious organization made an important decision, you would assume money was not the top priority. One would assume the religion itself would be the top priority along with empathy for the disadvantaged. But in those situations, you can reliably predict the decision will follow whatever path is also the best financial outcome for the decision-maker, directly or indirectly. In such a situation, I would expect the religious leader to make an argument that depended on religious principles and empathy. And the argument might make sense. Or not.

What matters is that I could predict which way the decision would go. That’s all we know, or think we know. If you extend that worldview to include knowing the religious figure is a fraud or a hypocrite, that’s mind-reading—and taking things too far. This hypothetical religious figure might be acting in naked self-interest. The other possibility is they don’t know they are rationalizing their own self-interest. That explanation is at least as likely as a religious figure being corrupt.

Look for patterns that predict. Don’t assume you know why. It would be terrific if you did know why as that would help predict even better. But our tendency to mind-read imaginary motives in people is far greater than our ability to discern real motives.

If you ask people what motivates them, they might not say money, but watch how often their ethics-based preferences match their economic interests. Polite society asks us to express our priorities as lofty goals such as making the world a better place, helping children, succeeding in business, that sort of thing. It would sound rude to say you’re in it for the money and are only pretending to care about doing good. And perhaps you’ve convinced yourself you are not in it for the money. That’s not uncommon.

For example, if you ask me why I’m writing this book instead of shuffling off to rich-guy retirement, I’ll probably say something about how good it feels to improve people’s lives and how I like to feel useful. Every bit of both is true. But if you want to predict how I spend my time, check to see if I expect the book to make me some money. And sure enough, I do.

You might tell yourself money doesn’t influence how you think about your choices and your priorities. But it sure influences what your body is doing while your mind is enjoying lofty thoughts about yourself. We humans often have no idea why we do what we do. Sometimes you must “follow the money” even to understand yourself. Or more generally, selfishness explains nearly everything about human behavior.

Life Is an Adventure

I heard this reframe from Dr. Jordan Peterson. It matches one I’ve been using for a few years to great effect.

Usual Frame: Life is about avoiding pain while pursuing happiness and meaning.

Reframe: Life is an adventure.

Life is full of discomforts. If you think your purpose is to avoid discomfort, you will be unhappy because there is no real hope of succeeding. Problems are part of life. But if you frame your life as an adventure, your temporary discomforts will feel as if they belong in the game to keep it interesting.

As a point of comparison, people who like to go camping are willingly taking on a load of inconvenience and discomfort before they even get the campfire lit. In any other context, willingly taking on those discomforts might look like insanity. But when viewed as part of the camping adventure, the psychological discomfort is greatly reduced.

This is one of my favorite filters on reality. Now when something goes wrong, the situation feels no different than missing one shot in a basketball game. Missing half of all shots is expected in basketball, so missing any one shot doesn’t crush your spirit. If you live your life that way instead of crying “Why me???!!!” at every bump in the road, you are likely to better enjoy the ride.

My take on the adventure frame is that we are computer simulations put here either to entertain our creators or to test strategies for their civilization. I go through my day as if I’m in a video game, which makes a lot of the stress disappear. Does it matter how unrealistic or dead-wrong I am about my reality? Nope. All that matters is that the reframe works in some identifiable way, and this one does. It makes me happy. I recommend it.

Innocent until Proven Guilty

Much of adult life is spent trying to discern who is lying and who is telling the truth. When it comes to the legal system, we take the view that citizens are innocent until proven guilty. That’s an improvement (a reframe) from labeling a person potentially guilty, or maybe innocent, maybe not. As with most reframes, it is not literally true that someone is innocent until proven guilty, except in a strict legal sense. It’s simply a better system to act as if innocence is the starting assumption to avoid harming the truly innocent.

The problem appears when we extend “innocent until proven guilty” to corporations and government entities. Given the outsized power those entities wield over citizens, it’s a better system to think of them as guilty until proven innocent. That’s why public corporations must show their financials and why elections can be audited.

Keep this rule in mind the next time a large company or government entity is accused of some heinous behavior. Until they can prove otherwise, assume guilt. You won’t often be wrong. But please be cautious about extending the presumption of guilt to any specific individuals running those organizations. Citizens are always presumed innocent until proven guilty, and I think we all appreciate that.

Usual Frame: Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

Reframe: Citizens are innocent until proven guilty. Corporations and governments are presumed guilty until proven innocent.

How often will big organizations cheat and lie? More often than you think. The larger the organization, the less likely anything they say is completely true. And there’s a reason for that. This reframe reveals it.

Usual Frame: No cheating has been detected, so the organization is innocent.

Reframe: Whenever there is an opportunity for cheating and not getting caught, a lot to gain from cheating, and lots of people involved, cheating will always happen.

The larger the organization, the more opportunities there will be to cheat and get away with it. That’s because crime can easily hide in a complicated bureaucracy.

Don’t let anyone make you feel bad about distrusting a large organization. Distrust is the best starting position. If a company can make itself transparent and reduce mistrust, it’s welcome to do so. But until then, hold organizations to a higher standard than citizens. Assume guilt but give them every opportunity to prove otherwise.

Where Opinions Come From

We want to believe our opinions come from some combination of our experiences, our knowledge, and our reason. That’s what it feels like. But nothing remotely like that is happening. Most of our opinions are assigned to us by the media. We pick a “team” we want to join, then the media tells that team what to believe.

I could spend the remainder of this book explaining why science agrees with me about how opinions are formed, but it would be easier for you to directly observe the media assigning opinions to teams.

Look at the people on whatever political side you are not on. Do you notice how they all seem to have the same opinions, opinions which in your view don’t make much sense?

That’s how they see you, too. And according to the hypnotist’s reframe—that people are irrational 90 percent of the time—you can clearly see that the other team is brainwashed. They see it in you, too. But neither of you can see it in yourselves. That’s the normal way of the world.

Okay, okay, you’re the exception. So am I. The two of us make rational decisions every time, but I think you’d agree other people seem to be moving like a brainwashed herd. Thank goodness we’re not like them.

Usual Frame: People come up with their own opinions.

Reframe: People join teams, and the media assigns their opinions.

The best way I have found to exempt yourself from media-assigned opinions is to make it a habit to argue the opposite side of each debate. If you can’t do that without laughing, using sarcasm, or making an intentionally bad argument, you probably don’t have a genuine opinion. You have an assigned opinion.

Once you can make a full argument for all sides of a debate, you might be thinking rationally. If your opinions are identical to the bumper sticker wisdom of your team, you might have a problem.

The usefulness of this reframe is that it tells you logic and facts won’t help you change many minds. If people did not arrive at their opinions by rational means, a rational argument isn’t going to talk them out of it. Instead, I recommend asking them to repeat back your argument to demonstrate they understand it. If they can—which would be rare—they can be persuaded. Most people will change the subject to escape the trap.

Perhaps the main benefit of this reframe is that you neutralize the frustration when dealing with people on the other side of issues. Once you realize they’re not the sources of their own opinions—and probably can’t explain their own opinions with any clarity—you’re free to see them as victims, not opponents. I don’t get stressed when a victim of brainwashing disagrees with me. I feel bad for them. And that empathy feels way better than being ticked-off because some stranger refuses to see the alleged wisdom of my opinions.

People Think Like You

One of the worst misconceptions of life is that other people think the same way you do. Humans are similar in a lot of ways, but in any specific situation your basket of preferences and mine will be different. That means you can’t reliably predict what people will do or why they will do it (unless money is involved). But we imagine we can predict well because we make the poor assumption that people are working with the same set of variables and intentions we are. That is rarely the case.

If you don’t understand someone’s motives, and you end up guessing based on how you would feel in the same situation, you’re indulging in nonsense.

Usual Frame: Others think and feel approximately as I do.

Reframe: Others are unimaginably different.

When others act in ways you would not, don’t assume they are necessarily lying, selfish, stupid weasels. They might be exactly that, but that’s not the first explanation you should go with. Instead, assume all you are seeing is a difference in priorities or a difference in who brainwashed each of you.

The power of this reframe is that it helps you understand why you can’t change people’s minds. You might be looking at the same facts, but the processes in your heads are as different as porcupines and bowling balls.