🎯 This Week’s Focus

We don’t see the world as it actually is; we see it based on how we’ve trained ourselves to see it. Your brain moves through life running mental models and internal scripts that interpret every experience you have. These are thought patterns that were formed by past experiences, emotions shaped by early conditioning, behaviors that may have once protected us but now can hold us back.

The result? We live on autopilot feeling stuck in loops of self-doubt, procrastination, perfectionism, people-pleasing, or emotional reactivity. But these patterns aren’t fixed and scripts can be revised.

This week, we’re diving into how to reprogram your mind. We’ll explore how thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are linked, how the brain wires those connections, and how you can untangle the old stories and interrupt thought loops to build new ones that support your future self.

🧠 How Mental Models Are Built and Why They Stick

Your brain builds mental models (aka schemas) as shortcuts to make sense of the world. They’re formed through emotional experiences and repetition, and they influence how you interpret situations, respond to others, and even define your identity.

For example: If you were criticized often as a child, you might develop a schema like “I’m not good enough.” That belief becomes a lens that affects your self-talk, risk-taking, and how you receive feedback.

These schemas stick because they’re tied to survival. The brain prefers the familiar (even if it’s painful) over the unknown. Once you have a mental model, your brain filters information through it, seeking evidence to confirm what it already believes. This is known as confirmation bias.

Psychologist Jean Piaget observed that we either assimilate new experiences (fit them into our existing schema) or accommodate (revise the schema itself). Assimilation is often easier so, change often requires powerful emotional or repeated disconfirming experiences to shake things up. As we often say in the Change Management world, “people don’t tend to change until the pain of keeping things the same outweighs the pain of changing.”

✅ Key takeaway: Your thoughts aren’t always truths; they’re often just interpretations of situations based on your mental models. And the brain can revise them. But first, you have to become aware of them.

🎛️ The Brain’s Default Settings: Why Change Feels So Hard

From an evolutionary standpoint, your brain is designed to prioritize safety and efficiency. That’s why even unhelpful patterns, like self-criticism or avoidance, can feel hard to break. They once served a purpose (e.g., avoiding rejection) and became coded as “safe.”

Culturally, you’ve also inherited beliefs about success, gender roles, ambition, and worthiness. These collective mental models (e.g., “rest is lazy” or “asking for help is weakness”) get absorbed early and run in the background unless challenged.

The brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN) governs your internal narrative or the story of who you are. If that story is rooted in shame, fear, or self-doubt, your mind will predict outcomes based on it. You might not apply for the job or speak up in the meeting not because you lack ability but because your brain expects failure.

But here’s the opportunity: the brain is predictive, not fixed. When you prove an old prediction wrong (e.g., you take a risk and it goes well), your brain adjusts its model. This is the foundation of neuroplasticity, which is your brain’s ability to rewire through new experience.

✅ Key takeaway: Your mind resists change because it equates the familiar with safe, but with conscious effort and repeated experience, you can override outdated scripts.

🔁 The Thought–Emotion–Behavior Loop

Every reaction you have is part of a feedback loop:

Thought → Emotion → Behavior → Outcome → Reinforces Thought

Let’s say you’re ignored in a meeting.

• Thought: “They don’t respect me.”

• Emotion: Embarrassment or anger.

• Behavior: Withdrawing or lashing out.

• Outcome: Others don’t engage.

• Thought confirmed.

That outcome reinforces your original belief. When people don’t respond warmly (perhaps because they’re unsure why you’re distant), it further affirms your thought: “See, they really don’t like me.” Over time, the cycle tightens its grip, and the brain uses this pattern as evidence to hardwire the belief deeper making it even harder to break.

But what if the initial thought was: “Maybe they’re preoccupied.” You’d feel neutral, maybe even curious. Your behavior would shift and so would the result.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) works by identifying distorted or unhelpful thoughts (e.g., catastrophizing, mind-reading, black-and-white thinking) and reframing them. The idea: If you change the thought, you change the emotion, and therefore the action.

✅ Key takeaway: Thoughts are not facts—they’re habits. By catching them early, you can choose new responses that shift the entire loop.

🔧 The REWIRE Framework: How to Change Mental Patterns

Let’s put it into practice with a six-step process:

1. R – Recognize the thought/emotion pattern. Become aware of the moment it shows up. (“Here’s that ‘I always mess this up’ voice again.”)

2. E – Examine it. Ask: Is this true? Where did it come from? What evidence supports or contradicts it?

3. W – Write a New Narrative. Replace the old thought with a believable, empowering alternative. (“I’ve made progress before—I can figure this out.”)

4. I – Integrate the new narrative through emotional anchoring (visualization, journaling, real-life wins).

5. R – Rehearse the new thought and behavior in small, repeatable ways.

6. E – Embody it by acting like the version of you who already believes it. Let the new belief guide real-life choices.

Because reprogramming your mind requires interrupting your automatic loops and laying down new ones both cognitively and emotionally. This process aligns with the principles of CBT (challenging distortions), draws from the storytelling power of narrative therapy, and uses repetition to reshape your neural pathways.

By integrating action into the process, the framework turns insight into identity. Each step helps you get just a little more distance from your old patterns and a little closer to the person you want to become.

This framework is powerful because it draws from:

•  🧠 CBT: To identify and restructure distorted thoughts

• ✍️ Narrative therapy: To author a new internal story

•  🔁 Neuroplasticity: To create new default pathways through practice

•  🪞 Identity-based habit change: To align actions with who you want to become

The result? A simple but profound roadmap for reprogramming thought patterns and reshaping your identity from the inside out.

✅ Key Takeaways:

• You can’t change what you don’t see; awareness is the first step.

• The process of examining and rewriting your mental story is how change starts.

• Embodying your new belief is how change sticks

🛠️ Building Your Repatterning Toolkit

Here are practical tools you can use this week to reinforce the REWIRE process and integrate these concepts into your everyday life:

• ✍️ Thought Log: Write down 1–2 automatic negative thoughts each day. Challenge them.

• 💭 Visualization Practice: Spend 5 minutes visualizing your future self acting confidently, kindly, or boldly.

• 🧑‍🔬 Behavioral Experiment: Choose one small action that contradicts an old belief. Take it. Write down what happened.

• 🗺️ If-Then Coping Plan: “If I catch myself thinking X, then I will say Y and take action Z.”

• 📝 Anchor with Environment: Put up a Post-it note with your new belief on your mirror, phone background, or laptop.

✅ Key Takeaways:

• Small daily reps > big dramatic change. Consistency builds confidence.

• Anchor new beliefs with action and context cues.

• Make the unfamiliar feel familiar through practice.

📝 This Week’s Challenge

This week, choose one recurring thought loop to work on. Use the REWIRE method:

1. Write down the thought when it shows up.

2. Examine it: Is it distorted? Where did it come from?

3. Reframe it.

4. Visualize yourself acting from the new belief.

5. Rehearse with a small action.

6. Reflect: How did it feel?

✍️ Weekly Reflection

What’s one thought that’s been on repeat lately? What’s a more empowering thought you could practice instead—and what action could go with it?

🚀 And for some quick wins you can try right now:

• Pick a 3-minute “thought reset” moment after lunch or work

• Practice a new belief in low-stakes moments (ordering coffee, replying to a message)

• Say your new belief out loud in the mirror once a day

📅 Next Week’s Preview

Even the most powerful intentions can unravel in emotionally triggering moments. Next week, we’ll explore how to master emotional regulation, which is the ability to stay grounded when life gets turbulent. You’ll learn science-backed techniques to manage overwhelming feelings, bounce back from setbacks, and protect your progress even when stress, conflict, or self-doubt strike.

It’s not about suppressing emotion but learning to ride the wave, without getting swept away.

📚 Essential Reading

1. The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris – A guide to defusing unhelpful thoughts using ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy).

2. The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest – Learn how to overcome self-sabotage by understanding subconscious patterns.

3. Rewire Your Anxious Brain by Catherine Pittman – Explains the amygdala vs. cortex roots of anxiety and how to manage both.

Like what you’re reading?

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About Kevin

Kevin Earl Tan helps people to design their lives through evidence-based coaching and systems thinking. He is pursuing his International Coaching Federation (ICF) Associate Certified Coach (ACC) certification. Kevin combines academic insights from his Masters in Human Resources from the University of Southern California along with practical application from 10+ years in change management and leadership to make behavior change simple and approachable.