On February 4, I wrote about the two modes described in Thinking, Fast and Slow. There is a fast, automatic thinking and a slower, deliberate reasoning. Fast thinking keeps us efficient. Slow thinking keeps us accurate. There is also a third layer that I hinted about. We are going to explore this more fully now. It has nothing to do with the speed of thinking. It has to do with awareness. It is called metacognition. If you are trying to recalibrate old habits, interrupt outdated emotional reactions or regain your sense of agency, this if a vital skill to be aware of and one you will want to strengthen.

What is Metacognition? Simply, it is thinking about your thinking. It is the capacity to notice, name and influence your own mental processes in real time. It includes, not only the awareness of the mental processes, but also awareness of emotional activation. It includes being reflective about your own assumptions and interpretations. It also includes the awareness that a decision is about to happen. It is not the process of slow thinking or analysis. It is not rumination. It is just noticing. In other words, slow thinking is the process of reasoning carefully, while metacognition is the recognition that reasoning might be needed…or night not. It is important to point out the distinction between awareness vs process. Fast thinking is a process – it reacts. Slow thinking is a process – it analyzes. Metacognition notices which one is operating and then creates space for a pause. That pause leaves room for control. Sometimes it triggers the slow thinking process, but other times it just taps the brakes.

As I discussed in the Jan 28th article, decision making is a threshold process. Inputs accumulate including emotions, environmental cues, prior memories/experiences and the social context. Activation then arises. When the threshold is crossed, behavior is initiated. Metacognition lives just before the threshold crossing. It detects the rise in activation. Sometimes that detection will recruit the process of slow thinking: “what is really happening here?” Other times it will just initiate a pause. Either way, the process is halted before hitting the threshold. The ability to insert that pause is often enough to change the trajectory of a conversation, a decision or even your day.

It is important to recognize that metacognition does not always require analysis. We tend to assume awareness must lead to deeper thinking, but often the most skillful move is just restraint. You notice, do nothing, let the surge pass, then reset. In other words, metacognition functioning without having to engage slow thinking. Metacognition increases optionality without mandating a specific intervention.

So, what happens when Fast Thinking is miscalibrated? Many people operate with fast patterns that once made sense but no longer serve them. Some examples include:

• Interpreting neutral feedback as rejection.

• Reacting to disagreement as threat.

• Avoiding opportunities due to old fear scripts.

• Escalating minor frustrations into major conflicts.

While fast thinking might be efficient, it is heavily shaped by past environments. What once protected may now be creating distortions for you. Metacognition is how you recognize outdated programming. The first step is not changing it…it is noticing it. An internal dialogue might sound like this:

• “This feels bigger than it probably is.”

• “I’ve reacted this way before.”

• “This is that old pattern again.”

This awareness alone starts to loosen the grip of the automatic response. You now have a choice. It is not a guarantee of change, but a choice. To execute that choice, you need control. Early on in developing improved metacognition, control may not be as effective as you want it to be, which is OK. This is part of the journey. In order to make lasting changes in your life you need a balance of self awareness (ideally in real time) and the ability to intervene when needed to steer toward the desired outcome. Everyone is at a different stage in their self awareness and their ability to control what happens next. To better illustrate these stages, we are going to next take a look at the Awareness/Control matrix. You can think of this as a map to locate where you are and to outline the path forward. Be sure to subscribe so you can be alerted when the next article drops.

Yesterday on the Learn From People Who Lived It podcast, Mathew and Cortney touched on the idea of “Hope”. Cortney had mentioned preferring to use the word “trust” instead, as in “I trust (not hope) you are doing well” or “I trust (not hope) things will work out”. As I listened to the discussion, I understood why she made the distinction. There is a common misunderstanding of hope. It is the idea of “hope as a beggar”. This, to me, is a diminished version of hope. It is a hope that lacks confidence and feels entitled to very little. It asks rather than expects. It survives on the scraps of possibility rather than thriving on plans and expectations. This type of hope is what is left after years of disappointments, poor health, prolonged injustice, emotional neglect and withdrawal after trauma. Many of us have felt this way when adverse circumstances pile up but options to fix them are few or seem out of reach. For some, this has become a way of life. The important thing to see here is that even in a diminished state, there is still some measure of hope. The door was left opened on a crack and it is possible to open it back up again.

What is hope supposed to be? At its essence, it is the ability to imagine a future that is in a better state than the present. At the same time, you remain psychologically and spiritually engaged with the possibility of moving toward it even when the outcomes are uncertain. It is not optimism or wishful thinking. It is more structured than that. Psychologist C.R. Snyder, PhD defined hope as having two interacting components. The first is agency; the idea that you can move toward something with a sense of motivation, will and personal efficacy. The next is pathways; the idea that there are always ways to get there. You have the ability to imagine routes, alternatives and strategies. In this model, hope is an active process, not passive. You can desire without having hope and you can hope without being guaranteed certainty. On an emotional level, hope can coexist with fear, grief and doubt. It tolerates ambiguity. It does not require confidence, only belief in the possibility. In this sense, hope functions quietly as an emotional buffer against despair, preventing a psychological shutdown when certainty is unavailable. Hope can serve an existential role by answering the question, “Is it still worth staying engaged with life?” In this context, hope is less about being bound to a specific outcome and more about deriving meaning from the experience. For instance, you may lose hope in finding a cure for your cancer, but you may retain hope for spending meaningful time with family and leaving a legacy with the time you have left. This aspect of hope chooses participation over withdrawal even when suffering remains. From a social and relational view, hope is rarely solitary. It is shared and passed among people. An insecure child can borrow hope from a parent. A patient can borrow hope from a doctor. Members of a community often borrow hope from shared narratives and values. This type of relational hope can be a bolster when personal hope is depleted. “I’m not sure if I believe this yet, but you do and I trust you.” Hope can lift us up when we fall down morally. It keeps open the possibility of repair, accountability and growth. It keeps us from being defined by our worst moments. It also reminds us that suffering is never the final word. On a spiritual level, hope extends our view beyond the self and the immediate adversities. It includes trust in a reality that is larger than our individual experience. There is meaning that transcends the current circumstances. In light of the eternal, there is continuity beyond loss, failure or even death. Unlike psychological hope, Spiritual hope does not require clear pathways, can persist even when agency is surrendered and rests on faith and promise rather than evidence. Spiritual hope can remain intact even when human hope has collapsed and can be a profound resource during terminal illness, grief or moral injury. Let’s close this section out but describing a bit about what hope is not. It is not denial. It is not having certainty. It is not positivity at all costs. It is not passively waiting. True hope leaves space for grief, anger, realism and doubt to coexist without surrendering engagement.

So, how do we recover hope that has been injured? There are no quick answers here, but I think there is a process that can yield results over time. Many of you reading this will have experienced betrayal, abandonment or gaslighting at some point in your life which damages the interpersonal scaffolding needed for hope. Trauma can often collapse pathways making it feel like there is no way out. Depression can lower agency and make everything feel like it is not worth the bother. Anxiety may still allow some hope, but the future is often flooded with catastrophic predictions. Start looking for patterns. Where has hope been damaged? It is usually not everywhere all at once, so you can leverage your strong areas to give you the space to improve other areas. Working with a therapist here can be helpful for framing and getting an outside perspective. The process begins by creating a safe environment in which to work. It is important to reduce the overall threat environment so that the nervous system can settle down and agency can slowly return. This may include reducing (where possible) exposure to sources of humiliation, chaos or volatility. Develop practices that help to stabilize your nervous system. Sometimes taking a walk or laying down for a bit can help to give you the reset you need. Work on setting boundaries that hold. Make fewer promises to people, but be diligent about keeping the ones you make (and apologize quickly if you break a promise). The idea here is to create consistency and predictability wherever possible. Without these steps, exercising agency will feel reckless. The next step is restoring dignity by giving yourself permission to want good things in your life. That is not unreasonable or selfish. Many people get stuck here because they fear humiliation if they don’t end up getting the thing they had wanted. It is useful to separate the wanting from the outcome. Outcomes are often uncertain and rarely come with guarantees. It is OK to want an outcome even if it never happens – it is not a personal failure. This is the soil where dignity begins to grow. The next step is to regain confidence by setting small attainable goals. Your agency builds by making choices that stick, completing tasks with visible outcomes, having your “no” respected and not being punished for trying and failing. This is not a “daily affirmation” with flowery words. This is evidence of accomplishment built up in small ways over time, and it becomes empowering. Hope is not built on dreams, it is built on plans. Look for multiple paths to get to your desired outcome. Obviously, some will be more feasible than others, but relying on a single, fragile plan can have a large emotional cost if it does not work out. Having several ways to move forward lowers the threshold for action. It can be helpful to have a reliable witness along on your journey. This is a form of borrowed confidence. A close friend, coach or therapist can give you valuable feedback on your effort, risks, progress and repairs made. Hope can grow when effort is seen, and confidence grows when reality is mirrored back. They hold the memory of your growing competence even when you are not able to see it yet. Along the way, it is useful to reframe your ideas about failure. Learn to consider it as data and not as evidence of unworthiness. Each failure is an opportunity to learn something about the system. Stay engaged and resist the urge to retreat. Ask “what is next?” Remember that time horizons expand slowly. Damaged hope can only tolerate short time frames before becoming overwhelmed. As agency improves longer timelines are more possible. Have some patience here and let confidence grow naturally at its own pace. Making unrealistic long term plans too early can collapse hope. Finally, at the highest level, enduring hope is stabilized by meaning. This is an important shift from “Everything will just work out” to “What I do matters, even if the outcome is imperfect.” To summarize this into a single formula, damaged hope becomes robust hope when safety allows wanting, dignity allows trying, small successes restore agency, multiple pathways lower risk, and meaning steadies effort over time. Good luck on your own journey of hope.

Last week we looked at how decisions are made. We discussed the many automatic and unconscious steps leading from the initial spark of an idea, to an action, then to the story your mind tells you about what just happened. This week we are going to go to take a look at the work of Dr. Daniel Kahneman. In 2011, he published a best-selling book called “Thinking Fast and Slow”, where he described 2 distinct systems in the brain that govern thought. The first, he called System 1. This is the fast thinking system which functions as your “autopilot” brain. The other he called System 2. This is the slow thinking system which Kahneman described as an “editor”. It can be called into play at will, but more typically engages only in selective circumstances.

Let’s start by discussing System 1. This system has several specialized tasks that it accomplishes automatically and with speed and efficiency. When I say speed, we are looking at 30-40 milliseconds to detect danger, 140-200 ms to read emotional valence and 300-500 ms for facial recognition and full conscious awareness. So the most complicated System 1 tasks take less than ½ of a second to complete. It makes rapid judgements with little information. Because it is fast and efficient, it conserves mental energy for other more complex tasks. It also allows for you to become fluent in new skills once you learn them. It is designed to compress experiences into fast, usable signals. The downside, though, to any system that relies on compression is that you also lose information. Let’s go a bit deeper into how this system actually works and where it has some limitations.

The first task is pattern recognition. “Have I seen something like this before?” System 1 constantly scans the environment for familiar configurations such as faces, a tone of voice, various situations, the social dynamics, and emotional cues. Once a pattern feels familiar, System 1 stops analyzing, fills in any missing information, then predicts what comes next. When dialed in, this is what mastery looks like. It allows a person to bring instant expertise to a situation. You can see this with people who are able to “read a room” or a doctor’s “clinical intuition” or even with people who are skilled drivers, able to anticipate the moves of other drivers while also avoiding road hazards. While the brain is good at recognizing patterns it can go wrong when the initial patterns are learned from limited or biased data. It also tends to give more weight to earlier experience at the expense of more recent experiences. Finally, false patterns can be locked in when paired with emotional intensity. This may be true for trauma and threats, but it is also true for hitting a jackpot. To sum up, System 1 does not ask “Is this pattern true?” but it asks “Does this feel familiar?”

The next task is heuristics (or mental shortcuts). “Good enough is good enough”. Heuristics can be thought of as rules of thumb designed to save time and energy. Kahneman showed in his book that they are efficient but also systematically biased. There are several common examples such as the availability heuristic: The thing that comes to mind easily feels more common or more true. Another example is the representativeness heuristic: If it resembles a category, it must belong there. There is also anchoring: First information sets the reference point, even if irrelevant. Heuristics are important and exist because the brain does not have the bandwidth to stop and calculate everything. Also, from an evolutionary point of view, speed often mattered more than accuracy if you want to avoid getting eaten or attacked. In modern life, however, heuristics can fail. Feedback can be delayed – overeating and lack of exercise may have no immediate negative consequence, so System 1 concludes “It does not really matter”. In reality, the negative effects can accumulate over time leading to poor health. Data can be noisy – you made one good stock pick and now you think you are an investment genius. System 1 concludes “I must be good at this”. In reality, the signal is buried in randomness, and variance is confused with insight. There can also be emotional or social distortions - Someone challenges your idea and your body reacts as if threatened. You become defensive. System 1 concludes “They are wrong or hostile”. In reality, the emotional reaction preceded reasoning and got anchored, while logic only got recruited afterward. As much as heuristics are useful to save time, their limitations need to be understood and respected. Survival shortcuts can get you into trouble when applied to abstract problems. Later, we will discuss where System 2 can have an important role in auditing System 1 to make sure the correct heuristics are being used in the correct situations. Stay tuned.

The next task is emotional tagging – “How did that feel the last time it happened?” We discussed this process a bit last week. System 1 attaches emotional labels to experience. Was this experience safe or dangerous, pleasant or unpleasant, worth it or not worth it. Once an experience is tagged, future decisions are guided by affect (a vibe or feeling), and not by any thoughtful analysis. This process explains why some choices feel “obviously wrong” without any logical backing. It also explains why avoidance can feel rational or certainty can feel like the moral choice. Misprogramming can occur because stronger emotions create stronger tags. Emotional tagging can be biased by chronic stress, shame or fear. Trauma, in particular, can massively distort the accuracy of tagging. System 1 remembers how the situation felt but does not weigh in on whether the interpretation was accurate. This is a situation where System 2 needs to revisit and relabel the experiences deliberately and more accurately. More on that later.

The final task is learned associations – “When A happens, B follows”. In this case, System 1 functions as a correlation machine linking stimuli to outcomes, actions to consequences and people to expectations. This process shapes our daily habits. An example might be “silence = danger.” Growing up in a volatile household where silence precedes anger or punishment creates the association that “silence means something bad is coming”. This association can play out in later relationships with people-pleasing behavior, overexplaining or having anxiety when someone does not respond immediately. The same person may also misread neutrality as rejection or compulsively fill quiet gaps in conversations. What we can take away from this is that System 1 does not learn what is true, it learns what was paired, repeated and emotionally charged. This is why associations persist even after they are outdated and why insight alone does not undo them. System 2 becomes important here. The only way to fix incorrect associations is to recognize the pattern then retrain System 1 through deliberate, repeated experience until the new response becomes automatic.

Let’s shift gears and learn a bit about System 2, the slow thinker. The reason it is slow is because it runs through current information in real time. It evaluates evidence, checks logic, weighs probabilities, overrides impulses and learns new rules. System 2 is typically underused because it requires effort and can feel slow or uncomfortable. It also taxes the body’s resources and can lead to fatigue. Kahneman described it as “lazy” but it might be better understood as selective. It only activates when there is novelty, something feels “off”, the stakes are high or when you deliberately call in online to address a problem. The best example I can think of to describe System 2 is as a mostly disengaged CEO of a company. He has full authority, but most of the time he is off playing golf. He has limited attention and does not like to be bothered by unnecessary meetings. He only shows up when there is a crisis or when the board forces him in for a meeting. It is important to realize that it is not the CEO’s job to step in and fix every mistake. Enduring change happens when policy is changed, staff is retrained and the system is redesigned so that the same mistakes don’t keep happening. Let me explain.

As mentioned earlier, System 1 is dominant and controls much of our decision making throughout the day. For all of the mundane situations, this is fine. By contrast, when there is a crisis, System 2 reliably comes online for most people. It will force a pause and allow an opportunity to look carefully at the situation to compose a logical and thoughtful response. The problem is the murky middle ground. There are times when System 1 is miscalibrated. The snap decision that you made turns out to be the wrong choice or leads to an undesirable outcome. In these situations, it is useful to self reflect, take a deep breath and shift into System 2. Time for the CEO to have a “come to Jesus” meeting with the staff. Here is what that process might look like. The first step is noticing a faulty automatic response. Maybe you overreacted emotionally to a friend or coworker. Maybe you caught yourself making a biased snap judgement that turned out to be wrong. Maybe you caught yourself in avoidant patterns. Maybe your overconfidence led to an embarrassing failure. When these happen, take time to deliberately slow down and analyze the situation with honesty and acceptance. What actually happened? Was there evidence that you missed? Could the situation have meant something else? If you see a pattern where System 1 is miscalibrated, make a mental note of the circumstances and try to catch it next time. There is no judgement here – we all have miscalibrations. Most of the miscalibrations will occur in one of the 4 areas described above. Was it an error in pattern recognition? Here is where familiar patterns from childhood may be outdated or may have been laid down inaccurately. Was it an error in heuristics? Maybe your “rule of thumb” is missing an important exception to the rule, or maybe you catch a bias that requires an entire rethinking of what you thought to be true. Be bold here. Was the error misplaced emotional tagging? Before making a decision based on emotion, do nothing in the moment. Wait for the emotion to pass then reevaluate with logic. Maybe dare yourself to try that experience again in a different context – a positive experience can “retag” the emotions in System 1. Was the error in learned associations? Maybe B does not always follow A. Pause, ask the questions and look for the current patterns instead of just relying on the old ones. This is the process of pulling situations into System 2. Carefully think about an appropriate response. Try it out in real situations, with awareness. Look for feedback on the other side to confirm a better outcome. This is where a trusted friend or a therapist can be a useful ally or spotter for you. The more you practice your new and improved responses, it eventually becomes a System 1 firmware update. The slow responses become faster and eventually become second nature. This process takes System 2 out of just being the slow and deliberate crisis manager and turns it into a System 1 trainer. You are now on the path to wisdom, greater competence and harmony with those around you. If you like what you just read and found it helpful, please consider subscribing.

I would like to lay down some fundamental principles for you that we can refer back to in future articles. When you understand the steps in a process, you can then begin looking for ways to shape, modify and optimize them toward a specific goal. We are going to start today with basic decision making. As you read through, see if you can spot areas where an intervention could be inserted to steer the process.

It starts with the spark. An idea pops into your head and you become aware of it.

“I should go for a walk.”

“I could send that email now”

“Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut and not say anything”

Ideas like this are not deliberate. They emerge from the electrical chaos of the brain cued by things like memory, habit, your emotional state or environmental cues (time of day, hunger pangs, someone’s tone of voice). You did not decide to have this idea. It just arrived.

The next step (instantly and unconsciously) is that your brain emotionally tags the idea and assigns meaning to it. Is it good or bad? Is it safe or risky? Is it even worth the effort? Your past experiences are consulted and weighed in, including learned skills and competence as well as aversive and traumatic experiences. The idea is then tagged with feelings such as anticipation, dread, guilt or curiosity. This is like the brain’s version of using hashtags. Sometimes at this stage, the body may also react with micro expressions in the face and subtle changes in body posture or tension. The original idea at this point now has valence. It is either attractive, aversive or neutral.

The third step is a cost/benefit scan (which is mostly unconscious). How much effort is required? How much time will it take? What will it cost emotionally? Is there a possible reward? Are there negative social consequences? The results of this scan will be served up as a “gut feeling.” An example of this might be the “ugh” feeling when you see your cell phone ringing and it is that excessively chatty friend who never lets you get a word in. It is important to mention here that two people can evaluate the same action differently because their internal “weights” are different.

At the fourth stage, I now want to introduce the idea of the threshold – the line that must be crossed in order for action to occur. This is the binary part of the process. If motivation, urgency and emotional pull exceed the force of internal resistance, fear and fatigue, then the action happens. If not, then the result is inaction (which is also a decision). An important aspect to point out is that the threshold itself is not fixed. When you are tired, depressed, ashamed or overwhelmed, the threshold rises. When you are excited, confident and feel supported, the threshold drops.

The fifth stage is the deployment of the conscious narrative. This is the story that your mind uses to explain what just happened. Your mind may tell you “I decided it wasn’t worth it” or “I thought it through and made my decision”, but in reality, your brain already held a vote and this is just the press release. The story was not the cause of the action. My readers who consider themselves strictly rational may find this hard to believe.

The final stage is the execution (or deferral) phase. If the threshold is crossed, motor systems become engaged, attention narrows to the task and you begin action. If not, the idea fades or gets postponed, but can be revisited if there is new emotional weight to push it forward.

What I have laid out for you is a model of how decision-making works and the steps that are involved. As I mentioned above, the process is largely unconscious and automatic. Most of us are taught implicitly that if we care enough or have enough will power, we should be able to accomplish whatever we want or need to do. We are taught to think of motivation as a personal trait or a moral quality. The brain simply does not work this way. The brain works more like a voting system with a threshold for action. Dozens of small signals vote “yes” or “no,” and whether action happens depends not only on the votes, but also on where the threshold is set that day. When people “can’t make themselves” do something, it’s rarely because they don’t care. It’s because the combined inputs never crossed the needed threshold. We will come back to this topic in future articles when we get into threshold shaping and what can be done to deliberately modify inputs in order to reach a goal. If you found this useful, you can subscribe and continue this journey with me.