I have this image saved on my phone that I look at from time to time.

A happy little pink brain, holding a tiny coffee cup with a heart on it, looking genuinely, blissfully pleased with itself, underneath the words "don't believe everything you think."

I love that little brain. I relate to that little brain. I also wish that little brain would show up more often when my actual brain is doing what my actual brain does.

Let me give you a recent example.

I just got a new used car. And it was the right decision. My 2021 Ford Bronco was a dream wannabe beach bum vehicle, but it was problematic from the start, had more recalls than I can count and I’ve spent a weird amount of time wishing the absurd dollar figure Ford spent on printing and postage for those notifications would end up in my bank account.

Anyway, new used car. Right decision. Justified adult move. Good.

And then I went to sleep.

Or tried to. Because my brain, which had been completely on board with this decision all day, apparently waited until I was horizontal and defenseless to clear its throat and say actually, I've been thinking.

What if you lose your job?

Excuse me?

Hear me out. I know it’s not something you’ve consciously thought about, but you see the routine news cycle of layoffs and quit going on LinkedIn partially because the algorithm felt the need to fill your feed with others sharing their unfortunate news of having their positions eliminated, so it could happen. You have a new car payment now. What if you lose your job? What if everything falls apart? What if this was the wrong move and now you have this payment and what if, what if, what if.

I know there’s no certainty, but the possibility of it happening is significantly smaller than it not happening. And either way, I knew we’d be okay. But my brain simply identified a new variable in my life and decided the most helpful thing it could do at 11:30pm was construct an elaborate worst case scenario around it and present its findings with complete confidence.

I slept terribly. I woke up tired. And in the daylight, with groggy perspective, the whole thing was an obviously ridiculous reason to lose a good night’s sleep.

This is what our brains do. They take a perfectly reasonable decision, wait until we're vulnerable, and then run it through the worst case scenario machine and present the output as something worth panicking about. The technical term for this is cognitive distortion. The less technical term is your brain being a dramatic, unreliable narrator with terrible timing.

I have this image on my phone for exactly these moments. The happy little brain with the coffee cup, calm and content, reminding me that I don't have to believe everything I think. That a thought being loud and confident at 11:30pm does not make it true. That sometimes the most useful thing I can do is look at what my brain is telling me, raise an eyebrow at it, say "interesting, but probably not" and go back to sleep.

This week I'm taking a little break from the longer winded newsletter and I just wanted to leave you with that image, that story, and this permission slip: You are allowed to fact check your own brain. You are allowed to notice the spiral and choose not to follow it into the rabbit hole it has so carefully prepared for you.

That's the whole newsletter this week.

I'll be back next Thursday. Try not to believe everything you think between now and then. Your brain will try very hard to convince you otherwise. It means well. It's also frequently wrong.

That's Volume 068. Here's to new used cars, occasional bad nights of sleep because our brains are doing brain things, 11:30pm worst case scenarios that look ridiculous in the daylight, and the happy little brain with the coffee cup that knows better than all of us.

Until next time: breathe deep, fact check your brain, and chill the duck out.

Jason