The Mountain Is You

WHAT’S A FAULT Y INFERENCE?
A faulty inference is when you come up with a false conclusion based on
valid evidence.
This means that what you’re seeing, experiencing, or understanding might
be real, but the assumptions that you are piecing together from it are either
not real or are highly unlikely.
One example is a hasty generalization, which is when you make a claim
about an entire group of people based on one or two experiences you’ve
had. This is the bias at the base of a lot of racism and prejudice. Another
example is post hoc ergo propter hoc, which is what happens when you
assume that because two things happened around the same time, they must
be related, even if they aren’t.
A false dichotomy happens when you assume that there are only two
possibilities that could be valid, when in reality, there are far more that you
simply aren’t aware of.
An example of this is when your boss calls you to a pri-vate meeting, and
you assume you must either be getting
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a promotion or getting fired. A slippery slope, to play off of that example, is
another false inference in which you assume that one event will set off a
series of others, even if they certainly will not.
These are just some of the myriad ways your brain can, in a sense, betray
you. Though it intends to keep you alert and aware, sometimes, the threat
becomes overinflated. Unable to decipher the difference, your body
responds regardless.
HOW DO I CORRECT THIS?
Correcting faulty inferencing begins with first being aware that you’re
doing it. In the majority of cases, once you realize that you’re thinking in a
false dichotomy or making a hasty generalization, you stop doing it. You
understand what it is, and you let it go.
Training your brain to stop doing it automatically takes time. Think of your
mind like a search engine that autofills your terms. If it’s something you’ve
input many times over the years, it’s still going to come up for a while. You
have to work on consistently adding new thoughts, options, and stimuli to
shift what it comes up with naturally.
This is not only possible; it’s inevitable. What you consistently do is what
you adapt to. Your brain will start to reorient your comfort zone, and
eventually it will feel as natural to think logically as it once did to think
dramat-ically. It will feel as natural to be calm as it does now to
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feel anxious. It takes awareness, and it takes time. But it is always possible.
W O R R Y I N G I S T H E W E A K E S T
D E F E N S E S Y S T E M
Rumination is the birthplace of creativity. They’re controlled by the same