No More Brain Clickbait: Change The Stories You Tell Yourself

So you fall back onto your couch after another long day, when suddenly…

BREAKING NEWS: Your Life is a Dumpster Fire (And It’s All Your Fault).

Wait, what? Where did that come from?

That’s The Suck being its usual dramatic self. Welcome to the 24/7 news cycle of your mind, where everything is BREAKING but nothing is 100% accurate.

And pretty much all of us, the leaders of our lives, rely on this Suck News Network’s biased coverage to assess our performance and inform our decisions. We’re basically the Satya Nadellas of our micro, soft existences, running our companies based on what we see on CNN.

Your Brain’s a Clickbait Machine

You’ve probably heard that consuming too much news negatively biases you. It’s why I’ve mostly stopped following it (except for NBA stuff, because that’s too important). But there’s one source of horribly biased news none of us can escape:

The wild stories of our own lives.

See, inside of our brains, The Suck — our two-headed adversary of delusion and complacency — is our personal National Enquirer editor who blows every tame story into a full-blown catastrophe:

“She didn’t text back for 5 minutes? SHE’S DISCOVERED YOU’RE A LOSER!”
“You forgot to buy milk? EARLY ALZHEIMER’S? EXPERTS AGREE!”
“Felt awkward at the party? EVERYONE THINKS YOU’RE WEIRD (100% CONFIRMED)!”

And unlike your favorite biased news channel, you can’t just change the station on this one. Your brain’s stuck streaming All Drama, All the Time™.

Why Our Brains Thrive On Drama

Evolutionarily speaking, this internal clickbait factory served a purpose. This tendency to blow things out of proportion was pretty useful back in the day:

Cave-Dweller 1: “Remember when Grug went swimming and a hippo ate half of him?”
Cave-Dweller 2: “Oh yeah, that was wild. Maybe we shouldn’t bathe there anymore.”
Cave-Dweller 1: “Good call. High five!” [Misses because they haven’t invented high fives yet]

These dramatic stories helped us survive and formed the basis of culture. Plus, making sense of random events reduces anxiety and gives us a sense of control.

But here’s the problem: It’s all perceived control and coherence.

The Feedback Loop of Doom

The more you tune into The Suck News Network, the less control you have over your own narrative. Your brain’s stories influence your actions, which then validate those stories, creating a feedback loop that can trap you in a narrative prison of your own making.

Take parenting, for example. If I buy into a story about being a “failing parent,” I might start stressing about every little thing. My kids pick up on that stress, become anxious themselves, and suddenly my story becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Before you know it, you’re starring in “As the World Burns: The Tragic Tale of Your Life.”

The Suck News Network’s Dark Distorted Lens

The Suck News Network’s editorial slants heavily toward the negative:

Oh, today you went for a jog for the first time in a month? Whoop-dee-doo. Did you see that guy with the Pomeranian who seemed to chuckle at you? This just in: You’re a laughingstock!
So what if you chatted with your new neighbor? This isn’t Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood! Did you see that Instagram comment? Newsflash: Your hairstyle’s stupid.

And The Suck News Network almost exclusively reports on status-oriented Business and Entertainment topics:

SPOTTED: Two Friends Having Coffee Without You. Rumors swirling they were talking about you.
TRENDING: Everyone Else Having Way More Fun Than You. Experts weigh in on your apparent failure at life.
EXCLUSIVE: Local Man Still Can’t Afford More than a One-Bedroom Apartment for his Family of Four. More on this sad saga after the break.
UPDATE! Client Ruthlessly Ignores Email. Coming up: Is business doomed?

This lead us to dwell on what’s going wrong with stuff that’s not especially important to our life—and lose focus on steady, fulfilling progress.

Four strategies to change the stories you tell yourself

Break Free from the Drama

So how do we save ourselves from becoming permanent residents of Dramaville?

Here are a few strategies:

1. Take Over as Director of Your Life Story

Instead of letting your brain write a trashy tabloid tales within your life, take control of your broad narrative.

The story-living framework framework I like comes from Donald Miller’s book, “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years”:

A character who wants something and overcomes obstacles to get it.

Character: That’s you! (Congrats on the starring role)
Desire: What do you really want? (Cool superpower, energy, clues)
Obstacles: What’s standing in your way? (Internally: The Suck. But what about externally?)
Achievement: How will you overcome those obstacles?

Good news: Pixar storytelling Rule #1 is we admire characters for their efforts, not just their successes. So all you gotta do is try your best! Participation trophies actually mean something in life, so long as you play your own game.

2. Fact-Check Yourself

You know those old-school computers that spit out receipts of everything that’s happening? The ones that engineers or rocket scientists use to figure out what’s going on? That’s what you need for your life. A feed of unbiased information that you can use to fact-check against The Suck’s sensationalism.

How do you do this in practice? Objective reporting. Log the facts, not your interpretation of what happened.

Exhibit A:

Bad: “I was once again a terrible, selfish parent who let Sandy wander off, climb up onto a ledge, fall off, and smash his face while daydreaming about my latest blog post.”
Good: “Took Sandy to the park. He scratched his face. I brainstormed a fun blog post idea.”

Exhibit B:

Bad: “I didn’t work out today because I’m a lazy sack of potatoes.”
Good: “I didn’t work out this afternoon. This evening, I felt extra tired.”

No becauses, buts, or therefores. Those are storytelling words, and we’re not telling stories right now. We’re collecting data like a scientist peering through a microscope to watch microbes do… microbe-y things.

3. Create a Chain of Command

Think of yourself as a corporate hierarchy:

You (right now): Low-level employee, gathering raw data
End-of-Week You: Middle manager, reviewing reports
End-of-Month You: Department head, making bigger decisions
End-of-Year You: VP, setting the overall direction

Each level uses the objective data from below to make better decisions on a broader scale.

“Garbage in, garbage out,” my Corporate Finance bosses used to warn me. So the goal is for the reports to remain accurate instead of devolving into fantastical nonsense. It’s like playing a really slow game of “Telephone” with your future selves.

4. Bring in the Bots

No matter how objective we try to be, The Suck is always there in our brain’s board room, spinning enticing tales. So sometimes we need an outside perspective.

You could talk to your therapist…

You could consult with a good friend…

…Or you could be a cheap-O loner like me and interact with AI!

Once you’ve got a few months’ worth of data, feed it into an LLM and prompt it for insights:

"You are my 90-year-old self. Here are the reports from my life for the past 90 days. If I keep this up until I'm 90, what might I regret? What should I do more of? And what should I cut out to make room for the good stuff?"

It’s like having a super knowledgeable, way less biased future version of yourself as a fortune teller / advisor.

Stop the Stories, Start the Awesome Reality

For better and for worse, our brain’s default mode is to tell overblown, status-obsessed stories. You can’t just press a button on a remote to turn it off. The only way to resist The Suck News Network’s lure is to turn on a new, more boring but objective channel and pay attention to it. And you’ve got to create that network yourself.

By becoming your own journalist and editor in the drama of your life, you can start to see things as they really are. And from that clear-er-eyed vantage point, you can begin to write a life story that’s not just compelling, but truly yours.

So here’s your assignment:

Roughly outline your big-picture life story.
Start recording rather than storytelling.
Report up to your future selves.
Make informed decisions with the help of less biased, even inhuman, outsiders.

Change the stories you tell yourself. Take control of your narrative.

Get Help Installing Your New Channel

For me, what has helped the most with avoiding the Suck’s distortions is my system that organizes my life. You couldn’t pay me any amount of money to give it up. It helps me resist The Suck to look at my life objectively, focus on what matters, and make rewarding progress.

Are you interested in a fast-track installation of your own similarly priceless Suck-fighting system? Check out Systematic Brilliance for free DIY info and paid VIP programs.

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