Your boss sends you a one-word email: “Later.”
You immediately feel a knot in your stomach. Your mind, in less than a second, has written a complete, detailed story:
- “I’m in trouble.”
- “That project I sent must have been terrible.”
- “She’s angry with me.”
- “I’m probably going to lose my job.”
This story feels 100% real. It creates a real physical response (the knot in your stomach). But it is a fiction.
It is an illusion, and your mind is the most powerful illusionist in the world.
Your Mind Is a Story Machine, Not a Truth Machine
We have a fundamental misunderstanding of our own minds. We think our mind’s job is to see the “truth.”
It’s not.
Your mind’s job is to make sense of the world as quickly as possible to ensure your survival. To do this, it tells stories. It takes a tiny piece of data (“Later.”) and instantly compares it to every past experience, fear, and insecurity you’ve ever had to create a “fiction” that explains it.
The problem isn’t that your mind creates fictions. The problem is that you believe them without question.
We mistake the story for the fact.
- Fact: “My boss sent a one-word email.”
- Fiction: “My boss is angry, and I’m in trouble.”
This is the entire art of de-illusion. The “art” is learning to separate the fact from the fiction.
How to Spot a Fiction: The 2-Question Test
So, how do you do it? How do you spot a fiction when it feels so real? You can run a simple test.
Almost every harmful fiction your mind creates falls into one of two categories:
1. Is this a Judgment? A fact is an observation. A fiction is a judgment.
- Fact: “I did not finish the project on time.”
- Fiction: “I am a lazy failure.”
“Failure” is a judgment. It’s a loaded, negative story. The moment you hear that internal voice labeling you, your experience, or someone else with a harsh judgment, you can be 100% certain you are dealing with a fiction.
2. Is this a Prediction? Your mind hates uncertainty. To protect you, it runs “threat simulations” about the future.
- Fact: “I have a presentation tomorrow.”
- Fiction: “It is going to be a disaster, and everyone will think I’m an idiot.”
That “disaster” does not exist. It’s a mental fiction. Any thought you have about the future—good or bad—is a story, not a fact.
What to Do When You Spot One
You don’t fight the fiction. You don’t argue with it. You simply label it.
When the thought “I’m a failure” appears, you just calmly say, “Ah. That is a ‘judgment’ fiction.” When the thought “This is going to be a disaster” appears, you say, “Thank you, mind. That is a ‘prediction’ fiction.”
This simple act of observation is everything.
The moment you label the thought, you are no longer inside the story. You are no longer the character in the drama. You have become the observer.
This is the great shift in perspective. It’s the freedom of moving from the panicked driver to the calm passenger, a state of being I explore in my work.
You are not your thoughts. You are the awareness that is big enough to hold them. The goal is not to have a mind that is free of fictions. That’s impossible. The goal is to have a mind where you can just see them.
An illusion, once seen, loses all its power.
