Without inner narratives we would be lost in a chaotic world.

Although Burton's article brilliantly warns us about the risky relationship between science and our natural tendency to storytelling and the fatal consequences that this innate characteristic of us might imply, in my compilation below I've chosen to focus on his rigorous illustration on why our brain needs to construct stories to make sense of the world we live in.

Looking for an extremely quick correlation and more than probable prediction on what's out there, has an incalculable value for our survival and well being, but is not always accurate. We have to remember that those correlations are no more than speculations of a probable scenario, that although possible, is, still, a construction.

If you do not, your parents for sure will remember Wayne Dyer, and most probably they have read or at least heard from his first book, Your Erroneous Zones (1976), one of the best-selling books of all time, with an estimated 100 million copies sold to date.

"Thoughts determine feelings. Remember that. Make a note. Get a tattoo. This powerful idea goes back thousands of years to the Stoics".

Feelings aren’t truth incarnate.

Emotions are useful, but they are our biological suggestions, not commandments. Our brain is a pattern-recognition machine. It makes observations and starts forming rules about the world. It’s really good at this. It creates automatic thoughts based on previous experience to simplify our way through life.

But sometimes our brain makes errors when it’s forming its rules, and the most common error is "better safe than sorry" acting as an overprotective parent.

So maybe that automatic emotional reaction, that gut feeling isn't really adjusting to reality.

And so? What to do?

Listen.

Eric's Barker approach on states on Aaron's Beck book ...