Metacognitive Skills

Metacognition is an awareness of one’s thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. Metacognitive skills are strategies that leverage the understanding of these processes and patterns toward better living. They mitigate the negative effects of habitual patterns and strengthen access to wisdom and personal power.

"Thinking problems' happen because we are wired in very particular ways, and there are often good reasons for that. Reasoning errors are mostly by-products of our highly evolved cognition, which has allowed us to get this far as a species and to survive and thrive in the world. As a result, the solutions to these problems are not always easily available. Indeed, any kind of de-biasing is notoriously challenging."

- Woo-Kyoung Ahn, Yale University Professor of Psychology

Common cognitive biases:

In my leadership coaching work, I’ve found these to be the most common cognitive biases that affect the ability to overcome obstacles and progress toward goals:

• We tend to overweight worst case scenarios and fear of loss

• We tend to see a single negative event as a permanent pattern or character trait

• We tend to disqualify the positive, like they “don’t count” for some reason

• We tend to only consider facts that align with the narrative we’ve chosen to believe

• We prefer immediate short term wins rather than long term greater success

We will always be influenced by emotional impulses and cognitive biases. They are part of what it means to be human. Many of our impulses and thinking heuristics are designed to keep us safe from harm. The problem is that sometimes these reactions do not serve us. Many of our inherited impulses are no longer adaptive given our modern world.

Tools for empowerment:

Awareness is #1. Being able to notice automatic reflexes showing up in the moment allows us to choose more wisely and less reactively. Elevated personal mastery comes from first becoming aware of these influences and then deploying strategies. This leads to us being at our best, so we can make better decisions and confidently act in service of our goals.

Pursuits include:

• Learn how the mind works, learn how your mind works

• Creatively reframe challenges and negative situations

• Build the ability to notice disempowering impulses and thoughts

• Becoming skilled at letting go of unwise reflexive beliefs

• Proactively designing empowering expectations