Case Study
Tom owned a marketing agency with 12 employees, and on paper, he was successful.
His clients got great results, his team respected him, and the business was profitable.

The problem was Tom had completely lost faith in his own judgment.

Every time he had to make a decision, his brain would flood with memories of past mistakes.
The campaign he approved that lost a client $50,000.
An employee he hired who turned out to be a disaster.
That software he invested in that nobody ended up using.

So Tom started second-guessing everything.
He'd make a decision, then change his mind an hour later.
Or he'd avoid deciding altogether, letting opportunities slip by because he was terrified of making another mistake.

His team started procrastinating on work because they never knew if the decision from this morning would still be the plan by afternoon. And clients were getting confused at all the ongoing options

Tom told me, "I've screwed up so many times that I don't trust myself anymore. Every decision feels like I'm about to mess up again."


Thinking Skills 

While you are doing any task, you, without even realizing it, are using your 28 thinking skills.
When the thinking skills you need to use are strong, doing the task happens easily.
If the thinking skill you need to use is weak, doing the task is a challenge.
The struggle that Tom had came from a weak thinking skill of Understanding Reality.


Understanding Reality
Understanding reality is about seeing how events connect to each other, learning from what happened before, and recognizing cause and effect instead of viewing your life as random chaos.

Tom's brain was stuck in what we call episodic thinking - seeing each mistake as a separate disaster rather than understanding the bigger picture of what was actually happening.

That failed campaign?
It happened because the client changed their target market halfway through without telling Tom.
The bad hire?
Tom had rushed the interview process because he was desperate to fill the position.
The unused software?
He'd bought it based on a sales pitch without testing if it actually solved his team's problem.

But Tom's brain wasn't connecting the dots.
Instead of seeing "when I rush decisions under pressure, they tend to go wrong," his brain just saw "I make terrible decisions and can't be trusted."

People with a strong understanding of reality can look at past experiences and spot the actual causes. They see patterns like "this type of situation tends to lead to this type of outcome" instead of just feeling like everything is unpredictable and scary.

Think about someone learning to cook.
Weak understanding of reality means burning dinner and thinking, "I'm terrible at cooking."
Strong understanding of reality means recognizing "when I set the temperature too high and don't check on it, food burns.”


Without understanding reality, it’s harder to learn from experience because you're not seeing what actually caused things to happen. You just feel like you're constantly failing for no reason.


3 Exercises to Improve Understanding Reality:

Tom's transformation didn't happen overnight, but with these 3 exercises, his understanding of reality greatly improved, and his self-trust automatically went up:

1) Separate Facts from Stories
Often, we mix facts and stories, which makes it really hard for us to understand reality.

Here’s a simple way to see the difference:
Facts are things you can actually see or measure. Example: ‘I made a typo in my email.’ You can point to it.
Stories are the meaning we put around the fact. Example: ‘I’ll never be good at writing.’

Tom thought, "I'm terrible at hiring." That’s a story.
The facts were: "Three out of my last five hires worked out great. The two that didn't both happened when I skipped reference checks because I was in a hurry."

2 out of those 5 hires indeed had to leave after a few weeks. That’s fact.
Tom didn’t check references. That’s fact.

By understanding the facts, you understand reality and can do something about it.


2) Spot Your Patterns
Take three recent mistakes you made and write down what was happening before, what you did, and what happened after.
What was the actual cause of the mistake?

Now do the same thing with three of your wins.
Write down what was happening before, what you did, and what happened after.
What helped that win actually happen?

The exercise helps your brain see the connection between action that took place and the results that occurred.


3) Identify the cause
Next time you make a mistake, instead of calling yourself names that shouldn’t be said, simply ask yourself:
What was the cause?
And once you have the answer, ask again, what was the cause?
And once you have the answer, ask again, what was the cause?

Do it at least 3 times.


The Reality of Understanding Reality
You might be thinking, "But ST, I really have made a lot of mistakes. This isn't just in my head."

Tom felt exactly the same way.
What he discovered was that everyone makes mistakes - the difference is whether you learn the actual lessons from them or just conclude you can't trust yourself.

It’s up to you to decide how you want to go about it.


Also, notice, we didn’t chant affirmations, “I’m good at making decisions.”
Instead, we figured out WHY he was struggling to make good decisions and actually solved the problem.
In Tom’s case, he was understanding reality.
He wasn’t looking for the cause and effect of his actions.


When your understanding of reality gets stronger, you stop feeling like a victim of random bad luck and start seeing the actual levers you can control. Past mistakes become useful data instead of proof that you're broken.

The most confident decision-makers I work with all have a strong understanding of reality skills.
They're not luckier or smarter - they've just trained their brains to see the real connections between what they do and what happens as a result.

Cheers to Peak Brain Performance!