It’s called the Ladder of Inference…
Years ago, when I was working in health and fitness, I had a client who always stopped by a fast-food restaurant on her way to work.
I mean, ALWAYS.
She simply could not stop herself from eating two cheeseburgers and a couple of hash browns in route to the office, every day, five days a week.
She was totally stuck in a habit of struggle, unable to see her way out of it.
“Maybe drive a different route to work each morning,” I suggested, when her calorie-filled commute came up in one of our sessions.
The lightbulb came on.
The route that my client was driving to work—the one that took her past that fast-food restaurant every single morning—was the quickest way to her office. The thought of driving a new route, a route that would take her five or even ten (gasp!) minutes out of her way, didn’t even occur to her. Her route was her pattern.
But once she made the simple change of driving a new route to work, she discovered that when she was faced with a new setting, when her brain encountered new data and stimuli, she could get to work without triggering herself.
She made a small, but conscious choice to do something differently.
One that offered mega results.
My suggestion to her sounded so simple—as solutions to habits often do once we’re aware they exist. But when you’re caught in the habit of struggle: unconscious, trapped in an all-or-nothing mindset, and stuck in black-or-white thinking, the obvious isn’t always so clear.
This story is just one example of the function of something called the Ladder of Inference.
The Ladder of Inference describes the process that the human brain moves through as it takes in objective stimuli (fact) and sorts it, sifts it, interprets it, ascribes meaning to it, and ultimately acts upon it.
In short, the Ladder of Inference explains how different people can approach the same situation but come away with completely different understandings, interpretations, and responses—we all select different data from the millions and millions of bits of data available at any given time. Then, we interpret that date based on our experiences, beliefs, and perspectives.
Our beliefs inform how we encounter data.
This means we can set ourselves up for positivity or negativity long before we ever encounter any data at all.
Until you build a new belief system, the data you select from any given situation and what you do with it will only support the belief system that you hold—even if it is an unhealthy one that is making you miserable.
Whatever belief you hold, you are going to show up to any given situation prepared to see only the data that supports that belief—whether you’re conscious of it or not. That is where mindfulness comes in: It wakes you up, makes you aware of what you are really thinking, and teaches you to tune into of all the other data that is available to you also.
Every single situation is an opportunity to make a choice: You can make the choice to believe that you are no good and destined for disappointment, or you can believe totally that things are going to work out for you.
If you feel your life is lacking the health, happiness, connection, success, abundance, or anything else you want, then learning to select different data in any given situation can help.
