Your Brain Lies to You Each Day
Your brain lies to you each day.
Your brain’s priority is survival. It edits information to keep you moving. Pushes truth aside when truth slows you down.
You experience a filtered version of the world, not the full input.
This works kinda fine until your energy drops. You feel tired, anxious, or stuck when your internal model stops matching your environment. Your system starts fighting information instead of using it. You feel this as energy loss, you feel drained.
Let’s look at the ways your brain bends reality and how you keep your energy aligned with accurate information.
1. Your brain fills in gaps to save time
Your senses deliver large amounts of data each second, or whatever is shorter as a second. You register a small slice. Your brain fills the missing parts with predictions. You see what your brain expects. You skip errors in emails. You miss familiar turns. You misread neutral tone.
Your brain aims for speed. It patches missing data and moves forward.
How this drains energy:
Wrong predictions force your brain to rebuild the story. You enter a correction loop. You spend energy realigning your internal map with real input.
What helps:
This takes practice, but pause before you respond. Give your attention time to update. Use a ten second reset. This lowers correction loops and reduces wasted energy.
2. Your emotions change what you think is true
Your brain decides before you think. Emotional signals fire first. Logic arrives later to support the emotional impulse. If you feel anxious, you interpret neutral cues as threats. If you feel confident, you read the same cues as supportive.
The environment stays the same. Your internal state shifts the interpretation.
How this drains energy:
You fight information when emotion directs the story. You spend energy defending a conclusion that does not match the facts in front of you.
What helps:
Notice when your reaction feels charged. That signal shows emotional energy driving the interpretation. Ask what else fits this information? This reopens your attention and lowers distortion.
3. Your attention directs your physical energy
My Energetic Information Hypothesis says that information processing takes energy. Research shows your brain uses about 20% of your body’s total energy even though it weighs roughly 2% of your mass. Attention directs that energy. Each shift pulls fuel from your supply.
When your attention scatters across tabs, notifications, noise, and unfinished loops, you fragment your energy. You feel drained because your system spreads fuel across too many inputs.
How this distorts reality:
Your brain treats loud information as important information. Notifications override your focus. They shape your temporary version of reality.
What helps:
Close loops, as in, turn off inputs you do not need. Bring attention back to a single target. This reduces internal entropy. Your system organizes information with less effort.
This is physics at work, not motivation.
Your memory rewrites past events
Memory does not record. Memory reconstructs. Each recall changes the event. Your brain saves the updated version and discards the previous one. Repeated recall shifts the memory further from the original input.
How this drains energy:
Your system responds to old emotional states as if they are current. You spend physical fuel on reactions linked to past information, not present conditions.
What helps:
Shift attention from the event to the lesson. Ask what remains useful right now? Release the rest. Your energy returns to tasks that need your focus.
4. Your brain limits awareness to protect you
Your conscious mind receives a slice of sensory input. Most processing happens below awareness. This approach saves energy. It also reduces access to new information. Your brain filters out data that conflicts with your existing model/your point of view. You overlook information that does not fit your expectations.
How this drains energy:
Rigid filters force your system to defend old assumptions. You resist change. You burn fuel holding your position instead of updating your outlook.
What helps:
Expose yourself to new information.
Embrace the unknown!
Read unfamiliar topics. Speak with people who hold different views. Novel data forces your system to build new informational links. This uses energy in a productive way. It strengthens awareness.
The energetic cost of illusion
Each internal shortcut saves energy in the short term. In the long term, these shortcuts drain you. You lose alignment between attention, emotion, and action. Internal entropy rises. Your energy disperses.
You do not need to override your brain. You need to work with its structure.
How to stay aligned with accurate information:
— Pause before reacting. This allows your system to process actual input.
— Track your internal state. Emotional shifts influence your interpretation.
— Focus on one clear task. Finish it before moving forward.
— Rest with intention. Idle time clears informational noise.
— Seek mild friction. New information strengthens your model.
Each step lowers entropy. You expend less energy holding inaccurate stories. You regain clarity and direction.
The deeper truth
Your brain optimizes for energy conservation. It filters truth when truth requires extra fuel. Awareness changes this! When you direct attention with intent, you reorganize information in your system.
My theory views attention as physical energy interacting with information. When you focus, you shift the structure of your internal model. You improve informational order. You support clearer perception.
You will keep encountering internal distortions. Each moment of attention lets you realign with real input. This alignment gives you stable energy, accurate decisions, and a clear path forward.
Stay curious!