The Biggest Mindset Shift by far

Your Brain is a Prediction Machine

Author

Moritz Eikelmann
June 01, 2025

When I was working as an assistant doctor in psychiatric hospitals and learning about psychiatric conditions, how to treat them (e.g. how to make symptoms go away) and how to perform psychotherapy, I felt passive, drained from my vitality and depressed.

I stopped eating healthy, stopped exercising and cluttered my mind with all symptoms and problems of the patients, but more severe: The pitfalls and fallacies of a university clinic, prussian hierarchies, enforcing leaders and a toxic work culture. This affected the was I saw myself, treated myself and how I defined my relationships to others.

Luckily, I found great mentors (professional and private), guiding me on my journey out of those clinics, into self-employment, starting my own private practice and business coaching company. Leading a more stable and happy life with great family, friends, business partners and clients.

Instead of remaining stuck in a passive therapy/psychiatric mindset, I've embraced active emotional development. Perhaps most importantly, I've transformed my approach to the how the brain works and how emotions are made.

Why context and knowledge define how we feel

For decades old and scientifically outdated models of the brain and its functions dominated what most people believed about brains, mental health, their emotions, thoughts and behaviours.

In short: The way we think about us, about our self. And the way we think about other people which equals to: Our relationships.

What we know and how we think about our self has serious implications for how we work, how we feel, how we raise our children, how we communicate and work together. And what we are buying. A lot of money has been made with myths about the brain knowledge, but hang on for a short while:

Common Myths about the Brain (that are scientifically false)

The Triune Brain

The triune brain theory dates back to the 1960s when scientists sliced up brains into pieces, colored them and looked closely under the microscope. What they got was a human brain composed of three distinct evolutionary layers: The reptilian brain (instincts), the limbic system (emotions), and the neocortex (rational thought). The evolutionary idea behind it, is that with every new step in evolution, a new layer has been added. In the end, us humans developed our powerful, reasoning Neocortex on top of all that layering, forming a hierarchical structure. As we humans are “made for thinking” and - across the board - geniuses, the Neocortex keeps the old lizard brain structure in check.

Of course, we liked this idea …

Why the Triune Brain feels so damn good

It fits with the western philosophical narrative dating back to Plato’s division of the psyche into rational, passionate, and appetitive parts. Check.

It makes us geniuses and automately smarter than other creatures (with less layers). Check.

We can make shit tons of money by selling books and seminars about how to “keep your lizard brain in check” for CEOs. Check.

How the Triune Brain spread like a virus

The idea of a Triune Brain feels good, sounds great, is utterly oversimplified and incorrect and therefore makes immediate senes.

It layed ground for many of the following concepts:

  • The idea that emotions (limbic brain) are neurobiologically segregated from cognition (neocortex) and the layers forming different, distinct and separated (not-interconnected) parts.

  • The idea that the brain therefore is purely reactive. The older parts react to things happening in the outside world, so all this emotion stuff is “out of our controll”, but: We can recapture all that lizard brain nonsense thanks to our neocortex.

  • The idea that our brains, therefore, are hardwired. After a couple of years (which of course you do not remember consciously) the deal is done. It’s all hardwired and layered. Take it or leave it.

  • The idea that, therefore, young people’s brains, especially when hitting puberty, get “out of controll”, they can’t be talked to and they can’t controll their behaviour as well as impulses. It’s their main deficit. We have to teach them (The incompetence model of young brains).

How Emotions are Made (science-backed)

Neuroscience showed us that the triune brain theory is wrong. It’s not how our brains work and evolved. Our understanding of the brain and our emotions has evolved significantly.

I highly recommend studying Lisa Feldmann-Barrett’s books and articles, I will link them below. She also appeared on some of the biggest podcasts recently, I will link them below, too.

Here is a short breakdown (I will cover her work in future editions more closely):

  • The brain operates as a single, dynamic network where all regions interact continuously. Emotions, cognition, and bodily regulation arise from coordinated activity across the entire brain. There is no segregation, no layering, it is all interconnected.

  • The brain is highly active and predictive: It constantly generates guesses about the world and body based on past experiences, refining these predictions using sensory input. This process, called allostasis, allows the brain to efficiently regulate energy and anticipate needs rather than merely responding to stimuli.

  • The brain can adapt, learn and rewire at any age. Neuroplasticity enables continuous adaptation, with emotions and concepts learned through cultural and personal experiences. This means emotional responses are not universal but shaped by individual and societal contexts.

  • Of course, when we encounter certain behaviours, we label it by “out of controll”, “bad”, “wrong”. Maintaining and building relationships with our family, kids, teens, friends and coworkers starts can be tough, but it starts in our self. Tidy up there - everyday - and learn how to speak to these people. There are no deficits or errors. It’s just how the other person predicts.

Why is this a Big Mindset Intervention?

Knowing (for now) how emotions are made is a big mindset intervention on it’s own. Remember how I wrote in the beginning of this newsletter that context and therefore knowledge are shaping how you see your self and define your relationships to others?

The triune and lizard brain idea implies that emotions are hardwired, universal and reactive. In turn, you cannot be responsible for your old emotions making their way to the surface. After all, your flight-or-fight responses from your ancestors were useful back then. Now, as annoying leftovers, they are just … annoying? Except the pleasant emotions, of course.

Finally, in this cascade of justifications, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis comes handy: Throwing big numbers into the mix, psychoanalyst claim that 90-95% of the mind is unconscious. So, who am I to reveal all the 90%? Who has time for >500 hours of psychoanalytic treatment (and who has the money for it)?

As you might know by now: Reason doesn't trump emotion—it's the other way around: Reason is the student, Emotion is the teacher. This predictive process is an active and creative function of your brain - leading to:

THE ONLY PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR CHANGING YOUR EMOTIONS IS YOU.

Knowing the Basics of Emotions

This is a vast and super interesting topic. I currently work on an Email Course about the Basics of Emotions.

The view of the brain with a predictive nature and function has huge and, indeed, very practical implications:

  • For marketing reasons I refer to this as Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Superpower on Linked-In, forgive me for that, but attention is the new currency and somehow you got to make the people stop scrolling after a long workday on commute.

  • As your brain’s main task is to run your systems and keep you alive, probably 70-80% of energy is used to do exactly this. In turn, taking excellent care of your biology, is key. As stable and energy efficient system, will make better predictions and learn faster.

  • Building Emotional Intelligence and Mental Resilience therefore starts with optimizing Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise, Breathing, Relaxation, just to name a few.

  • If you sleep bad, eat bad food, do not exercise, are not conscious of your breathing patterns and do not have any tools to relax, you very likely will feel bad inside, act this bad feelings on the outside, complain, overthink, get anxious, nervous, become irate and mad and so on.

  • These things come first. The rest (all the fancy tools, habit building, routines and rituals) comes after that.

That’s it for this month.

See you at the end of June again.

In the meantime, please share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues, who might like this content.

Let’s connect on Linked-In here.

If you are interested in my coaching program “Mastering Emotions” email me or book an orientation call here:

Take care,

Yours,

Moritz

Lisa Feldmann Barrett: https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/




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