[Rebroadcast] Harnessing Your Brain’s Predictions to Transform Anxiety

About this episode

This episode discusses how to reshape brain predictions to combat anxiety and procrastination.

#289: The brain’s models and predictions play a central role in the vicious cycles that drive procrastination, dread, and anxiety. When your brain assess a challenge as a threat, often it’s predicting some pain, or shame and sounds the alarm to get you to avoid it. To reverse these vicious cycles and transform them into virtuous ones, we need to shape our brain’s predictions, de-fusing from our models, opening up to reality, and asking: How can this bring out my best? What would a new and better way of doing this look like? Find more at https://OptimalWork.com

Topics covered

• anxiety
• brain predictions
• procrastination
• self-improvement
• mental models
• personal development

Keywords

• anxiety
• procrastination
• brain models
• self-improvement
• mental health
• personal growth

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: OptimalWork

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• [Rebroadcast] Reviewing Cal Newport’s “Slow Productivity” · May 18, 2026 · 34 min
• [Rebroadcast] Mindset Mistakes that Sabotage Success · May 11, 2026 · 34 min
• 298. When Abstention Becomes the Measure · May 4, 2026 · 32 min