How to Catch Your Brain Lying to You: A Practical Guide to Self-Awareness Over Ego
Learn how to spot self-deception as it happens, reduce ego-driven mistakes, and make better decisions with a more honest view of yourself
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RSS Feed It's easy to spend our lives defending a story about who we are, instead of finding out who we could become.
This episode is an invitation to stop protecting your ego and start practising self-awareness as a craft. We look at how high intelligence can turn into a sophisticated self-deception machine, and how the stories we tell ourselves—“I’m the rational one”, “I learn from feedback”, “I’m different from those stubborn people”—are often the very things that keep us stuck.
Through real examples from science, travel, and building (and misbuilding) companies, you’ll see how ego hides in certainty, and how growth begins the moment you allow yourself to be wrong on purpose. This is about a shift in identity, from someone who must be right to someone who is willing to see.
Identify three recurring patterns where your ego resists uncomfortable truths.
Create a regular “ego audit” ritual: write, reflect, and invite honest feedback.
Choose relationships and environments that reward curiosity over confidence.
Hit play if you’re ready to trade the comfort of being right for the possibility of becoming wiser.
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Chapters
00:00 Intro: Intelligence as a Burden
02:50 What This Episode Is About
05:25 How Good Are You at Understanding Information?
07:55 Being Aware of Your Flaws
10:42 Mistake 1: The Unscientific Scientist
14:00 Mistake 2: The Unbalanced Balancer
18:13 Mistake 3: The Unentrepreneurial Entrepreneur
22:47 Recap: Three Big Mistakes
23:05 Becoming an Ego Detective
24:28 Tip 1: Write Down Three Big Errors
25:25 Tip 2: Nurturing Strategies for Awareness
26:46 Tip 3: Find Your Crowd
27:18 Outro and Final Thoughts
Topics discussed
Why smart people trick themselves into being right
How ego hides unconscious bias in everyday decisions
Real stories of ego-driven mistakes in work and life
The link between high IQ and self-deception
Simple habits to build honest self-awareness
Spotting blind spots before they cost you
How to learn from feedback without defensiveness
Using reflection and journaling to reduce ego traps
Choosing friends who challenge your certainty
Turning mistakes into fuel for long-term growth
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