We Get Trapped by Invisible Patterns That Keep Us Stuck

Growing up, I learned early that I wasn't enough. When I was in 9th grade, I fought a bully who sexually harassed my girlfriend. I couldn't stay silent. I stood up to him—and got beaten up for it.

Walking home afterward, bruised and humiliated, the message felt clear: You're not enough.

That belief followed me everywhere, even into my research lab. When I couldn't solve the challenging troubleshooting steps in my RNA localization protocol, when experiments failed again and again, it felt... familiar. Of course I can't do this. Of course I'm failing. This is what I do. In science, I learned to accept failure, but I was still carrying it as proof of my inadequacy.

Then the pandemic hit, and everything I thought I was—my identity as a scientist—collapsed.

It should have been devastating. Instead, something unexpected happened: I felt liberated. A sense of joy arose that I hadn't felt in decades. Standing in the wreckage of my carefully constructed identity, I had a startling realization:

"I'm not that story?!"

The "I" that wasn't enough—that voice that had narrated my life for so long—was just a thought pretending to be me. I had been confusing myself with the thinker, when the thinker was simply another thought.

Everything shifted. I began taking on larger challenges, bigger risks. I left my science career and started my own business. The same pattern would show, but this time I wouldn't take the bait.

I would observe the thought without believing it.

In my work, failure transformed from a defining characteristic into information—data to learn from, not an identity to carry.

Looking back at that 9th-grade version of myself, I see something different now. That kid was courageous. He stood up for someone else's honor. He showed up. He fought. He did what he could with what he had.

I'd tell him: "What you did took courage. And next time you go into a fight, first learn how to fight."

But more importantly, I'd tell him: "You are not your failures. You are not that story. You never were. Let's look at what you did well, and where things didn't go well."

The Secret to Your Solving Your Problems

When we repeatedly fail at something—whether in relationships, career goals, or personal growth—there's often an invisible assumption or approach that stays constant across all our attempts. This is what John Vervaeke calls an invariant—like the assumed "square" in the nine-dot problem that people don't even notice they're assuming (look up the nine-dot problem).

Our reference frames become sources of systematic self-deception because:

• We can't see our own perspectives - they're transparent to us, like wearing orange-tinted glasses and thinking that the white snow is orange because we forget we have them on.
• We mistake our perspective for reality itself. Our perspective, or the reference frame from which we're seeing others, ourselves, etc., is simply that. A perspective. Treating our mental maps as if they were the actual territory causes us trouble, conflict, and suffering.
• We experience confirmation cascades, unconsciously selecting evidence that fits our frame, interpreting information to confirm it, and acting in ways that validate it.

Here are some examples of these invisible invariants:

• In relationships, this shows up as interpreting disagreement as an attack rather than miscommunication
• In career/goals, it shows up as defining "ready to start" in ways that ensure you never actually start
• In personal growth, it shows up as operating from an all-or-nothing mindset that treats setbacks as evidence of fundamental inadequacy

This Leads to Self-Deception That Compounds Over Time

The deeper challenge is that our failures often involve the very cognitive processes that make us adaptive. The heuristics that usually serve us well become the source of our blindness.

Wisdom is therefore not optional. It is essential.

Meta-Perspective Forms of Self-Deception

The most sophisticated form involves deceiving ourselves about our perspectives themselves:

• Thinking we're "objective" when we're deeply partisan
• Believing we're "open-minded" while operating from rigid frames
• Assuming we've "worked through" something when we've just gotten better at rationalizing it

The Recursive Nature

What makes this particularly profound is that changing invariants requires what Vervaeke calls an "ecology of practices" because our mind is complex, and patterns that lend themselves to forms of self-deception are self-maintaining. You're either explicitly pursuing the ability to notice your own invariants, or they implicitly trap you.

Cognitive Idolatry

Ancient wisdom traditions warned against treating our mental models as if they were the reality they represent. Each reference frame is like a map that always leaves things out (to be usable), emphasizes certain features based on purpose, can become outdated as the territory changes, and can make us stop paying attention to the actual territory.

Develop Meta-Perspectival Awareness Through Noticing The Invariants

John Vervaeke's framework offers a path forward through developing meta-perspectival awareness—learning to work intentionally with perspectival knowing itself.

The Notice Invariants Heuristic

When stuck in problem-solving, move to the "meta space"—don't search for solutions within your current framing, but search through different problem framings themselves. Pay attention to what remains unchanged across all your failed attempts, because that's likely what's holding you back.

Practical Application Method

To apply this requires:

• Direct awareness to the invariant patterns across failures rather than getting lost in the specifics of any one failure attempt.
• Develop your character so that you can leverage humility rather than attach shame and fear to your failures. A willingness to examine failures closely without defensively protecting the ego requires character development, which is usually forged through pain, suffering—and failure.
• Stop seeing yourself as "the person who fails at X" and start seeing yourself as someone learning to see their own patterns. This requires a shift in identity. Realize that the thinker is the thought. And thoughts aren't you. You are aware of them. They appear in you and are made of you, and are known by you.

The Three-Part Meta-Perspectival Development Plan

• Practice intentionally shifting between different frames and notice how each reveals and conceals different aspects of your problem—or, of reality itself.
• Develop sensitivity to when your current frame is creating problems rather than solving them—like noticing when the map you're using is leading you in circles.
• Move beyond just having perspectives to participating in the dynamic process of perspectival knowing itself—being in relationship with reality rather than trying to capture it.

Concrete Implementation Steps

• Track patterns across failures, not just individual instances of failures.
• Look for what you assume is "obvious" or "just how things are."
• Pay attention to your emotional responses—they often reveal hidden framings.
• Cultivate humility to examine failures rather than defending against them.
• Develop the awareness of noticing how you're noticing.

Reframing Questions for Different Life Areas

Instead of asking "why does my wife always…?" Ask instead:

• "What frame am I using that makes this pattern visible?"
• "What would this dynamic look like from a different frame?"

Instead of asking "What do I want to do?" Ask instead:

• "What frame am I using to understand 'wanting' and 'doing'?
• "How might different frames reveal different possibilities?"

Instead of asking "Why do I keep getting distracted?" Ask instead:

• "What frame makes distractions feel necessary or inevitable?"
• "What would have to shift in my way of seeing for distractions to become optional?"

The goal here is to develop what Vervaeke calls serious play—holding our frames seriously enough to act from them, while playing with them lightly enough to change them when they're no longer serving our flourishing and potential.

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-Alex

P.S. Cultivating integrity is vital to overcoming our self-deception. It also happens to be a key to a fulfilling life. ​Get Your Free Integrity Assessment Here →​

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