5 Mental Models I Swear By

Thanks to my two-hour commute, I not only expanded my Spotify playlists but also finally finished several audiobooks I had saved for a long time. I want to jot them down here so I don’t end up spending hours trying to re-dig the valuable insights I once heard. In this post, I’ll focus on five mental models from one of those books. The last one is the final secret of a stable core so stay patient! :-P

1. The absolute priority of facts

2. Self distance vs self immerse

3. Give up victim mindset

4. Strategic hibernation

5. Identity reconstruction

The Absolute Priority of Facts

This section is about stripping away emotion to see situations more clearly. Facts are the least emotional but the most reliable. They are simply data.

When you feel overwhelmed, try this exercise: take a piece of paper and draw a vertical line. On the left, write down facts. On the right, write down feelings. The goal is to separate what actually happened from how you interpreted it.

Example:
You feel criticized by your peers and experience embarrassment or low self-esteem.

• Facts (left): You were corrected multiple times during a meeting, or a project you worked on had issues.

• Feelings (right): “People think I’m incompetent.” “They look down on me.”

The feelings on the right can be intense and painful, but they are not facts. You don’t have access to other people’s thoughts. What you’re experiencing is interpretation and projection, not objective reality. What hurts you most is often not the event itself, but the meaning you attach to it.

Facts cannot be changed. Feelings can.

Once you isolate the facts, you can redirect your thinking in more constructive ways:

• These facts triggered uncomfortable emotions. Can I communicate my needs or ask for feedback on how things are delivered?

• If I speak up and nothing changes, do I want to continue lowering my standards to stay in this environment?

• If I don’t speak up, what can I change to avoid feeling this way again?

From there, move into analysis:

• Why did the mistakes happen. Was it a process issue or a capability gap?

• If it’s process, can the process be improved?

• If it’s capability, can I learn, practice, or get support?

When you consistently strip away emotion and return to facts, something shifts. Emotions still arise, but they pass more quickly, like storms that lose power because you stop feeding them.

Self Distance vs Self Immerse

When you sense a large wave of emotion approaching, shift into observer mode. You are not your emotions; you are the consciousness that witnesses them.

Instead of saying, “I feel so angry,” try reframing it as:
“I notice anger rising and occupying my body.”

When hopelessness appears, tell yourself:
“I’m observing a feeling called despair. It’s like a dark cloud passing through.”

A cloud can temporarily block the sun, but it is never the sky. You are the blue sky so don’t let a passing cloud define it.

In the TV series West World, the awakened hosts have an “analysis mode.” When panic or rage becomes overwhelming, they are able to shut it off with a button. This isn’t emotional numbness—it’s a form of de-identification training. Between stimulus and response, they insert a deliberate pause. That pause is power.

This practice is especially effective for stopping rumination. Rumination is common among highly analytical, self-reflective people. It often begins when emotions flood the system and quietly take over identity. Without a pause button, the mind believes the darkness is permanent—something that must be solved or fought.

For people who’ve achieved success through analysis, the instinct is to think their way out of emotional storms. But analysis cannot dissolve emotion when emotion has already seized the controls.

So how do you train the pause button?

You don’t stop the feelings—you create space around them.

Set aside five to ten minutes. Sit quietly. Imagine yourself observing yourself from a distance, as if you’re looking at a photograph or a movie still. Your only task is to watch and name what you see: anger, fear, sadness, confusion. No fixing. No judging. Just observing.

This is how you build the observer muscle. Over time, emotions still arise, but they move through you faster, because they’re no longer mistaken for who you are.

Give Up Why It Happened & Think about How To Resolve

I’ve lived through multiple periods where everything around me was collapsing—my identity, my career, my relationships, my family, my friendships. In those moments, asking “Why me?” felt natural, even comforting. But that question anchors you in a victim mindset.

There are two kinds of people in a crisis: those who wait for an explanation, and those who search for a way out. You want to be the latter.

In The Martian, Mark Watney is stranded alone on Mars. If he had spent his time asking why he was abandoned, he would have died. Instead, his only focus was this: I’m not dead yet. The most powerful question he asked wasn’t why, but how: How do I survive this? That single shift signals acceptance of reality and the reclaiming of agency.

So what’s the training method?

The timed complaining principle.
When disaster strikes, give yourself permission to feel fully, but briefly. Set a timer, Cry, Curse, Complain. Let the emotions move through you without shame or judgment.

But when the time is up, you stop feeding the pain. You gather your tears and anger and redirect all that energy away from explanations and toward action. From why this happened to what I’m going to do next.

That pivot from helplessness to movement is where life resumes.

Strategic Hibernation

This is not an invitation to give up. It is an invitation to accumulate energy.

When life has crippled you, when you are bleeding and limping, society’s default response is to demand strength. Be positive. Stand up. Push through. But does that make sense? It’s the equivalent of asking someone to run a marathon immediately after heart surgery.

When you are at the absolute low point of life, when your energy is fully depleted, the right move is not to confront difficulty head-on, but to retreat strategically.

In the wild, an injured animal does not perform resilience. It disappears. It finds the most hidden place to recover. It doesn’t socialize. It doesn’t hunt. It doesn’t seek validation to prove it’s still strong. It stays still. It licks its wounds and channels every ounce of energy into healing. When it returns, it is often more dangerous than before.

Humans have forgotten this instinct. When we feel depressed or broken, we are afraid to stop. We fear being judged, looked down on, or abandoned. So we drag our injured bodies forward, pretending everything is fine, forcing optimism, performing strength. We are already full of wounds, yet we spend our last reserves trying to appear okay. That is not courage. That is self-neglect.

So what should we do?

Not perform, but cleanse.

Cleanse your mind. Withdraw from noise, comparison, and external stimulation. Stop chasing validation. Hide if you must. Build quietly. Focus all attention on repair and recovery.

Then cleanse your desire. Much of suffering comes from expectations being wildly misaligned with reality. During your hibernation, lower desire to the minimum. Career success. Ideal relationships. Big milestones. Set them aside, for now. The only priority is survival and restoration:

• Sleep well

• Eat well

• Exercise

Spend your energy healing yourself, not entertaining others.

You are not moving backward. You are planting roots. In dark soil, where no one is watching, you grow strength beneath the surface. Wait for the storm to pass. Wait for the wounds to heal. When spring comes, guess who will be the first to break through the ground?

Rebuilding Your Identity
This is the core one

Why does it feel like the world is falling apart when we’re defeated? Because the identity we relied on has collapsed.

Ask yourself a simple question: Who are you?
Most people answer with roles and labels:

• I’m a software engineer. I’m an accountant. I’m a student.
  → Identity tied to career.

• I’m someone’s girlfriend. I’m someone’s husband.
  → Identity tied to relationships.

• I own a house. I have cars.
  → Identity tied to assets.

• I work at a famous company. I’m a founder.
  → Identity tied to status and labels.

Notice the pattern? Our self-perception is built on external, unstable things that can be taken away at any moment. So when a job is lost, the career identity collapses. When a relationship ends, the relationship identity disappears. It doesn’t just feel like something ended, it feels like you were erased. That’s the real root of collapse.

But here’s the truth:
You are not your job, your relationship, your assets, or your labels.
You are your choices and your actions.

That is the only rope strong enough to pull you out of the ruins.

Try this thought experiment: imagine everything is gone. No job. No partner. No status. No possessions. In that emptiness, ask yourself: What kind of person do I choose to be?
The answer cannot be “rich” or “successful.” It must be qualities. Ways of being.

When I had to reconstruct my identity after losing everything in early 2025, this is what I chose:

• I am someone who chooses kindness in chaos.

• I am resilient and refuse to give up on myself.

• I am curious and committed to learning and expanding my mind.

• I am courageous and willing to challenge myself.

These are my true identities. No one can take them away.

When you build your identity on internal qualities rather than external labels, you become unshakable.

In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy loses everything that once defined him:his career, his reputation, his freedom. But he chooses to remain dignified. He chooses to pursue hope. Over twenty years, he digs a tunnel and writes countless letters to build a library inside the prison. He acts from internal identity: resilience, patience, faith. That identity is what saves him.

So write this down: If you lose everything, who do you choose to be?
Put it somewhere visible. Return to it when life collapses again.

No matter what happens, you are still you. External storms may destroy the shell, but they can never touch the core.