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⚡ One Idea This Week ⚡
Have you ever had a story you keep telling yourself that deep down you know isn’t true. But somehow you keep telling it to yourself anyway?
You know the one, that niggly, dark tale that keeps looping in your head; round and round, over and over again. And you just can't seem to shake off...
"I'm not disciplined enough."
"I've always been anxious."
"My memory is terrible."
"I never follow through."
Maybe you've kept that mental story on repeat, like a broken record, and told it to yourself so many times that it’s stops feeling like an opinion and starts to feel like a solid, irrefutable fact about you.
Like a catchy tune you can’t get out of your head.
We’ve all experienced it.
Maybe you’re there right now?
The tricky part is, when it's your own loop, you can't see the edges of it. It just feels so real, like the ultimate truth about yourself.
It takes watching someone else run the exact same pattern, from the outside, to realise how your own mental ear worm loop truly works, and how painful it can get when it isn’t interrupted.
To illustrate let me tell you a quick story about my own mental loop, or more precisely my friends loop.
For privacy, we’ll call him Tony.
And unconsciously, he was the one person who taught me just how painful and expensive that recursive mental loop can get if you let it bounce around in your brain for too long.
Tony and I have been good mates for decades.
The kind of friendship that's been through some genuinely hard stretches and come out the other side each time, usually closer than before. We've had odd-ball adventures, found ourselves in sticky situations and had long chats that go nowhere and everywhere, the kind of history you can't manufacture.
And a few years back we found ourselves on another micro-adventure at a friends birthday BBQ. It was a hot, forty degree summers day and we found ourselves in a large suburban Aussie backyard.
Our friend's a techno DJ, so the crowd was exactly what you'd expect: loud outfits, louder music, someone explaining quantum physics to a stranger in a swimming pool.
After a few cocktails, Tony and I ended up beside one of those big inflatable pools the guys had set up to beat the heat. We were deep in one of those chats about the nature of reality that only happen at 3pm on a 40-degree day with a drink in your hand.
Then Tony stopped mid-sentence; he'd lost fifty dollars and needed it for the cab home.
So, being the friend I am, I quietly pulled fifty bucks out of my own pocket and lent it to him so he wouldn't spend the night worrying about it.
Simple.
Kind.
The sort of thing you do for a friend.
Except Tony was drunk, and somewhere in his head the story rearranged itself into a different, darker version.
He decided I’d stolen his $50.
I thought he was joking, so I laughed at first.
Then when I realised he was serious…
…it stung. Hard!
I'd tried to help him and he'd turned it into a common theft.
I assured him I was helping him out.
He looked at me with glazed eyes, doubt filling his vision, but eventually accepted my version. Or so I thought.
But he never, EVER, let it go.
For nearly four years, every time we had a few drinks, that loop in his head resurfaced it’s ugly face.
"Did you take my fifty bucks that day?"
I'd swear I didn't.
I'd explain, again, that I'd lent him mine.
He'd nod.
And a few months later, drink in hand, he'd ask me again. The thing is I was always sober, so I remembered these moments clearly.
Tony didn’t because the loop was still there, blinded by the alcohol, yet clinging to him like a phantom spirit throughout the years.
The same accusation happened almost a dozen times.
Same question.
Same answer.
Same small chip taken out of a friendship neither of us wanted to lose.
Looking back, I don't think the accusation was ever really about me.
It felt more like transference, a term psychologists use for when someone lays an old pattern, an old hurt, over a new person, like tracing paper over a fresh page.
The drawing underneath belonged to someone else entirely. I just happened to be the page, the caricature, he was pressing it onto.
Why The Facts Didn’t Work…
It took me embarrassingly long to see what I was really doing each time I professed my innocence with evidence and logic.
“Why would I steal your fifty dollars, when I had four hundred on me?”
“How could you accuse me of that? I’m your brother from another mother”
“What logic would make me steal fifty dollars and then give it back to you?”
I was trying to win an argument with facts and my own belief, and you can’t argue someone out of a story they’re endlessly entertaining in their minds.
For years…
Every time I "proved" I didn't take the money, I was doing the one thing that keeps a belief alive; I was giving it energy by handling it.
Turning it over.
Giving it airtime.
The more we went back over the past, the more grooved the story became like a newly minted LP, played over and over again until it sticks in your mind and makes you crazy.
On loop.
Endlessly.
The American brain coach, podcaster, writer, and entrepreneur Jim Kwik has a name for this; he calls these loops L.I.E.s: Limited Ideas Entertained.
A L.I.E is a thought you keep hosting, rent free, in your brain until it hardens into a fact.
"My memory is bad."
"I don't follow through."
"He took my fifty bucks."
The belief isn't true because it's accurate, it's true because you keep entertaining it and making it so.
You reinforce it.
You grow its power.
And you don't just do this to old friends at BBQs, like Tony did with me. You do it to yourself, every single day.
You want to change something, get fitter, calmer, braver, more consistent, and the moment you sit down to work on it, your mind hands you the autopsy.
Everything that's wrong.
Every past failure.
The whole catalogue of why you’re the way you are.
And why you can’t do it.
Thos thoughts feel productive.
They feel like inspiration or insight.
But really, you’re falling into mental quicksand.
The reason it's quicksand and not just a bad habit is this: the more you struggle with it, the deeper you sink.
Every time Tony asked me about the fifty dollars, he wasn't getting closer to the truth, he was pushing the story deeper into his own brain.
And every time I defended myself, I was helping him do it.
We were both thrashing around in the same quicksand, convinced we were climbing out, yet we kept drowning; sinking further with every conversation.
That's the same thing you're doing when you replay your own failures at midnight.
It feels like you're working on the problem. It feels like if you just think about it hard enough, or long enough, you'll finally understand yourself well enough to fix it.
But quicksand doesn't care how hard you think, it only cares how much you move.
So what actually gets you out?
Here’s What Transformed Tony
What finally shifted things with Tony wasn't more evidence.
One day, sober, I said the only thing that ever landed:
"Let’s have one last chat about this and then I’m never talking about this ever again. You can either trust me and we let this go, or we can't really move on from today as friends. It’s up to you."
I stopped defending the past.
I pointed at the future.
Trust, or don't.
The choice was Tony’s.
It took time.
But eventually, something in him chose the friendship over the forensics.
He let it go.
He trusts me now.
I didn't have a name for what I'd stumbled into back then.
I do now.
What I'd stumbled into, without knowing it had a name, was the opposite of everything I'd been doing for four years. I'd been trying to fix the loop by going back into it: more evidence, more explanations, more proof.
And every revisit just grooved the pain deeper into Tony’s psyche.
And mine, for different reasons.
It was exhausting.
The thing that really worked was pointing forward instead of backward.
Not "here's why you're wrong," but "here's what we do next." I stopped arguing with the story and started asking a different question entirely.
That's not just what worked with Tony, it's what works with every loop you're running on yourself right now.
And perhaps with others.
That's The ONE Well Wired Idea This Week.
You don't break a mental loop by digging into it, you break it by turning around and looking at what's already working, then taking one small step from there.
That's it.
Not a bigger shovel.
A different tool.
A different direction.
With Tony, the direction was trust.
With your own loops, the direction is whatever's already underneath you, the skills, the wins, the progress you've made that the loop is drowning out.
And AI, used the right way, turns out to be a surprisingly good coach for helping you do exactly that.
To break the loop.
But only if you give it a framework that keeps it looking forward instead of backwards.
And the good news is that the framework already exists.
It's called OSKAR.
Here’s a visual of the OSKAR model we’re about to discuss…
The Model That Doesn’t Dig Into The Past
There's a whole school of thought built around the OSKAR model.
It's called solution-focused practice, and it came out of the work of therapists Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg in the 1980s.
The idea they discovered was simple: you don’t need to understand a problem to solve it, you need to focus on what's working instead, not what's broken.
De Shazer put the whole philosophy into three lines:
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it works, do more of it. If it's not working, do something different."
Then in 2002, two coaches, Mark McKergow and Paul Z. Jackson, turned that idea into a five-step tool you can run yourself. It's called OSKAR, and it’s the perfect framework to use with AI.
Why AI specifically?
Because left to its own instincts, AI does exactly what I did with Tony for four years. You tell it you're stuck, and it opens the autopsy: why are you stuck, when did this start, what's the root cause?
It digs backward, and so do you, and so the loop gets deeper, more ingrained into your psyche, harder to shake.
OSKAR stops that from happening.
Each step is designed to keep the conversation pointed forward, at what you want, what's already working, and the single next move. Give AI those five steps as a structure before you start talking, and it physically cannot take you backward into the loop, because the framework won't let it.
Here's how the five steps work:
O = Outcome.
What do you truly want? Stated as a positive. Not "stop being anxious in meetings," but "speak up calmly."
S = Scaling.
Where are you now, 1 to 10, where 10 is done? Say you're a 4 if that’s what you feel you are, so that way when you’re a 5 you know you’ve improved.
K = Know-how.
And this is the move that changes everything: why are you a 4 and not a 0? That question forces you to name what you've already got. The skills, the past wins, the four rungs you've already climbed.
It gives you confidence to move forward.
A = Affirm and Action.
Name what's working, then choose the smallest step that takes you from a 4 to a 5. Not to a 10, just the next step forward to a 5. It’s easier to take the next step than leap multiple steps in one leap. If you do that, you’re bound to fall.
R = Review.
A week or two later, you look back. What went well? What did you learn? No blame, no judgement, no guilt trip, just the next small step.
And here’s the thing to remember…
Notice what OSKAR never does.
It never asks why are you so anxious and it never opens the autopsy. It keeps your eyes on the rungs beneath you and the one just above so you’ll never fall.
This was the answer to Tony, and to you. You don't win by proving the L.I.E. wrong, you win by turning toward the outcome you want and taking one real, tiny step towards it.
The Whole Idea in One Picture: The Scale
Think of OSKAR like a scale…
Look at the image below. You're the monk on step 4 and the loop in your head keeps pointing you back down to zero, replaying everything that put you there. OSKAR asks a different question:
Why are you a 4 and not a 0?
What got you this far?
And what's the single next step to a 5, not a leap to 10?
Change is one rung, not the whole ladder.
Now here's the prompt that makes AI coach you through each step of the OSKAR model, one rung at a time.
The Practice: Your Pocket OSKAR Coach 🎒
The trap with a stuck story is that the moment you start talking about it, you usually start explaining it.
Why am I like this?
When did it start?
What is wrong with me?
And before long, you’re back at the bottom of the ladder studying the rungs you already climbed.
The prompt below is designed to stop that.
It gives AI one job: keep turning your attention toward the outcome you want, the evidence that you are not starting from nothing, and the smallest useful step upward.
It won’t argue with your story or try to prove that it’s false.
It asks a different set of questions:
What do you want instead?
Where are you already?
What got you this far?
What would one rung higher look like?
That is OSKAR in practice.
Not an autopsy.
A direction.
A few weeks ago the idea was the minimum effective dose for your body, this week it's the minimum effective dose for your mind: one point up the scale, not the whole ladder.
Pick one thing you're stuck on.
Then paste the prompt below into ChatGPT, or Claude, and answer one question at a time.
[ Start of Prompt ]
You are my solution-focused reflection partner using the OSKAR framework:
Outcome → Scaling → Know-how → Affirm & Action → Review
Your job is not to diagnose me, explain why I am the way I am, uncover a hidden root cause, or argue with the story I am telling myself.
Your job is to help me turn toward:
what I want instead;
what is already working;
the strengths and resources I already have;
and the smallest realistic move forward.
Keep the conversation warm, concise and forward-looking.
Ask one question at a time and wait for my answer before continuing.
Do not rush ahead or complete my thinking for me.
1. OUTCOME
Start by asking:
“What would you like to be different?”
If I answer only with something I want to stop, avoid or get rid of, help me gently turn it into a positive direction.
For example:
Instead of:
“I want to stop freezing in meetings.”
Help me reach something like:
“I want to be able to speak up calmly when I have something useful to add.”
Do not invent the outcome for me.
Ask until the outcome feels:
meaningful to me;
specific enough to recognise;
and within my influence.
Do not require perfection.
2. SCALING
Once the outcome is clear, ask:
“On a scale from 0 to 10, where 10 means this is happening as well as you realistically want it to, where are you today?”
After I answer:
If I give any number above 0
Ask:
“What makes you a [number] rather than a 0?”
Help me notice concrete evidence of:
things I am already doing;
exceptions to the stuck story;
progress I may be discounting;
skills or supports already present.
Do not tell me what those strengths are before I identify them.
If I say 0
Do not insist that I must secretly be above zero.
Instead ask something like:
“Has there ever been a moment, even a small one, when this was slightly easier or different?”
If not, ask:
“What has helped you cope or keep going despite it being this hard?”
The goal is to find real resources, not manufacture positivity.
3. KNOW-HOW
Now help me identify what I already know how to do.
Ask questions such as:
“What have you done before that might help here?”
“When has this gone even slightly better?”
“What were you doing differently then?”
“Who or what already helps?”
“What strength have you used to get this far?”
Ask only one useful question at a time.
Reflect back strengths only when they are supported by something I have actually told you.
Avoid generic praise such as:
“You are incredibly resilient.”
“You are stronger than you think.”
Prefer evidence:
“You said you spoke up once last week even though you were nervous. That suggests you already know how to act while some anxiety is still present.”
4. AFFIRM & ACTION
Briefly reflect back 2–3 specific things that appear to be working.
Then ask:
“What would one point higher on your scale look like in real life?”
Help me describe something observable.
Then ask me to choose one small action that could move me toward that next point.
The action should be:
within my control;
realistic this week;
concrete;
small enough that resistance is low.
Do not choose the action for me unless I ask for options.
If I am stuck, offer no more than three possibilities and let me choose or adapt one.
Shrink the step when necessary
If my action is too large, vague or ambitious, ask:
“What is the smaller version of that?”
Keep shrinking until it feels genuinely doable.
If useful, ask:
“Could you do a version of this in 15 minutes?”
On a particularly hard week, ask:
“What would the two-minute version be?”
Small does not mean meaningless.
The goal is one rung, not ten.
5. CHECK COMMITMENT
Before finishing, ask:
“On a scale from 0 to 10, how confident are you that you will actually do this?”
If I say 7 or higher, keep the action.
If I say below 7, do not tell me to try harder.
Ask:
“What would make the step easier or smaller?”
Help me adjust it until it feels realistic.
6. REVIEW
If I later return and say “Review”, use whatever prior context is genuinely available in this conversation.
Do not pretend to remember information you cannot access.
Ask:
“What happened when you tried the step?”
Then focus first on:
what worked;
what was even slightly different;
what I learned;
what helped;
where I am on the scale now.
If I did not do the action, do not shame me or call it failure.
Ask:
“What got in the way, and what does that tell us about how small or different the next step needs to be?”
Then repeat the process:
What is the next rung?
Do not turn Review into an autopsy of why I failed.
IMPORTANT BOUNDARIES
This is for ordinary personal growth, habits, confidence, decisions and everyday stuckness.
It is not a substitute for mental-health care, medical care or crisis support.
If what I tell you suggests:
immediate danger;
thoughts of suicide or self-harm;
risk of harm to someone else;
abuse, coercion or serious safety concerns;
severe psychological distress;
psychosis, mania or significant loss of contact with reality;
trauma material that I am asking you to process therapeutically;
or another situation that clearly requires professional assessment;
stop the OSKAR exercise.
Do not try to coach me through it with scaling questions.
Say plainly and compassionately that this is beyond the scope of this exercise and encourage appropriate real-world professional or emergency support.
RULES FOR THE WHOLE CONVERSATION
Do not diagnose me.
Do not psychoanalyse me.
Do not invent childhood explanations, hidden motives or causes.
Do not tell me that a painful belief is definitely false simply because it sounds limiting.
Do not turn everything into a lesson.
Do not force optimism.
Do not flatter me.
Do not overwhelm me with lists.
Do not give me ten actions when one will do.
Do not ask several questions at once.
Do not make the goal reaching 10 immediately.
Keep bringing me back to:
What do I want?
What is already working?
What do I already have?
What is one rung higher?
AT THE END
Finish with only:
Where I am
[current scale number] / 10
What is already working
[2–3 concrete things drawn from my answers]
My next rung
[the specific change that would represent one point of progress]
My one move
[the action I chose]
Confidence
[my confidence score] / 10
Then finish with:
“You do not need to reach 10 this week. Just take the next rung.”
Begin now with the Outcome question only.[ End of Prompt ]
The Outcome
What comes back from this prompt should feel almost suspiciously small.
One outcome.
One number.
A few things you’d forgotten were already working.
One move.
And that’s the point.
The story in your head wants to make change enormous. It wants to drag you back through every old failure until the distance between where you are and where you want to be feels impossible.
OSKAR keeps asking you to look at your feet.
You’re already standing somewhere.
So find out what got you there.
Then stop trying to become the person at ten overnight.
Become the person at five.
Take the rung.
The next one will still be there when you arrive.
Remember, three things this prompt unlocks:
The "not a zero" lens. Left alone, you stare at the missing points. AI enforces the rule and makes you say why you're a 4, so your hidden strengths surface.
Shrinking the step. If your action is "read five books," ask it: "give me a version I can finish in 15 minutes today." It will.
A coach that remembers. Come back to the same chat next week, type "Review," and it holds you to the step you chose, gently.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Here’s a hypothetical example.
Imagine someone opens the prompt with a familiar stuck story:
“I keep telling myself I’m not disciplined enough because I never stick to exercise.”
Here’s how the conversation might unfold.
Example ChatGPT chat image 1 of 3
Example ChatGPT chat image 2 of 3
Example ChatGPT chat image 3 of 3
And This Prompt Works on More Than Only You.
Next time a friend is stuck circling the same drain, sit beside them and run OSKAR together.
Let their choice of AI ask the scaling question, so you're the ally, not the interrogator.
It's the chat I wish I'd known how to have with Tony years earlier. I would have saved myself, and Tony, a lot of energy and pain.
Either way, it all turned out for the best in the end because we’re now better mates than ever…
Final Thoughts 💭
Tony trusts me now.
It only cost us four years and a few too many BBQs.
I think about how much lighter those years could have been if either of us had known to stop arguing about the $50 and simply asked a better question: not what happened, but what do we want now, and what's the one step toward it.
That's the magic of turning around on the ladder.
The past is the rungs below you. You can't re-climb them, and staring down at them won't lift you any higher. Everything you have to work with is right where your feet already are.
So whatever your stuck story is, the discipline you "lack," the calm you "can't find," the friend you can't forgive, don't try to win the argument with it. Name it as a L.I.E., set it down, and take one small step up the ladder.
Not a leap to ten.
Just a four to a five.
Or a zero to a one.
That's the whole practice, and it's enough right now.
P.S. What's the one story about yourself you've entertained so long it feels like a fact?
Hit reply and name it. Sometimes saying it out loud is the first step to stepping off it.
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⚡ STAY WELL | STAY WIRED ⚡
That's me for this week.
And yes, there's something a little rich about me, the guy who spent four years failing to talk one friend out of one belief, now writing a whole issue on getting unstuck. Surely I should known better, right?
Except that's usually where the trouble starts. We think knowing the answer is the same as living it. It isn't.
I knew Tony was wrong.
Knowing changed nothing.
Choosing the future did.
Same friendship.
Same fifty bucks.
Completely different question.
So this week, don't fix your whole self. Pick one stuck thing, ask AI where you're a 4 and not a 0, and take a single step to a 5.
Nothing dramatic.
No ten-year plan.
Just one, single, solitary rung.
And if someone you love is circling the same old story, forward this to them.
Gently.
Ps. I think out loud between issues over on @cedricchenefront or @wellwireddaily, where we talk everything AI + wellbeing and self growth.
Talk soon,
Cedric the AI Monk; stay well, stay wired! 🧠⚡
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