My girlfriends turned me on to the online game, Wordle. If you haven’t played it yet, you must! It’s fun, challenging, and you can share results with friends to annoy each other on a daily basis. Plus, the making of Wordle is a very sweet love story. Wordle also has some fascinating life lessons about how our brains become biased.

Here’s a short explanation of how Wordle works: You enter a five-letter word. The game tells you which letters are in the winning word and which letters are in the correct space for the winning word. From there, you have five more chances to get the word right. I found my first life lesson in my attachment to the first word that I pick. It’s as if that word is my baby and I can’t let it go no matter what. I have the hardest time reframing my brain to think of another word or a different formation of the letters for that word.

Why the attachment? Our brains attach to something and then we look for evidence to prove that attachment right. I like my first word. I want it to be right and I have the hardest time letting it go to think of other words. So, if I pick “SPICE” as my first word and two of those letters are right, I can’t seem to think of any word but spice or any reformation of the letters from spice to a new word. If you’re completely lost right now, go play the game and you’ll get what I’m saying.

Retraining Our Brains

But here’s the life lesson – It’s hard to change our minds! Even when we know we are wrong, it’s hard to change our minds. Does this play out in other areas of life? Em, HELL YES! We meet someone and we have a thought or feeling about them and then it’s hard to think or feel anything else about them. Someone “wrongs” us in some way and we just can’t seem to let it go. We replay that wrong over and over again, which only makes us more fixated on it.

So how have I been able to maintain my 31-day Wordle winning streak? (Intentional brag thrown in.) Sometimes I close out the game for a few minutes to retrain my brain away from my original word. Sometimes I’ll do a one-person brain storm in which I throw out a bunch of other, very different, five-letter words. Sometimes I’ll see how quickly my girlfriends have solved it and I’ll motivate myself in the competition of beating them and then humbly (or not so humbly) brag about it!

Now the challenge is to take that awareness of changing my mindset into other areas of my life. Where have I gotten stuck in my own judgment or bias and how can I release that to look at it from another point of view? Wordle will be my daily reminder to stop and rethink how I’ve been thinking. Wish me luck.

Love,

Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC