Your Brain: The World’s Greatest Pattern-Making Machine
Imagine you’re working on a jigsaw puzzle. You pick up a piece, scan the edges, and—aha!—you spot exactly where it fits. You click it into place and feel that little rush of satisfaction. That moment isn’t just about finishing the puzzle. It’s about your brain doing what it loves: making patterns, matching them, and rewarding you for it.
This pattern-making power isn’t limited to puzzles. Think about Sudoku, crosswords, word searches, or even spotting shapes in clouds. None of these activities feed us, clothe us, or keep us warm. In evolutionary terms, they’re irrational. Yet we can spend hours on them—because every time we find or complete a pattern, our brain gives us a chemical high.
That “hit” comes from dopamine, one of the brain’s feel-good neurotransmitters. It’s nature’s way of saying:
“Nice work. Keep going. Do more of this.”
And nature isn’t rewarding us for puzzles specifically—it’s rewarding the process. This mechanism evolved to keep us learning, adapting, and applying new knowledge throughout our lives.
The Pattern Game: Learning and Applying
At its core, your brain’s pattern system has two main moves:
Pattern Making (Learning) – We detect and build a new mental model: “This shape fits here.” “This word means that.” “When clouds look dark, it’s going to rain.”
Pattern Matching (Application) – We spot something in the world and apply our stored model: “These puzzle edges match.” “That clue means ‘ostrich.’” “It’s about to rain—better take an umbrella.”
Each successful match releases dopamine, strengthening the connection between stimulus and response. Over time, this can turn into a self-sustaining loop—whether the pattern is useful, silly, or even harmful.
When Patterns Turn Against Us
Here’s the catch: the brain doesn’t care if a pattern is good for you—it only cares if it’s consistent and reinforced.
In a phobia, for example, the brain has built a pattern:
“Spider = danger = fear.”
Every time the fear response happens, it’s matched to the spider stimulus. And even though fear feels unpleasant, the act of successfully matching the pattern still activates the reward system. Your brain is essentially saying:
“Pattern recognised! Well done!”
This is why phobias, anxiety triggers, and unwanted habits can be stubborn. The brain has been “rewarding” them all along.
The Good News: Patterns Can Be Rewritten
Here’s where hope comes in. The same system that builds and maintains unhelpful patterns can be used to dismantle them and build better ones.
By deliberately creating new patterns—say, “spider = neutral” or “stress = deep breathing”—and rewarding ourselves each time we match the new pattern, we can shift the brain’s default wiring. Over time, the dopamine hit starts to attach to the new pattern, while the old one fades from disuse.
It’s not instant. It’s a process. But it’s exactly how you learned to tie your shoes, ride a bike, or master Sudoku—through repeated pattern-making, matching, and reinforcing.
Practical Steps for Repatterning Your Brain
Identify the pattern – Be specific. “Crowds trigger anxiety” is a pattern.
Design the replacement – Decide on a healthier match. “Crowds = chance to practise grounding techniques.”
Start small – Build the new pattern in low-stress contexts first.
Reward yourself – Actively celebrate each successful match. Your brain loves this.
Repeat – Like puzzles, the more you practise, the stronger the new pattern becomes.
The Takeaway
Your brain is a masterful pattern-making machine with a built-in reward system. This is why jigsaw puzzles, Sudoku, and crosswords feel so good. It’s also why unhelpful habits and fears can stick—they’re just patterns your brain keeps recognising and rewarding.
But here’s the empowering truth:
If your brain can learn a pattern once, it can learn a better one again.
When you know how you work, change stops being a mystery—and starts being a method.
