Suppose one day come to his office and nothing makes sense. He sees a set of chairs and tables full of papers, other people walking and sitting in front of a device with a screen. See a door with a sign with an inscription and the bottom one with the figure of a man. Someone approaches you and says you have to go through the personnel office to update the file and another he mentions a meeting to review a report. But nothing makes sense for you. He can not understand or understand anything of what he sees or hears.

The thought that we should relearn the thousands of everyday meanings we assign the collection of facts, signs and signals that populate our world, we installed a nightmare. Our senses provide us with data from the outside world, but these data in turn require a process of interpretation to assign a meaning.

In the process of giving meaning to every type of event or message, act interdependently in the “filters” (distinctions, memories, beliefs, values, conceptual categories, emotional memory, etc.). That make up our mental models.

This complex process of perception and interpretation performed thousands of times per day without interruption, is what allows us to travel on the nightmare of the previous example, where every day we should relearn the meaning of things. This role compass that are ubiquitous in our mental models, works at an unconscious level that makes clear the continuing process of assigning meaning.

It is precisely this characteristic that gives them the mental models a central role in human evolution. Mental models are powerful tools that enable us to filter and organize the world we observe and allow us to act coherently and efficiently in it. But also play a role insidious because it can limit our horizon of possibilities and lock us into patterns of thought and behavior that we are functional.

Mental models gain great power over us because once established do not require our attention at all times, operate automatically in the background of our consciousness. This is a mixed blessing. Therefore we say that we have mental models, but our mental models often have us.

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