Some of what you are saying feels slightly off, but overall I understand very well what you are getting at, so I'm just going to give you credit and understand it in the best way I can.

When we become more rational, it's usually because we invent a new cognitive rule that:

Explains why certain beliefs and actions lead to winning in a set of previously observed situations that all share some property; and, Leads to winning in some, if not all, heretofore unforeseen situations that also share this property.

This is different from my subjective experience. I started describing it here, but it grew long and I thought it was interesting enough to write a separate post: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ney/how_it_feels_to_improve_my_rationality/