Speaker 1: The biggest, like most dramatic shift in your life, right,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of transformation that usually gets its
Speaker 1: own sweeping orchestral music in a movie montage. We're totally
Speaker 1: conditioned to believe that this is when we change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and those massive fires exactly. We think our identity is
Speaker 1: forged in these really high stakes moments. But what if
Speaker 1: the person you are right now wasn't built in those
Speaker 1: cinematic moments at all.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty wild thought, it really is.
Speaker 1: We are taking a deep dive today into some really
Speaker 1: fascinating source material, a piece called the Chooser, building identity
Speaker 1: through quiet decisions, and the mission today is to completely
Speaker 1: reframe how you think about who you are.
Speaker 2: Because you really do hold far more power over your
Speaker 2: own nervous system than you probably think.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. The underlying premise here just fundamentally
Speaker 1: upends human development, I mean how we usually think about
Speaker 1: it anyway. Right, Yeah, it suggests identity isn't built in
Speaker 1: grand declarations. It's built in like the ordinary hours in
Speaker 1: a kitchen or a random conversation, in these tiny private
Speaker 1: fractions of a second, when an automatic habit is about
Speaker 1: to run and you.
Speaker 2: Just you just pause, Yes, you pause, and that pause
Speaker 2: that is the mechanical foundation of everything we call personality. Wow,
Speaker 2: because we are looking at a framework here that directly
Speaker 2: maps onto the mechanics of neuroplasticity. We aren't dealing in,
Speaker 2: you know, abstract philosophy about finding yourself right.
Speaker 1: It's not a self help cliche, no.
Speaker 3: Not at all.
Speaker 2: This is the actual measurable neuroscience of how your brain
Speaker 2: logs those microscopic moments of hesitation and how it literally
Speaker 2: uses them to physically rewrite the neural circuitry of who
Speaker 2: you are.
Speaker 1: Okay, So to really get to the bottom of how
Speaker 1: we build that circuitry, we first have to demolish this
Speaker 1: universal myth about what identity actually is. Oh, absolutely, because
Speaker 1: society treats identity like a permanent possession, like it's a
Speaker 1: fixed set of traits. You hear people say, Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: just an anxious person, or I lack discipline, I'm.
Speaker 2: Someone who always loses my temper. Yeah right.
Speaker 1: We say these things as if they are bio logical constants,
Speaker 1: like having brown eyes or being six feet tall.
Speaker 2: And it's a very compelling illusion because it feels entirely
Speaker 2: true to our daily experience. I mean it does, right,
Speaker 2: The anxious person really does feel that baseline of anxiety consistently.
Speaker 2: The person who loses their temper experiences that explosive reactivity.
Speaker 3: All the time.
Speaker 1: So the patterns are real.
Speaker 2: The patterns are undeniably real, but society completely misidentifies the
Speaker 2: nature of those patterns. What's fascinating here is that those
Speaker 2: behavioral loops, they are not your permanent core identity. Wait,
Speaker 2: really no, they are simply the accumulated evidence of your
Speaker 2: past choices, and your nervous system has just organized that
Speaker 2: evidence into a coherent, highly efficient story.
Speaker 1: So these are past choices that were mostly made on autopilot,
Speaker 1: right exactly. We're talking about reactions that happen before conscious
Speaker 1: thought even enters the picture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, most of those past choices were executed completely automatically,
Speaker 2: without what the source material calls the chooser.
Speaker 1: Being active, the chooser being your conscious deliberate itself.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So, over years and decades, your nervous system takes all
Speaker 2: those automatic reactions, bundles them up, and hands you a summary. Okay,
Speaker 2: so when you say I am an undisciplined person, you're
Speaker 2: essentially just reading back a historical ledger of what your
Speaker 2: automatic habits did in the past. Wow, it's a lagging indicator.
Speaker 2: It's a narrative, not a life sentence.
Speaker 1: I love that. So identity isn't this this carved stone
Speaker 1: statue that we carry around on our backs forever. It's
Speaker 1: more like a live streaming document that the brain is
Speaker 1: constantly editing in real time.
Speaker 3: That is a perfect way to put it.
Speaker 1: But let me push back on this a little bit. Sure,
Speaker 1: because if my brain is just this highly adaptable, constantly
Speaker 1: updating document, why does it feel so incredibly frustratingly hard
Speaker 1: to change who we are?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: That's the million dollar question.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, if I can just update the document,
Speaker 1: why does breaking a habit feel like trying to move
Speaker 1: a mountain?
Speaker 2: Well, the friction you're feeling there isn't the permanence of
Speaker 2: your identity. It's the physical density of your neural pathway. Yeah,
Speaker 2: your brain is essentially an energy conservation machine. It loves efficiency.
Speaker 1: It wants to take the easiest road always.
Speaker 2: The automatic pathways running those habits you want to change,
Speaker 2: they've been fired millions of times. They are heavily milinated
Speaker 2: super highways where electricity just travels with zero resistance.
Speaker 1: So it's effortless to do the bad habit exactly.
Speaker 2: So when the chooser steps in, you're basically asking your
Speaker 2: brain to divert rushing water from a deep ancient river
Speaker 2: canyon into a completely dry ditch.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Yeah, that sounds exhausting.
Speaker 2: It requires an immense amount of conscious dam building and
Speaker 2: metabolic energy to force the flow of electricity down that
Speaker 2: new path.
Speaker 1: And we usually try to force that water into the
Speaker 1: new ditch by setting these massive life altering goals, which
Speaker 1: brings us to the trap of how we usually attempt
Speaker 1: to change ourselves well setting, Because if the brain requires continuous,
Speaker 1: real time evidence to update our identity like we're talking about,
Speaker 1: then goal based change is structurally doomed from the star.
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 1: You see this everywhere. The classic example is the January
Speaker 1: first fitness resolution.
Speaker 3: Oh of course, you.
Speaker 1: Know, you buy the expensive running shoes, You lock yourself
Speaker 1: into that twelve month gym contract, You go intensely hard.
Speaker 3: For three weeks, and by mid February these.
Speaker 1: Shoes are just sitting in the back of the closet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the membership just becomes this monthly guilt trip on
Speaker 1: your bank statement.
Speaker 2: So true, and the problem with The goal based approach
Speaker 2: becomes glaringly obvious when you look at the temporal mechanics
Speaker 2: of the brain.
Speaker 1: Okay, temporal mechanics, break that down for me.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: So, goal based change anchors your motivation to a very
Speaker 2: specific question, which is what do I want to achieve?
Speaker 2: And by its very definition, a goal is external to you,
Speaker 2: and it exists entirely in the future.
Speaker 1: It's a finish line, exactly. And the problem with the
Speaker 1: finish line is that once you cross it, the race
Speaker 1: is over.
Speaker 2: Or if you realize you're too far behind to win,
Speaker 2: you just walk off the track entirely.
Speaker 1: Right, why even keep running?
Speaker 2: Exactly? Because the goal is in the future. The moment
Speaker 2: you either achieve it or abandon it, the dopamine driven
Speaker 2: motivation completely collapses.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that makes so much sense.
Speaker 2: Think about someone whose sole goal is to lose ten
Speaker 2: pounds for a high school reunion. Sure, the reunion happens,
Speaker 2: the weekend passes, and suddenly there is zero neurological incentive
Speaker 2: to go for a run on Monday morning.
Speaker 1: The reason for doing it is just gone.
Speaker 2: The behavior loses its anchor. Identity by contrast, is internal
Speaker 2: and present. It's not a destination you arrive at. It's
Speaker 2: an ongoing description of the hardware you are operating Right now.
Speaker 1: I see the distinction. So if I want to be
Speaker 1: a healthy person, I shouldn't be obsessing over the external
Speaker 1: metric of losing ten pounds.
Speaker 3: Oh not at all.
Speaker 1: The primary question running in the background shouldn't be what
Speaker 1: do I want to achieve? It should be who am
Speaker 1: I becoming?
Speaker 2: Yes, because a person who operates from the identity of
Speaker 2: someone who makes healthy choices, They don't fail motivation collapse
Speaker 2: after thirty days, right, They don't stop when they hit
Speaker 2: a target weight because the choice isn't a strained effort
Speaker 2: toward an external state anymore.
Speaker 1: It's just who they are.
Speaker 2: It is simply an expression of their current reality. The
Speaker 2: choices continue because they are a reflection of that newly
Speaker 2: updated self referential network.
Speaker 1: Okay, but this brings up a huge question. If our
Speaker 1: identity requires this real time evidence to update, how do
Speaker 1: we actually give the brain that data?
Speaker 3: Right? How do you make the swish?
Speaker 1: Yeah? How do we convince the nervous system to rewrite
Speaker 1: the ledger? Well, here's where it gets really interesting. The
Speaker 1: source material references a brilliant framework from the habit researcher
Speaker 1: James Clear.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, the voting concept exactly.
Speaker 1: He says, every single action you take is a vote
Speaker 1: for the type of person you wish to become.
Speaker 2: And the concept of a vote maps perfectly onto how
Speaker 2: synaptic weights shift in the brain. How so well, a
Speaker 2: single vote doesn't guarantee an election victory, right right, And
Speaker 2: a single behavioral choice doesn't permanently alter your personality overnight.
Speaker 2: But the steady accumulation of those votes, that is what
Speaker 2: shifts a balance of power within your neural networks.
Speaker 1: And these aren't votes cast on some grand stage with
Speaker 1: an audience cheering you on.
Speaker 3: No, not.
Speaker 1: Usually they're cast in total obscurity. Like think about the
Speaker 1: craving that hits at eleven o'clock at night. You are
Speaker 1: completely alone in the.
Speaker 3: Kitchen steering into the fridge.
Speaker 1: Right, There is no audience, nobody is keeping a record
Speaker 1: of what you eat. But you pause and you make
Speaker 1: the choice to close the fridge and walk away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the chooser was present, a vote was cast.
Speaker 2: Or consider the interpersonal moments you know, yeah, you're in
Speaker 2: a highly tense conversation with your partner or a colleague.
Speaker 1: Oh, I've been there.
Speaker 2: We all have the familiar urge to snap back with
Speaker 2: a sharp, defensive comment just rises up.
Speaker 1: You can feel it in your chest.
Speaker 2: You really can. But instead you just pause. You take
Speaker 2: a single breath before responding.
Speaker 1: And nobody praises you for that breath exactly.
Speaker 2: The conversation just moves on, but internally, a huge deposit
Speaker 2: was made into a new neural pathway.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing with like the unhelpful, highly reactive
Speaker 1: text message you furiously type out, oh yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you delete it instead of hitting send. It's a secret
Speaker 1: ballot for your nervous system. Nobody knows you showed restraint,
Speaker 1: because nobody even knew you were tempted in the first place.
Speaker 2: But you hearing this right now might be thinking, sure,
Speaker 2: a deep breath or a delete attack sounds nice, but
Speaker 2: that isn't going to fix my explosive anger or my
Speaker 2: deep seated anxiety.
Speaker 1: It sounds too small.
Speaker 3: It does, But what you.
Speaker 2: Have to realize is that neurologically, that single breath isn't
Speaker 2: just a psychological pause, it's an actual chemical circuit breaker.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When you interrupt that automatic sequence, you are actively preventing
Speaker 2: the release of the neurotransmitters that reinforce the old habit loop.
Speaker 1: So you're literally starving the old habit exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your nervous system is constantly counting those votes, tabulating
Speaker 2: the micro evidence of who you are right now.
Speaker 1: There's something incredibly liberating about this mechanism too, because the
Speaker 1: evidence has to come first. You do not need to
Speaker 1: genuinely believe the new identity before you start casting those votes.
Speaker 2: Belief follows the evidence, not the other way around. Right,
Speaker 2: You don't need to feel like a deeply calm, zen
Speaker 2: like person in order to make a calm choice in
Speaker 2: a stressful moment.
Speaker 1: Which is such a relief.
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 2: You don't need to feel like a highly disciplined athlete
Speaker 2: to resist the craving at eleven PM. You just have
Speaker 2: to execute the physical action of the chooser.
Speaker 1: You just cast the vote.
Speaker 2: Just cast the vote. Once you act, the brain updates
Speaker 2: the file. The self referential network adjusts its narrative based
Speaker 2: on what you actually did, regardless of how fraudulent or
Speaker 2: unsure you felt while doing it.
Speaker 1: You act first, and the belief catches up later.
Speaker 3: Precisely, I mean, we.
Speaker 1: Have to deal with the reality of being human here.
Speaker 1: We are going to cast the wrong vote. It's completely inevitable,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. So what happens when the chooser is awake?
Speaker 1: You're totally conscious of the moment, you know what you
Speaker 1: should do, but the automatic habit is just a rushing river,
Speaker 1: and it sweeps you away.
Speaker 3: You lose the battle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you eat the thing, you send the incredibly angry text,
Speaker 1: You totally lose your temper.
Speaker 2: Well, this raises an important question because the fallout from
Speaker 2: those moments, that is where the real battle for identity
Speaker 2: is one or lost. Because what usually happens immediately after
Speaker 2: that failure.
Speaker 1: The crushing weight of self criticism. The internal monologue kicks
Speaker 1: in immediately. I knew better, I'm trying to change, and
Speaker 1: it still failed. I will never be different. This is
Speaker 1: just who I am.
Speaker 3: It's brutal.
Speaker 1: But let me play Devil's advocate here for a second.
Speaker 3: Okay, go for It isn't.
Speaker 1: Self criticism, just a harsh form of accountability. Like if
Speaker 1: I don't beat myself up for eating the cake at
Speaker 1: midnight or yelling at my kids, my brain is just
Speaker 1: gonna think it's perfectly acceptable to do it again tomorrow.
Speaker 3: That's what we all think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, doesn't the brain require that intense negative reinforcement to
Speaker 1: learn what not to do.
Speaker 2: That is the assumption most of us operate under, but
Speaker 2: it completely misunderstands the biology of learning and behavioral change. Really, yeah,
Speaker 2: when you intensely criticize yourself, your brain precedes a threat.
Speaker 2: It does not distinguish between a physical predator and your
Speaker 2: environment and your own internal verbal abuse.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. So it treats me yelling at myself
Speaker 1: like a tiger in the room.
Speaker 3: Exactly so.
Speaker 2: It triggers an immediate cortisol spike and activates the threat response.
Speaker 1: Which means we are dealing with an amygdala hijack.
Speaker 2: Precisely the opposite of what you want. The threat response
Speaker 2: triggers the limbic system, which overrides your prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 1: And the prefrontal cortex is the good part, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes, The prefrontal cortex is the seed of the chooser.
Speaker 2: It's where your impulse control, your future planning, and your
Speaker 2: conscious decision making.
Speaker 3: Lift.
Speaker 2: Wait, so by beating yourself up in the name of accountability,
Speaker 2: you are literally shutting down the exact part of the
Speaker 2: brain you need to make a better choice.
Speaker 1: That is wild.
Speaker 3: You induce a state.
Speaker 2: Of cognitive narrowing, forcing your nervous system back into its
Speaker 2: most deep, ingrained, privitive survival pathways. Self criticism doesn't build accountability,
Speaker 2: It actively destroys your neurological capacity for conscious choice in
Speaker 2: the next moment.
Speaker 1: So by trying to whip ourselves into shape, we are
Speaker 1: literally handing the steering wheel right back to the autopilot
Speaker 1: that crashed the car in the first place.
Speaker 3: That is exactly what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. Okay, So if we can't beat ourselves up, but
Speaker 1: we also shouldn't just, you know, blissfully ignore the fact
Speaker 1: that we messed up. What is the protocol for failure?
Speaker 2: The protocol is neutral observation. Neutral observation, you look at
Speaker 2: the failure purely as incoming data. You say to yourself, Okay,
Speaker 2: the automatic response won that round. The chooser was present,
Speaker 2: but the habit ran anyway, so no judgment. You strip
Speaker 2: away the moral judgment completely. You treat the failure simply
Speaker 2: as cold heart information about where the current edge of
Speaker 2: your capacity is located.
Speaker 1: And once you've observed it neutrally, you move to the
Speaker 1: critical next step. You ask yourself, what would the chooser
Speaker 1: choose next time?
Speaker 2: But you don't ask get as a stressful white knuckle
Speaker 2: promise to never fail again. You ask it to trigger
Speaker 2: a mental rehearsal.
Speaker 1: This blew my mind when I read it.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: It is literally a fire drill for the brain because
Speaker 1: the brain relies on the exact same motor planning neural networks,
Speaker 1: whether you are physically moving your hand away from the
Speaker 1: fridge or just intensely visualizing yourself doing it.
Speaker 2: That is the profound power of mental rehearsal. When you
Speaker 2: take a moment after a failure to calmly and vividly
Speaker 2: imagine yourself making the better choice next time, the neurons
Speaker 2: fire in almost the exact same sequence they would have
Speaker 2: if you had executed the action physically.
Speaker 1: That feels like a cheat code.
Speaker 2: It kind of is y. Your brain begins generating myolin,
Speaker 2: which is the fatty sheet that wraps around neural pathways
Speaker 2: to make them faster and more efficient.
Speaker 1: So even if you lose the battle in the physical world,
Speaker 1: by mentally rehearsing the right choice afterward, you are still
Speaker 1: sneaking a vote into the ballot box.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: The deposit into the new neural pathway might be slightly
Speaker 1: smaller than if you had performed it in reality, but
Speaker 1: it is fundamentally altering the synaptic weights the chooser can
Speaker 1: still practice. In the wreckage of a bad habit.
Speaker 2: You are continuing to lay the groundwork for that new
Speaker 2: river ditch we talked about. That is how you work
Speaker 2: with your neurobiology instead of fighting against it. I love
Speaker 2: that you use the failure as a prompt to fire
Speaker 2: the correct sequence. It is truly the only way to
Speaker 2: build an identity that actually sustains itself.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for us walking around
Speaker 1: our daily lives. When we pull all these biological and
Speaker 1: psychological threads together, we realize that strong decisions, the ones
Speaker 1: that forge a strong identity, aren't these dramatic, heroic, cinematic
Speaker 1: leaps of faith we see in the movies.
Speaker 3: Not at all.
Speaker 1: A strong decision is simply a conscious one. It's the
Speaker 1: tiny agonizing pause before the anger takes over. It's the
Speaker 1: half second of noticing before the harsh words leave your mouth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and these quiet decisions aren't easy. In fact, fighting
Speaker 2: the momentum of an ancient river canyon is profoundly difficult.
Speaker 2: But they are strong because they are deliberately chosen and.
Speaker 1: If you can consistently accumulate those tiny quiet choices, the
Speaker 1: transformation will happen, the way it always does in human development. Slowly,
Speaker 1: then suddenly you will wake up one day, look back
Speaker 1: at the pattern of your recent choices and recognize someone
Speaker 1: you didn't used to be. You'll recognize an identity that
Speaker 1: isn't just a default inheritance from your past autopilot.
Speaker 3: You're actually in control.
Speaker 1: You have to respect the weight of the quiet choices
Speaker 1: you've already been making. You know, you may have made
Speaker 1: them imperfectly and inconsistently, but if they were genuine, your
Speaker 1: nervous system was logging the data. You are guiding the
Speaker 1: machinery now, not just being driven by it.
Speaker 2: It is a quiet internal revolution, which leads us with
Speaker 2: one final thing for you to ponder today.
Speaker 1: We just walked through the mechanics of how the brain
Speaker 1: genuinely logs your vivid mental rehearsals as neural votes, and
Speaker 1: we know that your identity is nothing more than the
Speaker 1: accumulated evidence of all those past But so simply pausing
Speaker 1: right now wherever you are to intensely and vividly imagine
Speaker 1: the person you want to choose to be tomorrow be
Speaker 1: the exact moment your nervous system permanently changes its blueprint.
Speaker 1: Until next time, keep casting those quiet votes.