What if the person you think you are is an outdated idea?
In this episode, we explore how habits form—not from logic, but from history. From childhood rules to adult rituals, your behaviours aren’t just choices. They’re echoes.
We look at behavioural debt: how the past continues to extract payments from your present and what you can do about it.
We look expansively at different ways we pick up all these habits and identities, and then use 5 ideas from psychology and philosophy to fix them.
There’s a monk shedding illusions, a writer who redefined his identity, and a cycling team that changed everything with 1% improvements. These aren’t just stories. They’re invitations—to become intentional, to design rituals that serve who you want to be, not who you used to be.
Takeaways:
- Reframe your identity as something you craft, not inherit
- Use “identity microshifts” to pay off your behavioural debt
- Hack your own Fresh Start Effect—even on a random Tuesday
- Learn how to become yourself through subtraction instead of adding more things
If you’ve ever felt like your habits were someone else’s or like your current actions no longer serve who you are, this episode will make a lot of sense to you.
The real work isn’t in learning more—it’s in unlearning what no longer fits.
How to Change the World
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Growth Mindset Psychology:
Sam Webster explores the psychology of happiness, satisfaction, purpose, and growth through the lens of self-improvement.
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Show: Growth Mindset, psychology of self-improvement
Episode: Bad Habits: The Psychology of Behavioural Debt—and How to Pay It Off
Chapters:
00:00 What makes you, you?
02:52 Memory and the self
04:20 British Accents and lessons of children
05:58 Attachment and behaviour
07:58 Small Actions Compound
09:36 Advert - Magic Mind
09:38 Opening our minds
11:01 Every story has a villain
14:24 Path Dependence: The Continuity Trap
16:21 Self Schema Theory: The Stories We Tell Ourselves
17:52 Neuroplasticity - Hebb's Law and rewiring brain connections
19:56 Friedrich Nietzsche and becoming who you are
21:27 Psychological Rebirth: The Fresh Start Effect
23:20 Conclusion - Paying of behavioural debt
24:36 Feedback
25:07 Send Off
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Growth Mindset Psychology: The Science of Self-Improvement 
