Why 'That's Just Who I Am' Is the Most Expensive Belief You Hold

Kenji has tried to change. Really tried.

Three productivity systems. Two coaches. One very expensive course on breaking bad habits. And still — every Sunday evening, the same sinking feeling. Every Monday morning, the same pattern: procrastinating on the hard thing, busying himself with the easy things, wondering why he keeps doing this when he knows better.

He's starting to believe the story: this is just who I am.

But here's the thing. That story — 'who I am' — might be the problem. Not because it's negative. Because it assumes there's a fixed 'I' in there somewhere. A thing. A noun.

Neuroscience suggests something different. Something stranger. And potentially — something more freeing.

The Self Is Not a Thing

When you think about yourself — your personality, your habits, your beliefs — it feels solid. Continuous. Like there's someone in there, behind your eyes, running the show.

Neuroscientists have looked for that someone. They haven't found it.

What they've found instead: patterns. Thoughts, emotions, beliefs, even your sense of 'I' — all of these are patterns of neural activation. Signals firing across networks of neurons, again and again, until they become familiar. Automatic. Feel like 'you.'

There is no central 'you.' There are highly recurrent patterns — loops of activity that repeat so often they feel like identity.

What the Science Says

This isn't philosophy. It's biology.

Gerald Edelman, a Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist, spent decades studying how the brain organizes itself. His theory — called Neural Darwinism — proposes that the brain works through selection, not instruction (Edelman, 1987). Neuronal groups that fire together, win together. They get reinforced. They become the patterns that shape perception, memory, and behavior.

Stanislas Dehaene, a cognitive neuroscientist at Collège de France, took this further with his Global Neuronal Workspace theory. His research shows that conscious experience emerges when neural activity becomes widely broadcast across the brain — like a spotlight illuminating a stage (Dehaene & Changeux, 1998). But the spotlight isn't the self. It's just... attention.

Why This Matters

Back to Kenji.

When he says 'this is just who I am,' he's treating his patterns as permanent. Fixed. Essential. As if procrastination were written into his DNA rather than wired into his neural loops.

But if identity is a pattern rather than a thing — if 'you' is a verb rather than a noun — then something interesting follows:

Patterns can change. Not through willpower — but through disruption. Interruption. Introducing something new into the loop.

This isn't just semantics. It's a different relationship with your own mind.

Try This: Catch Yourself 'Being'

Next time you notice a familiar pattern — procrastination, anxiety, self-criticism, whatever yours is — try a small shift in language.

Instead of: 'I'm anxious.'

Try: 'The anxiety pattern is running.'

Notice what happens. The pattern is still there. But you've created a small gap between 'you' and 'it.' You've stepped back just far enough to see the loop as a loop.

That gap is where change becomes possible.

Going Deeper

Language helps. But some patterns are deeply grooved — they've been running so long that the neural pathways are superhighways. Recognizing them intellectually is one thing. Actually interrupting them is another.

At AATAM Studio, we work with this. Our sessions are designed to surface the patterns that run beneath the surface — and create conditions where they can actually shift. Not by forcing change, but by making the pattern visible at a level deeper than thought.

If you're curious, explore the app.

The Takeaway

You are not a fixed thing. You are a pattern — complex, recurrent, and capable of change. The self that feels so permanent is actually something your brain does, moment by moment. And what's being done can be done differently.

References

Edelman, G. M. (1987). Neural Darwinism: The theory of neuronal group selection. Basic Books. APA PsycNet

Edelman, G. M. (1993). Neural Darwinism: Selection and reentrant signaling in higher brain function. Neuron, 10(2), 115–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/0896-6273(93)90304-A

Dehaene, S., & Changeux, J. P. (1998). A neuronal model of a global workspace in effortful cognitive tasks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95(24), 14529–14534. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.95.24.14529

Mashour, G. A., Roelfsema, P., Changeux, J. P., & Dehaene, S. (2020). Conscious processing and the global neuronal workspace hypothesis. Neuron, 105(5), 776–798. PMC Full Text