Bad Habits: The Psychology of Behavioural Debt—and How to Pay It Off

Bad Habits: The Psychology of Behavioural Debt—and How to Pay It Off

What if the person you think you are is an outdated idea?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 Sam's new show can be found on major podcast players: Spotify - ⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/1Fj3eFjEoAEKF5lWQxPJyT⁠⁠ Apple - ⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-change-the-world-the-history-of-innovation/id1815282649⁠⁠ YouTube - ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@HowToChangeTheWorldPodcast⁠⁠ Can't find it on your player? This is the RSS feed - ⁠⁠https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/682b3b86696b5d1232d698a8⁠⁠ AD-FREE with ⁠Premium⁠: 🤘 Support the show 🔓 Exclusive AMAs + Bonus content 💬 Community Discord ⁠GrowthMindset.Supercast.com⁠ Get in Touch 👋 Free Call - Schedule Link - https://cal.com/samwebster/mindset 📧 Email - GrowthMindsetPodcast (@) gmail,com Growth Mindset Psychology: Sam Webster explores the psychology of happiness, satisfaction, purpose, and growth through the lens of self-improvement. 📺 Watch - YouTube (Growth Mindset) 🛜 Website - Growth Mindset 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episoder(504)

The Psychology of Never Feeling Good Enough (Even When You Clearly Are)

The Psychology of Never Feeling Good Enough (Even When You Clearly Are)

Hedonic adaption busily sweeps our wins under the rug like they are a nuisance. We look at how to fight back against your own psychology. I once ran further than 99.9% of humans ever will. Then wen...

20 Mar 23min

7 Weird Life-Changing Skills that are Strange to Work On

7 Weird Life-Changing Skills that are Strange to Work On

Nobody tells you that curiosity is a skill. Or that humor can be built. Or that the way you think is quietly deciding everything. Most of us are running on borrowed opinions — System One thinking dre...

17 Mar 59min

Why Having a Backup Plan Is Making You Fail - Burn the boats with Matt Higgins

Why Having a Backup Plan Is Making You Fail - Burn the boats with Matt Higgins

In 1519, Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico and promptly set fire to his own fleet. By any conventional measure of military logistics, this seems profoundly counterproductive. It wasn't. Matt Higgins — S...

13 Mar 44min

Why You Have Great Ideas but Never Actually Do Anything With Them

Why You Have Great Ideas but Never Actually Do Anything With Them

We are spectacularly good at having ideas and remarkably reluctant to do anything with them. It turns out that the distance between "I've got it!" and "here it is" is not a step but a rather long, oc...

10 Mar 22min

You Didn't Choose Your Attachment Style, but Here's How You Can Change It - With Jessica Baum

You Didn't Choose Your Attachment Style, but Here's How You Can Change It - With Jessica Baum

Most people think their relationship problems are about the other person. They're not — they're about an 18-month-old version of you who learned the only way to survive. In this episode, psychotherap...

6 Mar 53min

From Reactance to Resilience: How to manage psychological triggers and create freedom

From Reactance to Resilience: How to manage psychological triggers and create freedom

Most anger isn’t about the thing. It’s about what the thing means: “Someone just messed with my control.” When your expectations get violated... plans change,d a process breaks, a person does someth...

3 Mar 24min

How To Train Your Mind: The surprising benefits of play

How To Train Your Mind: The surprising benefits of play

Turns out you don't learn faster when you're stressed, you learn faster when you're happy! So let's talk about treating your brain like a friend, not a factory worker. Muscles respond to stress with ...

24 Feb 23min

The Weird Psychology of Communication, Self-control, and Gossip: What evolution teaches us about communicating your needs clearly

The Weird Psychology of Communication, Self-control, and Gossip: What evolution teaches us about communicating your needs clearly

In the noble quest to understand our minds, today we take a new angle. We track how grunts turned into gossip, myths, and the weird human habit of blushing when we screw up. You’ll see why your brai...

17 Feb 39min

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