When You Realize Your Thoughts Aren’t Always in Charge | Alan Bodnar

What if the thoughts, emotions, habits, and reactions you identify as “you” are often automatic patterns running outside your awareness?

Alan Bodnar, author of The Self-Driving You, joins Pam Dwyer to explain how the brain’s self-driving system generates many of our first responses to life. These patterns can shape our fears, cravings, beliefs, emotional reactions, and sense of identity before the conscious mind has an opportunity to intervene.

Alan describes the difference between the automatic system and the conscious “driver” capable of directing attention and choosing an alternative response. He and Pam explore how the pause between impulse and action can help us interrupt patterns, regulate stress, and gradually rewire the brain.

They also discuss Quiet Depletion, the effect of chronic stress on the nervous system, and why awareness alone does not create change. Alan shares practical ways to engage the conscious driver through mindfulness, slower breathing, journaling, curiosity, and compassion.

In this episode:

• Why many thoughts and reactions happen automatically
• How patterns become attached to identity
• What happens when the conscious driver “takes the wheel”
• Why chronic stress keeps the body’s accelerator pressed down
• How mindfulness and breath help apply the brake
• What it means to drop the story and go to the energy
• Why journaling helps reveal patterns
• How compassion can be practiced and strengthened
• Why lasting change is not about willpower or shame

Connect with Alan:

Website and The Self-Driving You: https://www.theselfdrivingyou.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theselfdrivingyou/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-bodnar-21bb2513/

Connect with Pam:

https://pamdwyer.com/
https://delaythebinge.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@PamDwyerSpeaker

Pause. Choose. Build momentum. Finish stronger.

Transcript

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Autopilot Vs Conscious Choice

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome back to Delay the Binge, the podcast where we explore the pause between impulse and action, reaction and response, and help high-functioning people recognize the hidden patterns quietly draining their lives before those patterns become unhealthy coping habits, self-sabotage, or disconnection from themselves. Today we're exploring something most of us experience every day, but rarely stop to question. What if many of the thoughts, emotions, habits, and reactions we think of as who we are are actually running on autopilot? My guest today is Alan Bodner, author of The Self-Driving You. After spending more than a decade studying neuroscience, human behavior, artificial intelligence, mindfulness, and over 500 books on human potential, Alan developed a fascinating framework for understanding how our minds operate. Alan describes the mind as a self-driving vehicle that automatically generates our thoughts, emotions, beliefs, habits, and behaviors in response to life's experiences. But he also suggests there is another part of us, the conscious driver, capable of directing attention, making intentional choices, and reshaping the patterns guiding our lives. I have a feeling this conversation is going to connect deeply with anyone who has ever wondered why do I keep doing the very thing I don't want to do anymore? Alan, welcome to Delay the Binge.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Thanks for having me, Pam. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

Oh my goodness, I'm excited. I can't wait.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Me too.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

But before we get into all the science and everything, I I love to start with, you know, what are you most excited about in your work right now?

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Um, I think just getting the idea out there. It took me a decade to write, and I did a lot of my work listening to books, applying them to my life. All that was done in isolation and writing. And now I'm happy to just have conversations with people like yourself that are like-minded and start to get the idea out to the world.

unknown 2:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

That's beautiful. One of the things I teach is that change happens in the pause when between impulse and action. When you talk about the self-driving mind, are we really talking about the same thing from just different directions?

SPEAKER_02 2:35

We are. Yours is the answer. And then I provide that answer as we'll go, we can get into that deeper. But I provide the answer as deliberate attention, especially with mindfulness. But essentially it is finding that pause and questioning these automatic behaviors. And when we do that, we gain insights and start to rewire our brain. So your delay the binge is essentially the answer to how to rewire your brain.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

This is why I'm excited because I've been very obsessed with the neuroscience of

When Habits Become Identity

SPEAKER_03 3:10

the brain. It's fascinating to me. And I've just started that journey. But the more I learn, the more I can apply everything we've been learning here on the delay the binge. I think many people are less afraid of changing a habit than they are of losing the identity attached to it. Does that make sense? Yep. Because a lot of times my clients, people that I am teaching this whole method to, it seems like they're fearful of this thing they've been battling. They're fearful of when it is gone. Who are they? And they're not sure who they are without it.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:51

And I know that's it's a very different way to look at it, but I that's what I've been getting from the last few clients that I've worked with. Have you found that people become attached to their self-driving responses because they eventually mistake them for who they are?

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Yeah, that's exactly it. Like we don't we have trouble seeing that they are part of a self-driving system. We've we've been in our like the brain is a network, and the network is made up of a number of circuits, and many of them are self-driving, and then we do have executive control circuits. But throughout our life, our self-driving system is wearing itself through experience. And then our executive control network starts to take shape as we age, and it doesn't fully develop until adolescence, like mid to late, mid-twenties to late 20s. Um, but we grow so accustomed to the self-driving system, we don't notice it's there. So yeah, we totally do attach to these automatic responses, and that's the challenge because they are our identity. That is who we are. And I think that's where delaying for a second before we automatically perform these actions provides this opportunity for insight to realize oh, maybe I have not this automatic response, especially when we sit in it and realize that that strong response passes, it comes and goes. And when you experience that, just it's gone now, and I'm still here, then that starts to rewire the brain. And then we are able to grow that separation. But I think totally initially there is that identity that we have, and that's it's all normal. It's so with my way of looking at the brain, it's more like it's not personal. We all come into the world with a brain that's wired, not the same, but same general circuits. Obviously, uh, it can be wired in different ways, but it's a same general design. And a lot of it is not personal. It's this self-driving system that makes a lot of our decisions, and then we're the driver who's doing our best to hang on and make sense of it all.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

It does. That makes total sense. I love that visual because in my mind, I think my brain's like a toddler.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:29

And instead of the driver, I feel like I'm the parent because the best way to describe what works for me is like food is my release. Um, I used to weigh over 300 pounds. I'm about 140. But I, if I was stressed or anxious, I would want the pattern in my brain wanted sugar or a big piece of chocolate cake. Then I started treating my brain like a toddler, meaning, okay, you can have this cake, okay, but tomorrow, why don't we wait? But if you still want it, tomorrow you can have it. And for some reason that works for me, and people tell me it works for them too. What's nice about that is you're gentle.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

You're a gentle parent. And I think that's the way is to uh treat it impartially and to just be gentle with it and try not to take it personally as best we can.

SPEAKER_03 7:21

Yeah. People spend decades identifying as the anxious one or the overchiever, the people pleaser, or even the the victim of their story. What happens when those patterns begin to disappear? Is there a fear that we won't know who we are anymore?

SPEAKER_02 7:47

I guess that's possible. And it's hard to answer because a lot of my work has been done personally for myself. Yeah. And for me, uh, with the change in identity that I've had, it has helped me because I was driven by fear. So fear prevented me from public speaking, from doing anything. Up until I was 30, I was driven by low self-worth and fear and anxiety, a lot of social anxiety. So it prevented me from taking a lot of the actions I wanted. And then to be able to take that pause in mindfulness and then go and do what my self-driving system wanted was trying to prevent me from doing. I was able to see that there's new possibilities. And then by doing that over and over again, I was able to completely rewire those patterns. And now I don't have those thoughts anymore. Like I don't before this conversation today, there's still nerves. That's still a part of it. But then I paused and I went to the energy. That's part of my book, that's part of like the you go to the energy, drop the story, like drop the story of the thoughts, and then that's where I'm able to feel okay with it. And that's just one strategy. There's so many strategies. You're mentioning a lot of great strategies, too. Uh, it's more for me, I found that it was freeing to be able to find this new identity and to realize oh, I am not driven by fear, I don't need to be anxious. I can do anything I want, and it helped me. But I'm I can relate to it could definitely be scary if we're so used to our reality. What would life look like if it wasn't like this?

SPEAKER_03 9:45

Right, exactly. You're curious because you spent what, 10 years intentionally rewiring your own patterns. I'm sure you look at yourself now and say, wow, I'm responding differently than I would have ever responded five years ago, sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Did you see a gradual um process in improving your behaviors and your patterns, or did it just was an aha moment like, oh well, what I like about the brain and the self-driving system is as you mentioned, our behaviors, habits, emotions, skills, beliefs, opinions are all self-driving. So these are being taken care of, even our wandering thoughts. So thoughts of worry, ruminations, all of that first arises from the self-driving system. So there's so many different layers. Yeah. And when it comes to like this change, sure, I did notice I have changed behaviors around anger when driving. I used to honk the horn a lot. I don't honk the horn. I don't get angry. That took a lot of time, though, and many years. I still get the response. Like, I'll still, my self-driving system will say, Oh, why did that person cut me off and get angry? But then I can say, wait, pause, go to your breath, and then I can realize, oh, the self-driving, it's okay, I'm safe. And then it goes away. Am I able to do that for everything? No. For coffee in the morning? No. I'm still that's I find with habit energy is the most difficult for myself. And I still like with coffee, it's a challenge. I can stop for a week or two. I have wins, but then I fall back into the same patterns, which again, it's all okay because it's just self-exploration. But yeah, there's some behaviors, especially around fear, anxiety, anger, that I have been able to change. And there are some that have been more difficult to change and are more stubborn. And I think what has changed the most, though, is this whole message of delay in the pause and doing that more often. So building the awareness of when these automatic patterns are happening, and then trying to build the habit of pausing in them rather than attaching to them. That's where the long-term change happens. So it's okay that we do these automatic things because that's all we know. We we have to build this habit of stopping it. So I would say that that's building the habit of taking the wheel with the driver to provide an alternative response because we're so used to attaching to it, we don't know how to take the wheel and provide an alternative response. We've never been shown how. And conversations like this help to bring awareness to that and learn how, but it's a skill to be learned.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

It really is. And it happens slowly. You have to slowly, in small steps, apply it. I always tell people there's going to be days that you don't meet the goal, but that's okay because you don't start over. The brain likes patterns and you can create new ones. There's so much to unpack here.

System One And System Two

SPEAKER_03 13:02

I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

So you're exactly right.

SPEAKER_03 13:05

But I really do want to talk about the lower brain chatter that we all experience, like the fight or flight, the survival versus the frontal cortex, which is the thinking part of the brain. And what I like to think or visualize is that when you pause, it quiets the lower brain chatter that's tempting you to do something very short term and then bring this frontal cortex back online so that you can make a choice, a good choice that serves you. What is your findings on the lower brain versus the frontal cortex? Can you help us with that a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Yeah. So with the brain, it's a network made of patterns. These patterns are circuits. We have a number of them. We have part of, I guess actually, we could start first with the systems. So there's Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, where he popularized system one and system two. Uh, system one is generating all of our automatic responses outside of awareness. And this goes into what we're saying with behaviors, habits, actions, beliefs, all our automatic thoughts are taken care of by this system. System one, it's always on and active, and it's looking for any cues, and it's just making decisions based on associations. At the same time, it also has a mind-wandering circuit. So your system one has survival circuits, and these look for anything in the environment related to food, mating, and defense. So that would be your fight or flight, and this is happening outside our awareness. And it's all wired through a lifetime of experience. But with the parts of the brain that are take part in that circuitry, there's no time with them. So if I get bit by a dog when I'm a child, if at any point in my life, if I see that dog, the circuit's going to fire to generate that fear. So for me, I had that with public speaking, where as a child I was afraid. But then up until I was 30, I could not do it because it was just that circuitry was wired that way. So it's not personal, it's impartial. Uh, then we have like intuitive responses. So I call them intuitive circuits. And these two are basically everything we learn two plus two equals that, all of that, everything, all the general responses we learn are also part of these self-driving circuits that respond to cues. And then we have default mode, and default mode, anytime we are idle, so not paying attention to something, if we're in the shower, if we're lying down, if we're just walking, if our attention isn't engaged and there's no cues coming in from the environment, our self-driving system is going to create wandering thoughts.

unknown 15:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

And then we're the driver who can go with them or not. So when you're talking about the prefrontal cortex, that would be more executive. It's called the executive control network framework you're into, it all works, it's all the same. Um, but yeah, like that executive is able to basically process what the self-driving system is doing. So your system one is making this decision, the first response to everything based on a lifetime of experience and wiring. It's all just patterns in the brain. And then system two is our executive driver, and that's the conscious us. That's the person that we identify with as I. And what they do is they're basically making sense of what's happening or what the self-driving system processes. And our role is we can go with it or not. At any time, we can provide an alternative response because we have extra processing power that allows us to. But system two is doing the heavy lifting. We're the ones that are there if it gets stuck. But the challenge is it doesn't get stuck because we think it's right, we think it's accurate.

unknown 17:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

So it's not stuck. So that's where I say a lot of us are executive or parent or driver is sleeping at the wheel because we agree with it all. So there's nothing for us to correct. But when we start to engage that conscious driver more often, then we are engaging our executive circuits. And that gives us our ability to plan, deliberate, monitor, and take that executive control or the self-control to provide an alternative action or option. The challenge is we don't fully understand how to engage them and use them. So most of us, it's no fault of our own. I was sleeping for 30 years of my life and still I'm sleep, like we're still self-driving. I'm still self-driving, but I'm engaging my driver more often. So that's the thing is deliberately engaging our driver. And we do that through attention, and we can talk about that more.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

Yeah, yeah. I had a guest on once, a doctor, and she tried to explain to me that the lower part of the brain has nothing to do with speaking. And the frontal part of the brain has everything to do with talking, speaking. And so a lot of times if your lower brain chatter is tempting you for whatever the unhealthy behavior is, overeating, over sleeping, overworking, over pleasing, all those things, she said all you have to do is speak. I know this doesn't serve me. I do not want to eat the cake. It overpowers the lower brain chatter. So I've tried it a couple of times, and I don't know if it's just me wanting it to be, but it has worked for me. I've experimented with it.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

To speak it out loud, then it brings the thinking part of your brain back online. I always tell people to try it, see if it works.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

I think the more that we're engaging the executive to challenge the better.

SPEAKER_03 19:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

And whatever works works and is great.

SPEAKER_03 19:18

Like I remember seeing that you mentioned the value of not knowing. Most people find uncertainty uncomfortable. So what have you discovered on the other side of surrendering the need to know?

SPEAKER_02 19:35

Hmm. I need to know, though. That's the challenge, I guess. Because I all of everything that I've done has been to try to understand why I am the way I am. But maybe it's to try to depersonalize the reasons why I'm taking these actions and to make it more human and more personal rather than um getting upset every time I do these automatic things. But it has been this quest of needing to read, understand, and do this experimentation, as you mentioned, trying everything self-talk, mindfulness, um, hypnosis on videotapes, like everything out there just to see what does work. Because when you are researching books, there's a lot of information out there. And most books focus on one thing. And so, like, that's the idea with my book. It's trying to piece everything together to tell like one unified story. And that is the the challenge because um we're trying to find a solution to relieve our whatever we would label as pain or suffering. And it's really challenging because humans have been around for so long, we still don't have an answer. Like we still we do, but we still don't understand the brain fully. And we're there's more progress being made every day, but it's just we're still challenged living with the human condition.

SPEAKER_03 21:11

Yeah, it's kind of like there's no cure for the cold. What?

SPEAKER_02 21:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:15

You know, it's like, why not? Why haven't we found that yet?

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:19

But it's more of a preventative thing. Which I suppose this whole behavior patterns and all that, you can be preventative. Like many people listening are incredibly capable, right? We're all we're our smart human beings, but we get things done, we hold everything together. Yet underneath that competence can be exhaustion and disconnection. And that's why we talk a lot about quiet depletion, because everything looks fine on the outside, Alan. And on the inside, we're just falling apart and exhausted and not understanding

Quiet Depletion And Burnout Mechanics

SPEAKER_03 21:58

why. Why we keep doing Doing the things that are not serving us. Can you tell me what brought all this about for you? What story brought you to this place of research and just curiosity on this whole topic?

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Well, I'd say that I started when I was 30. I'm 41 now. And it was, I guess that quiet depletion for me would have been just stress around uh fear, anxiety, and then just not living to my potential. I was a cable technician at the time, and I just wanted to know like, why am I here and why do I feel this pain? Like this unrelenting pain. How do I feel better? But this is the thing where our self-driving system through experience, these circuits, the self-driving ones I discussed, can become miscalibrated. And our circuits, the self-driving circuits and the driver circuit, the the way the brain works is it uses the sympathetic system for the gas. So that will trigger acceleration and sorry, it's our accelerator, but it will trigger adrenaline and cortisol. And a lot of our responses get tied to that. So this is being triggered by the self-driving system outside of our awareness. So if we miscalibrate these circuits, then they're triggering that response all day long. We also have built into the self-driving system is homeostasis. So that applies the brake. That applies the parasympathetic channel, which will rest us and digest us, so or allow us to rest and digest. So if our vehicle is wired to accelerate too often, homeostasis can't bring us into balance. And like a car that drives with the gas pedal, with the pedal to the metal too often, it's going to eventually break down. And that's what leads to this depletion and being burnt out and getting sick because we're accelerating. But you'll hear often people say, Oh, I went to the doctor and they said I'm stressed. I just need to stop being stressed. It's like, well, that's why it's challenging because the stress is coming from the self-driving system outside of your awareness. But what we can do is this is where with my message with um how we can change is with mindfulness, because this is the act of deliberate attention. So I can put my attention on my breath and I can delay the binge and do this and go to my breath. And when I do that and I slow the breath, it's going to trigger the vagus nerve with which activates the parasympathetic system. So that's my break. So anytime I experience this acceleration or depletion, I do have a tool for slowing my breath and applying the break.

SPEAKER_03 24:53

You know what I love, love, love about this is that there is, it's a hot topic right now, burnout. You go on LinkedIn or anywhere else, and it's all you see is people talking about that, helping people understand what causes it. But there are no things to actively start doing to turn that around. First of all, we can educate ourselves all we want, but it doesn't help us in actually making that change. You know, we need we need to understand, okay, what can I start right now to undo all these patterns or to help me with it? What can I do? And you do that. You're offering solutions, you're offering actions, things that we can do to make a difference, to make a change.

Mindfulness As The Brake Pedal

SPEAKER_03 25:39

We all hear be aware all the time. But awareness doesn't automatically create that change. So what do you think has to happen after you're aware, you understand if someone truly wants to create a different future, what do you suggest they start with?

SPEAKER_02 25:59

So I like how you position that once you're aware, because yeah, the first part is to gain awareness. Once you start to understand how automatic you are and that these behaviors aren't personal, they're self-driving, then there's okay, well, what do I do with that? And that's where, from what I've read, a strategy that works for me is mindfulness. And that allows you to apply the break when you notice these behaviors. And more specifically, like you can do that for fixed periods of time. And then if I'm just breathing and slowing my breath for 30 minutes, now I'm in relaxation mode for 30 minutes. So that's good, that's beneficial.

unknown 26:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

Uh, the other thing is when I do feel burnt out, when I do get frustrated, when I get angry, when I have that craving, I can sit and become aware, like I have this craving, but then I can sit in that and I can go to my breath with that. And with mindfulness, there's another strategy where you, with all these thoughts, there they have a story attached or a story tied to them, and we attach to the story. This is what we were saying earlier about identities. So we have this identity to these stories, and they're real. But if we drop the story, this is uh a mindfulness expert, Pima Shodrin, says, drop the story, go to the energy. So, like every thought we have, especially the self-driving responses, are going to have, as we mentioned, the sympathetic or parasympathetic response. That's going to show up in the body as some type of energy. For me, with fear and anger and stress, it's usually knots in my stomach. I'm very familiar with that feeling and where it is. And when I notice, hey, I have fear is here, anxiety is here. I can delay that, I can go to it in mindfulness, but drop the story, for example, with this, like, oh, you're doing this call. What if it doesn't go well? Drop that, and then go to the energy. And when you go to the energy, the knots, then you can experience a lift. It can just dissipate, and then there's this freedom. And then, as we're saying, when we do that over and over and over again, we can retrain and regulate our self-driving system. We're also neutralizing these responses because our self-driving system is accelerating. And then when we go to it, we decelerate, we apply the brake. But if you do that with the same response over and over again, you can regulate that response so it can become less reactive.

unknown 28:42

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 28:43

Yes. Listen, everybody, y'all are just gonna have to replay this several times so that it can just all sink in.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

Yeah, sorry if I'm talking too fast.

SPEAKER_03 28:52

No, I love it so much. And I know my listeners are gonna get a lot out of this. So thank you for sharing your all of your knowledge with us and educating us better.

Drop The Story, Feel Energy

SPEAKER_03 29:02

I was gonna ask you, do you believe there's actually a self that's separate from the automatic mind, or is it is it consciousness simply, you know, is it another process happening within the system? You know, like our consciousness. Is it one or is it separate? What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 29:21

I think it's separate. I think that these thoughts that we have, this constant dialogue is a like these all our thoughts are kind of coming together in the prefrontal cortex, which they call it a convergence zone. So a lot of information is just reaching there. So our thoughts from the self-driving system are coming there, and they call it uh like consciousness, they call a workspace. So it's like within this workspace, you have all these ideas that all the thoughts that come in from the self-driving system, but then there's a spotlight that we can put on them and think on them further. So this spotlight is consciousness. So in my mind, I think that consciousness is the product of the executive circuitry in our brain. So we have what I write is there's four different circuits, and the consciousness that we know is the executive control network. And we still get thoughts, though, that originate from those other circuits outside of our awareness, and we're just interacting with them. But we have that conscious circuitry to interact with it. So, yeah, I'd say that it's all one system, but the conscious eye is just the byproduct of a circuit that's processing other circuits.

SPEAKER_03 30:42

Can you share these four circuits with us or one of them, or just give us a little teaser or something? Is this in your book?

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Yeah. And I think I mentioned them earlier, but I was providing a lot of information. So we had the survival circuits, the intuitive circuit, so the survival for anything related to um defense, food, mating, and then intuitive, which are learned responses throughout our life. Those two respond to cues in the environment. So at any time we're moving, our self-driving system, when it sees these cues, it's going to provide that response. Those are going to show up as thoughts. They're still my thoughts, but they're coming from circuits that are working outside my awareness. They're taking in information, it's flowing through patterns, and then thoughts come into what I was saying is this workspace. And then we have default mode. So when those circuits are less active, default mode creates mind wandering, ruminations. It's also like when we feel compassion for other people, when we're just brain, well, not brainstorming fully, but when our mind's wandering or when we're daydreaming, uh, that those thoughts are coming from the self-driving system as well. So when you're in the shower and you're just thinking, those thoughts are essentially, they are our thoughts, but they are coming from circuits outside of our awareness.

SPEAKER_03 32:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

So generally we attach to the wandering thoughts. We'll attach to the person that we're in conflict with because wandering thoughts are past, or all thoughts related to the past or future that involve us, like myself or other people. Anytime I'm at rest, these thoughts come in. And then I'm the executive who interacts with them. So I if I attach to them, they just keep going, or I can delay in the pause and provide an alternative response. But we often don't.

SPEAKER_03 32:53

No, we don't. And the body is this welled machine. Everything's working for the same result, which is just to survive, function, breathe.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:04

And so it deserves our respect by listening to it. I think a lot of us, including myself, are guilty of just not listening to what our body is trying to tell us, where our brain is trying to communicate with us. And if we do listen and we learn how to work with it, then our lives are going to be strong and healthy and happy. But if not, we stray. We're not going to listen. We think, I don't know where that comes from, where we think we know better than what our body is trying to tell us.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

One time I had a bleeding ulcer. I didn't even know I had an ulcer, and it was just bleeding out. And then I fell down. They called the ER and they took me in and they said, You have an ulcer. You've lost a lot. Do you need four pints of blood? But I mean, my body was telling me the whole time something's wrong, something's wrong.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:55

This is not just you with a stomach bug. I try to make logic of it, of what I know, what I experienced, what has happened in the past when this pain happened. Right. But when it's something new, we don't recognize it. We have to learn. And unfortunately, if you learn that fire is hot and it will burn you, how do we learn it? By burning our span, burning ourselves. And that's the input we have to educate our brain to, right? It needs us to educate it, correct? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

Yeah. And that's what I say about the brain. Like when we're learning, it's a learning network. It learns by making mistakes. And as we make mistakes,

Consciousness And The Four Circuits

SPEAKER_02 34:42

it's refining these patterns. And then eventually they become the self-driving patterns that drive us. So it is through our mistakes where they're made. I guess that's the challenge, is if we make a mistake and then avoid it forever, then we're not going to continue to pursue a specific thing. It's possible. And then that could become the narrative that deters us or stops us from moving towards what we want.

SPEAKER_03 35:12

Yeah. Yeah. I advocate a lot for meditation. You're talking about breath and also journaling. I just think that those two things uh really can help in creating new patterns. But first you have to learn what the pattern is. And people are like, I don't want to journal. I don't want to meditate. I don't have time. I challenge them to just try it. Because if you journal just one little comment every day about your emotions or what happened or what you're feeling, if you reflect two weeks ago, you can start seeing a pattern. When this happens, I tend to do this. But it's the only way really to educate our brain. Or uh we can educate ourselves about what our brain is doing. If listeners remember just one thing from today, it's a conversation. What do you hope it is?

SPEAKER_02 36:06

I think it's to not take life so personally. A lot of our thoughts and decisions are coming automatically outside awareness. Even that example you just provided with journaling, I think journaling is a powerful tool as well because it's creating awareness, but it's also creating a separation between the self-driving system. And then that first response that we have of, oh no, I don't want to do mindfulness or I don't want to journal, that's self-driving. So that's where we could even pause in that moment. And like, what is that thought that's saying, don't do this? So I think it's to continue the message of your podcast of just embrace the journey and pause and just be curious. Just be curious about the self-driving system or whatever you want to call it. And then if we do do what we don't consciously want to do, it's okay. And I was liking how you mentioned all of the like just having the compassion, because that's something that I wasn't aware either of all my self-driving, my automatic responses, and I wasn't, I was harsh about it. And then that was something that over the last few years I did start to appreciate just how it's brought me here. And like I'm 41, and I'm just thankful that I'm alive and I'm living and I'm healthy and appreciating like taking time to appreciate where we are, even though we may want to be somewhere else and take our life somewhere else.

SPEAKER_03 37:44

It's beautiful. And I love that you're sharing your gift. I mean, I do really believe that we're all being led to a certain calling. It's our job while we're here, sort of thing. No matter what your faith is, I do believe that we are each put here for a purpose. And life's hard. Bad things happen in your life that causes you to rethink things. I've learned, like any system, I've learned to use it, use the pain for purpose, like fuel. And I've discovered that in so many different ways. And it has really helped me keep moving forward because a lot of times I don't want to do it. It's just like I don't want to take my three-mile walk every morning. I try to talk myself out of it. Yeah.

Learning Through Mistakes And Journaling

SPEAKER_03 38:33

But I just go, Oh, I would love to find out what how do you think about motivation? Because I am a firm believer, if you wait to be motivated to do something or to try something, it's never going to happen. It's like my walk, my three-mile walk. If I wait to be motivated to do it, it's not going to happen. So I think motivation happens after you act. But how do you get to that point of just making yourself get up, put your clothes on, and go for the walk? And it applies to other things in our lives. But the compassion thing, I love that you said that. Compassion and kindness, it's a superpower. I think sometimes people don't give it enough credit because it helps the giver and the receiver. It empowers you, it heals. And because that's why it feels good to us when we are kind. It feels good to be kind. But when we're unkind and just too, yeah, no compassion, that's when we feel shame and guilt. And we turn it in and we're we don't think we're a good person. And that really is a wall. I talk about the well a lot, falling into a well, because people that s struggle with depression, that's how they describe it. What does it feel like to be depressed? And a lot of them will tell you it's like being in a dark well with no way out. You can see the light and the sky above, but you don't know how to climb out. You're trapped in there.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:07

And so I use the well as one of my uh stages of quiet depletion. And it's a great visual. But I guess my question is, do you do you think that we can uh learn compassion or do you think it's just something we have in us?

SPEAKER_02 40:21

I think we can learn all of the emotions, and there is a mindfulness practice on loving compassion, and it essentially is thinking about people that you well is it's kind of thinking of like neutral, positive and negative, but you're coming to realizations about your thoughts and like the bodily sensations that go with them, but then you're also practicing feeling love. So you think of a person and you feel love for them, and it's so weird because when you start that, I couldn't do it. It was like I can't, and then you think of your wife and it's like or your partner, and it's like this should be easy, but it's not because there's also a lot of other emotions behind it. So then even this is a lot of what Pima Showrun teaches, and I it's usually they say that think of a dog, think of an animal, and then when I do that, then it's like, oh, this is love. But then when you practice that and you go to this animal, and then you experience like you're basically rewiring the compassion circuit in your brain, and you're teaching yourself to feel that, and that's a lot of what the practice is, is as you mentioned, when you feel closed off, there's I was closed. I like I'd see someone and then I just don't like them. But that's me, that's not them, that's my self-driving system saying that it's just creating a narrative that's not true, but normally I attach to it. But then when I listen to audiobooks, that's why I like them, because they change your pattern of thought. And I've listened to a few that talk about this discussion on compassion, but also opening up, and opening up means so much because I'll notice that it's like you're closed, Alan. Open up, and then when you open up, it's yeah, you start to think, Am I okay? Because you're having an inner dialogue with yourself a lot, but I don't know, I think it's working. And yeah, I I am able to find interrupt those thoughts and then find that love for people. And it's not like with everything we're saying, it's not that it's instant success, it's all just slowly but surely, eventually you can start to change a little bit. And it just there's strategies that do help. But yeah, I think compassion, I think everything. I mentioned that I had a fear around public speaking. I think that's a skill to be tuned. I think leadership is a skill to be tuned. All our emotions, everything I think in the brain is a pattern that we can tune.

SPEAKER_03 43:11

Yep, exactly. And you spoke of energy earlier. I meant to to comment on that. I love that because I always tell my my children, both of my kids are adults now. I'm going through life, but I always tell them you're giving all your energy to this negative, terrible thing. Why are you doing that? Use your energy to better yourself or to better someone else's life. Just we have to learn how to redirect our energy. And I think that's true with the brain. We need to put put energy into learning the patterns so we can make a difference. I went through this uh course once and it was on what love is and how to give it, how to receive it. And they said, use one word to describe your definition of love.

unknown 43:59

And that

SPEAKER_03 44:00

Was the hardest exercise ever because you want to expand on it, you want to explain it. It's like delay the binge. People challenge me to have one sentence like an elevator pitch for delay the binge, and it's almost impossible because it's so vast and so deep to be that efficient with it. But love, my word was acceptance. That's what I think love is. You're not trying to change someone, you're trying to just accept them. And it makes it easier to love somebody that way. Whether they return it or not. You can love them anyway.

SPEAKER_02 44:37

Yeah. Well, I think that is part of it as well, is like leading with love, and then you can start to change other people that way rather than um doing our best not to be impacted by these automatic responses. Because as I mentioned, I would be closed off. But is what they're saying actually angry and wrong? And even if it is, should I be impacted by that? Because ultimately, in my mind, it's just a self-driving circuit that says this is bad and now I'm mad. But what if I let that go? What if I went to my breath again? Delay in the binge.

SPEAKER_03 45:12

Yeah. And we all get angry. Like you said, driving the car, getting mad at other drivers.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:18

That's a waste of energy because it's not accomplishing anything. However, anger, people think anger is bad. It really isn't. It's a natural emotion that our brain needs sometimes. It's just what you do with it. So anger is-that's what I think.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

Yeah. Like as you said, all our emotions are just, to me, they're self-driving responses to our experience. So we get we have an experience, it gets tied to anger. We have another experience, it gets tied to happiness. So all our experiences get tied to these. And then as we interact with our environment, now I'm mad. Now I'm happy. But it's not personal. It's yeah, we personalize it, but it's the decision is made outside of our awareness. So it's just trying to, yeah, build a understanding and peace around it because it's okay.

SPEAKER_03 46:05

I always tell people binging is not about willpower. It's about realizing what the pain is behind the behavior, behind the pattern, what's causing this, getting curious, researching, and giving yourself some grace, like you said, just being patient with yourself in small steps every day. Just do one little small thing in that direction of change.

Compassion Practice, Love, And Closing

SPEAKER_03 46:31

And it could happen over. It's time passes anyway, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:36

So before we wrap up, where can our listeners learn more about your work, connect with you, and get a copy of the self-driving you?

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Yeah, thank you. I have my website, which is the self driving you.com, all one word. And that's just a landing page with a website that will provide more information about what we've discussed and what my idea is all about. And then the book is available on Amazon in all formats, as well as audible in the audiobook format. And I am on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, most social platforms under the self-driving you.

SPEAKER_03 47:19

Yes, you're still a young whippersnapper. So yeah, you're on all of those platforms.

SPEAKER_02 47:23

No, I was not good with the platforms. That's something that I started two years ago to try to get the idea out there, but I was not a social media person.

SPEAKER_03 47:34

Well, and to be honest, our messages are very similar, and I appreciate you so much because you do put it in a way that people can can absorb it and hopefully apply it. And that's the challenge for me is just making sure uh getting it out of my head and my heart to others so they can process it.

SPEAKER_02 47:54

That's the same mission I have. Yeah. Because we can relate to trying to be okay ourselves. Yeah. And I put in all this effort for myself, and then it's I thought, well, maybe this will help others, and it's a a way to think. So it's similar purpose that we both share. And yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:17

Yeah, and I appreciate that too. There's another human being in the world that thinks that.

SPEAKER_02 48:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:23

I don't know if that's good or bad. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 48:25

Yeah, I don't know. I think it's good.

SPEAKER_03 48:28

No, it is. It's definitely good. Yeah. And thank you for sharing your wisdom, but not just your wisdom, but your compassion and your heart, because that's what it takes to share a message like that. We have to genuinely care about others. And it's evident in your work. So thank you so much for sharing it with us today. And what I love about this conversation is that it reminds us that awareness isn't about judging ourselves. It's about noticing, noticing the thoughts, the patterns, the reactions, the stories that are quietly running in the background, as Alan said, because we can't change what we don't see. And maybe, just maybe the goal isn't to become someone else. Maybe the goal is to wake up enough to become more fully ourselves, who we were always meant to be. Sometimes we lose sight of that. If today's conversation resonated with you and you'd like to explore these ideas further, I invite you to visit pamdwyre.com or delethebinge.com and be sure and take advantage of all the resources. I'm sure Alan has some on his website. We'll feature Alan on Behind the Mic. And I don't know if you realize that, Alan, but we've we put you everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

I'm excited about that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 49:53

Yes, yes. And so pay attention, y'all. Just read them because it's the same message and repeat, repeat. That is how we build new patterns. All right, until next time, pause, choose, build momentum, finish stronger. We'll see y'all next week. Hey, it's me Pam, and before we go, just a quick reminder. Everything we share here is meant to encourage, educate, and get you thinking. But it's not a substitute for professional mental health, medical, legal, financial, or any other licensed advice. I'm simply someone who's walking through life, learning right alongside you. And I'm grateful we get to learn together. Always seek the guidance of a qualified professional for your unique situation. Thanks for spending this time with us. Until next time, remember sometimes the biggest change begins with one small pause. I'll see you on the next episode of Delay the Binge.