The Self-Driving You (Part 3)

Welcome to Readers, the podcast for the lifelong learner. Join us on our weekly dose of wisdom where we talk about the real-life lessons and applications of books. Enjoy! Hey, Alan.

Hey, Pruthviraj Chavda, how are you? Good, man.

Good, good. Looking forward to this final part. I want to jump in just real quick because I do have to be somewhere by in like 30 minutes. So if we can just keep this one about 30 minutes, I have like 8 questions. So I should give you like 2, 2 and a half minutes to answer each one about if that works.

Yeah, let's jump in. Is your mic on? I'm sorry, your mic's on?

Yeah, yeah, Mike. Okay, is it not— is my audio not coming through properly?

I think it's okay. Yeah, just sometimes I wasn't sure if there's an echo or not, but it's okay. It's okay. I just wasn't sure.

We're fine right now?

Yeah, we're fine.

Awesome, thanks, man.

And my side, you're fine? You're not hearing an echo or anything? Yeah, no, you're good, you're good.

Um, Cool. Let me know when you're ready. We can start.

Ready. Let's go.

Welcome back to readers, everyone. This is part 3, the finale of our series on The Self-Driving You by Alan Bodner. In the first 2 episodes, you know, we built the metaphor. We went under the hood. We talked about the 2 drivers, the circuits of the self, you know, the self-driving system and the practical tools of the breath and mindfulness. This episode will be going all the way down almost to the biology of the problem into what Alan actually has labeled this part as part 2 of the book. It's part 3 of our podcast, but part 2 of the book, uh, and this will be Networks and Human Potential. So again, you know, Alan, great to have you back. Uh, I'm looking forward to this part 3.

Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Uh, thanks, Pruthviraj Chavda. I'm excited to get started.

Yes, absolutely. You know, today we'll be covering chapters 16 through 25. We'll talk about the actual cells, right? The 86 billion neurons. And the support cells that physically upgrade whatever you practice. How the brain works with a network. What it shares with the AI inside the self-driving cars we started this whole series with. And how, you know, we both learn by making mistakes. And then the payoff, right? The science of mastery. The 10,000-hour idea. The surprising power of mental practice. And, you know, Allen's kind of closing argument here that our genes are far less of a cage or a limiting factor than we think. Right now, without further ado, Alan, whenever you're ready, let's jump right in.

Okay, let's do it.

Awesome. Now, you know, starting off with this neurons chapter, right? I think you make a very interesting claim that's either cold or liberating to some people, right? That depends on how you kind of take it. You say that our mental states and the activity of our neurons are one and the same. Every thought, every emotion is essentially just cells firing electrical signals and passing chemicals to one another., right? For some people that sounds reductive, right? Even a little bleak at times, but the way you use it, it seems like the opposite, right? It's freeing. How does that change in outlook actually change a person's relationship to their emotions? Or at least how did it do that for you?

Yeah, I think this is the whole theme. And yeah, you're right. It can be limiting, but it can be freeing. It's really how we look at it. And the purpose for me is to make it impersonal. Like, we are this human that has experience, but what drives it is that brain, that organ, which is this impartial learning network, and that is responsible for our thoughts and our actions. And of course, we have, as we mentioned, the conscious circuitry that gives us this sense of self and ability to take the wheel and drive how we want when we deliberately use attention to take the wheel. But yeah, a lot of it is, it's understanding this impersonal network and how, like, what is the makeup behind it that allows us to impersonalize it, but then from there understand what its potential is. And then that's where the second part of the book is about using our driver to get to its potential. And this, the first part was geared towards more like wellbeing, and this part is more toward success.

Now I think, you know, moving on a little bit to Chapter 17 here, right? Also along those similar lines of, you know, positively reinforcing our emotions, our actions and things like that. I think you introduced some of my favorite kind of characters in the whole book, and those are the support cells that you call broadband installers, right? Now these kind of wrap myelin around whichever circuits you fire the most. And for those of us who may not know what myelin is, they essentially, you know, will help reinforce what your habits, emotions, activities, things like that are, and can speed up your processing on those circuits by up to 3,000 times. Now I think this is really, really interesting. You make an observation that says, you know, when I say I can't do that, or, you know, I'm not capable of doing this, I won't be able to do something, you know, what we're really doing is essentially essentially telling those installers not to show up. And I think that was really just cool for me because there's a lot of people who negatively talk about themselves and kind of disguise it as like, oh, I don't want to keep my hopes up or something like that in case things don't go right. But I think this shows the actual impact that negative or honestly positive self-talk can have on, you know, even us at a biological level, right? From not just like, oh, this mentally affects me, but this can actually have an impact on the outcome of my habit creation, my successes, things like that. I'd love for you to kind of unpack that for us, right? What is physically happening in someone's brain when they practice the same thing every day for a year? And why does that make, you know, saying, "I'm just not a natural at this," such a misleading thing to tell ourselves?

Yeah, and behind it all is, as you mentioned, the neurons. And then those are, the signaling nodes in the brain. They make up our network. But then, as you mentioned, the— we also have the network technicians, the support cells. There's 7 different types, and these are the supporting cast. They're maintaining the neurons as they fire. And also, you mentioned the broadband installers. That comes from Daniel Coyle in his book The Talent Code. And with that book, what it helps with is just to understand the perspective of the support cells. So like it's neurons and support cells, and together they're actively tuning through like whatever we pay attention to. So your neurons are always adjusting based on what we pay attention to, creating patterns. And then as you mentioned, those support cells, they're going to help refine those patterns even more and send signals faster. So that's what's happening behind the scenes for every thought we have. And this is the whole idea where when we tell ourselves we can't do something, what we're doing— well, I guess I would say that our self-driving system is saying we can't do it, and then we attach to it. And then either way, there's no action. So if there's no action, then there's— we're not placing attention on something, and then we're not learning, because all learning is through attention. When we're learning, all that is, is these patterns. The neurons are firing, the support cells are helping refine those patterns even more, and at a cellular level, it's creating these patterns that through repetition become automatic. So when we say we can't do something, we're really reinforcing the pattern that says we can't, and we're not trying out the experience. So we're not— if I say I can't do public speaking, well, now I'm not going to be practicing public speaking. So then of course I won't be able to public speak because I'm not doing it. I'm not refining the patterns that will allow me to accomplish that skill. That goes for any skill that we're talking about, whether it's about learning an instrument, a sport, or even in school.

Yeah, I think that brings up a very interesting point. I was also thinking about like failure in this part, right? Obviously reinforcing ourself with positive, whether that's self-talk or, you know, obviously following through on our actions and stuff like that. What happens when we kind of face these setbacks, right? And I think later on in this chapter, you tell the story of the DeepMind company, DeepMind, their AI learning the old game Breakout, right? And you know, you mentioned that it starts out failing, kind of barely scoring, purely by making millions and millions of mistakes, it becomes better than any human who's ever played, right? And your point is essentially that like, yeah, you can look at it and just be like, oh, it's an AI, of course it's going to do better, right? But your point is that this isn't just how machines learn, it's also how we learn, right? Networks learn by failing. But, you know, kind of going back to maybe the psychology aspect of it or how our society has learned to treat failure, right? So many of us were raised to treat mistakes as failures, right? Something to be embarrassed about. And obviously now that we know mistakes or failures will only help reinforce what we know or don't know, and then kind of help us build on that, how do we actually work on positively reinforcing learning from our failures, right? And how does one go about doing that in daily life, right? Whether, you know, you're talking to our audience of parents, educators, or even the, the individuals themselves?

That was the biggest mind shift that I had from when I was 30 and started reading, is embracing mistakes. I used to personalize them, and I'd say that that just stunts us. That stops us from refining the pattern further. Um, when we're talking about mistakes, that is, in my opinion, we make a mistake because the pattern for that function isn't tuned enough. So that's why when we go to perform it, it is— it could be taken as failure, or it is failure in that moment because it didn't work. But that's because the pattern needs to be refined more. So if we personalize that mistake and say, oh, I made a mistake, now I have to stop, well, then that's the end of tuning that pattern. But if we say, oh, great, I made that mistake, now let me keep making that mistake and refine. You're making adjustments. As you're making these physical adjustments in real time, your brain is tuning the network inside your mind. In the brain, our internal network is tuning the pattern more, and that will reflect in our ability. So we will end up improving at that. So really, if you want to attain mastery, The mindset does need to shift towards seeking out mistakes because the brain is a learning network, just like what we're seeing in AI. AI is inspired by the brain. These are learning networks, and learning networks learn through mistakes. So we need to make mistakes to grow and to reach our potential and to get where we want. So it's changing that mindset and starting to embrace our mistakes. And I'd say that that's the first step to starting to tune our brains towards mastery.

You also describe plasticity as a two-way street, right? I mean, you bring up Hebb's law that, you know, essentially neurons that fire together wire together, but there's also the flip side you mentioned, right? Neurons that fire apart wire apart. Essentially this kind of use it or lose it. You know, we're always learning and unlearning depending on what we repeat. Um, and I feel like that's a bit of a double-edged sword, right? It means even our good patterns fade if we stop feeding them. But I'm wondering, how does that change the way someone goes about building a new habit, right? Especially knowing that the old one doesn't instantly disappear and the new one still needs, you know, a lot of steady reps before it can take hold. How does that maybe influence habit creation or change, you know, from a daily basis to a lot of our listeners who may be thinking, okay, how is this applicable to my daily life?

I think, again, it's always trying to find the hope in it. You can go two ways when we're thinking about this, but Yeah, when it comes to these patterns, and I do have this ingrained habit, if, if I am able to interrupt that and not do that habit, then based on what we just said with the laws of plasticity, I'm not using that pattern, or I'm interrupting that pattern so it doesn't fire. So in theory, because I'm not firing that pattern If you don't use it, you lose it, it weakens. And then if I go and do something else instead, like instead of having coffee, go to my breath instead, now I'm strengthening that ability for me to use my attention and to go to my breath instead. When you fire it, you wire it. But then it's still not a perfect system. It's more that there's hope that you can in theory, replace a habit with a new habit through repetition. So if I stop this habit of drinking coffee and I, I go through that process that I just mentioned, where we do that maybe 100 to 1,000 times, then maybe I will wire this new behavior where I can go to my breath instead. And, but that's the thing where it's not a perfect system. It is plasticity. So it, it will wire a new pattern. But to say that the old pattern will be completely destroyed and will be gone, that, that's not how it works. It will weaken and it can weaken, and then you can strengthen new ones. But a lot of these self-driving responses, especially with habits, they're based on cues in the environment. So at any time you could still get an old cue that triggers that response from the past, and you're back at square one. But maybe if you have been able to practice that other habit, like going to the breath, then that is available for you as well. So you can do that. But yeah, that's why in the book I, I tried to mention, like, if you play a sport when you're a child and then you stop for 20 years, like for my example was hockey, I haven't played hockey for that long. If I go back, I can still play hockey, but I'm not going to be very good. I'm going to have to refine those patterns again. And that's why with professional athletes, they're always practicing. We can't stop practicing because as soon as we stop, then these patterns are starting to— they're not losing connections, but it's the idea of continually tuning the patterns for the skills that you want.

Yeah, I think that continuous tuning of those patterns for the skills that you just mentioned, right, is like such an interesting point because I also think about a lot of the things that we just do on autopilot every day, right? And like the things that we're so used to just, you know, letting autopilot take over. Even the things that we may consider we consciously do, like our jobs, right? And I think this mastery chapter that kind of comes up here has one of the, I think, most useful lines in the book, at least in my opinion, right? Right? You say attention tunes patterns, autopilot uses them. Now, you know, you point out here that someone can drive a car for 30 years or do the same job for decades, right? And barely improve because essentially they're running on autopilot, not really tuning anything. I thought that was a really good point because I think there's a lot of people who kind of go about their mundane daily lives without actively consciously trying to make, you know, any progressions or difference and just lets autopilot take over what they've always done, right? I think that's also why so many people plateau at something and then just stay there for life. So, you know, for our listeners out there, you know, probably wondering what does it take to kind of get to that place where I'm consciously building, right? What does it take to keep tuning instead of coasting, right? What does deliberate practice look like for a regular person who maybe isn't training to, I don't know, be an Olympian, but just wants to keep getting better at something that actually matters to them?

Yeah, and I think that is using attention in the same way as you did when you first learned that skill. And that's the idea, because when we learn something for the first time, like riding a bike, we don't know how to do it. So we're paying full attention to what we're doing, and then we're going to fall over. Each time we fall, we are tuning that pattern until it gets to the point where it becomes an autopilot function that we can perform without thinking. And from that point on, if we just start joyriding and I do that for 10,000 hours, I'll still be able to joyride and I'll be pretty good at that, but I'm not going to be tuning this to a master level where I can be a BMX bike rider or something like that. It's the idea of learning each small minuscule aspect of that skill. So if it was to become a professional BMX bike rider, then it would be doing each move, practicing each move, making mistakes, failing over and over again, and continually paying attention to each movement in the same way as when you first learned how to ride the bike. And if we could try to get that mentality with everything that we do, then, um, we will be in a way better spot. And I think that's the main challenge, which is why I put it in the book, is many people, when it comes to this 10,000 hours— deliberate practice is like deliberately using attention on what we are not proficient at, like focusing on our weak points, because each time we do that, we're going to refine that pattern and then it will be better when we perform automatically. And that's the whole point, so that we're paying attention to each part and tuning that through attention so that we can do it with minimal flaws when we're doing it without attention, without thinking.

I want to shift gears here a little bit and talk, you know, switch to Chapter 24, right? I think this chapter is one of the most surprising findings in the book, right? That the brain actually barely distinguishes between vividly imagining something and actually doing it, right? This makes me think a little bit about, you know, when people talk about manifesting something. The same circuits fire, right? There's even a study that says that people built measurable muscle strength just by imagining those exercises, right? Michael Jordan himself said that he took more shots in his mind than he ever did on the court, right? That's like crazy to me. That's incredible, right? Obviously, I think it's very interesting, but for someone who wants to use this, right? For someone who wants to get better at a skill or to, I don't know, prepare for something that they're really nervous for or dreading, like a difficult conversation or a big presentation or something like that, um, you know, a difficult meeting coming up, how do they actually do mental practice well, right? I think a lot of us, um, think like, oh, I do mental practice all the time. I'm daydreaming at work or in my classes all the time. But what's the real difference between truly visualizing something that will then help you in the future as opposed to just daydreaming?

Well, yeah, and that Is a great question because with daydreaming, like especially with worrying about something, that, that's pretty much your default mode creating mind wandering. And then we're attaching to it. So what I have found when I do that, it really just reinforces that thought. So if I have a thought of worry about a social situation and my default mode is triggering this thought of you're going to go there and it's— everyone is going to be looking at you. People like are going to think that you're not too bright or whatever the thoughts are that if I attach to that, then it's just going to feed the anxiety. But with mental practice, what we're saying, it's actually very similar to mindfulness and it is a form of mindfulness. So mindfulness is, as we said, deliberately, well, Mindfulness is deliberately paying attention to the breath. And then from there, you can also go to sensations. There's all these different variations. You can also visualize. But the best thing we can do with our driver is use deliberate attention and focus it on something neutral and positive. That's how we take the wheel. So that when we're talking about mental rehearsal and visualization, we're basically taking that same principle and applying it to learning a skill. So when I am thinking about this future event, what I would be doing instead of— if my mind was wandering, I would stop that. Go to my breath, breathe, and you're kind of setting the stage for this mental visualization. And then you want to vividly see it as much as you can, but you're not thinking about worst case scenario. You're thinking of the whole situation and you navigating it successfully. And as you're navigating it successfully, now it's the same as living through it in your mind. So if we were doing it with this conversation, and if I was nervous beforehand, I could see us having a positive conversation, and then we would have already had this conversation in a sense in my mind. And then if I did that 10 times, I could be prepared at least on the nerve side for this thing. And that's the, the main idea if you're talking about some performer who's going to be performing their skill in front of thousands of people. Well, by seeing that in their mind, it's almost as though they've already done it. So when they are doing that in real time, they may have less nerves in that situation.

With this, I want to shift it a little bit to actually what the deepest version of your own self-image may come from, right? Our genes. And I think a lot of us have or attribute a lot of our own identity or our personality to what those genes may be, to what our families may be. And, you know, just to, I think, the biological makeup of who we are as people, right? And I think you make the case, right, through epigenetics and gene-environment interaction that genes are actually less like a fixed script and more like, you know, I think David Schenk kind of brings this up, right? 20,000 volume knobs that the environment is constantly turning up and down. You land on this line, right? You say, "We put far more limitations on ourselves than our genes ever will." Now, for someone who's always believed that, "I'm just wired a certain way. I'm anxious or undisciplined, or I'm just not a math person," or something like that, right? What does the science of gene expression actually offer them? And where's the line between an honest genetic limit and a limit we've just always assumed was permanent?

Yeah. And it goes with understanding the, the genes as this switchboard. As you mentioned with David Chang, he calls it a 20,000 volume knobs and switches. So if I'm born with this switchboard, some of them are set in place. And well, I guess most of them are set in place, but some of them are more flexible to the hands of the environment. So the environment is what's going to adjust these knobs and switches. Some traits like eye color, hair, hair color, the hair itself is going to be less impacted by the environment, but it still will be with like the sun. If the sun is continually on shining on my hair, it may influence the color. And it may damage my hair. But then there's other aspects of our traits that our genes determine, and those volume knobs and switches for traits like our personality and temperament and just what my potential is, is, are more flexible to the environment. So if I am now this person that can direct my environment. I can choose the environments that I expose myself to. So with the Michael Jordan example, by playing basketball for thousands and thousands of hours, you are now exposing yourself to the environment that is going to adjust those volume knobs and switches. So you get to determine the direction that our body is going to mold itself around. And that's why I say we put more limits on ourselves than our genes will, because we don't really know what our limits are until you spend thousands of hours, thousands of hours expressing your genes in the environment in the direction you want. Otherwise, how would you know? A quick example would be this conversation that we're having. Before I was 30, I didn't know any of this information at all. And then I listened to 500 books. I wrote for— so I did that for about 5,000 hours of listening, and then I wrote for about 5,000 hours. Now we can have this conversation. Before I started that, would I have said that I can be here and have this conversation? I'd say no. But then that was the thing where I started, after listening to books, looking at success, looking at potential as a process. And then you just put the time in, just go and do it. Just keep going. Keep going. Anytime those thoughts, they come up thousands of times. Why are you writing this? You're not a writer. You're nobody. Don't do it. But then it's just write, just do it. Just go.

I love it.

Yeah.

I love it.

So that's, that's the whole idea.

It's almost simple, but so obviously difficult to do at the same time.

Very difficult. But that's the idea of seeing it as a process. That's what worked for me. Is just thinking, and I think that's the idea of this book, to just provide the information and then to allow us to kind of just get out of our head and to say, oh, okay, the brain is this impartial learning network that takes 10,000 hours to tune. Our genes are not set in stone. Sure, we, we're not saying that they're not in place. Like there may be some limitations on them, but our environment will mold them. So if we direct ourselves to a specific environment, we don't really know what that potential will be until after we do it. So why not just look at it as a process, take the action, and just do that for thousands of hours with what we were saying with deliberate attention, make your mistakes and learn. And if we can do it without personalizing it, then that's the point is who knows how far we can take it.

I love it.

Until we actually do it.

I almost, I almost just wanna close it out right here. I have one last question though. You know, I feel like just to wrap it up, you know, we've traveled all the way from, you know, a self-driving car in traffic down to neurons, myelin, genes. And I feel like the thread through every chapter is the same, right? The brain wires what we repeat. No questions asked. And you know, there's a driver in us who gets to choose what we repeat. Now you end the book on one simple line, right? Just take the wheel and don't stop until you get there. So, you know, as we close out the series for the person who may have just finished the book or this, you know, podcast series nodding along, but standing at the bottom of what looks like a very tall mountain, right? What is the one thing you most want them to believe about themselves? And what's the first place you would tell them to put their attention tomorrow morning?

Yeah, it's that you can do it. The brain, as you said, it doesn't ask questions, it makes connections, and we can direct that. And the first step would be just start, because a lot of these things, at least in my mind, it was what I always wanted to do. It— my brain kept going back to Write. Do this. Write. Like, try to do this thing. But then it was fear that was stopping me from doing it. And I didn't even have this idea of Self-Driving until after a year of writing. I wrote the first version of the book and then it came to me. So I think that with all of it, it's just start, especially if it's that thing that you want to do. And if it is fear that's holding you back, just start because it's fun. Just that's how I started with writing. It was, I'm writing for me. I'm not doing it for this. I didn't do it for this. It has just evolved to trying to get the message out there because it helped me and I want to help other people do the same. But when I started, it was because I was doing it for me and that's what I like to do. I like to write.

Yeah, that's fantastic. And with that, we'll wrap up this episode and the whole series. I think this has been an incredible series, right? We've gone from a self-driving car, you know, in traffic, all the way down to neurons, myelin, genes, and the message holds the entire way. The brain wires what you repeat. It doesn't stop to ask whether it's good for you, and there's a driver in you who gets to choose what you want that to be, right? Who, you know, you get to decide what your environment is, what you repeat, what you decide to do, and, you know, I think that natural ceiling that I feel like so much of us so many of us have held for ourselves is genuinely just not true, or at least we'll never know until we get there. So, Alan, again, thank you so much for joining us. I've had a blast. I'm sure our listeners have too. To everyone listening, you know, who's curious about learning a little bit more about this, where can they find you, the book, your work in general? Anything you want to plug, just put it out there.

Thanks so much. Yeah, and thank you for having me on the show. I really appreciate the platform and the audience, especially As I mentioned, I, I wrote for people that feel similarly to me. So this is for your audience. That's why I wrote the book. And it can be found on my website, theselfdrivingyou.com, all one word. And you can also go to Amazon or Audible to buy the book there. And then on social media, I'm under the handle of The Self-Driving You on Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. And I continue just refining my socials each day to, uh, continue to make these ideas more accessible to everybody. So thanks so much.

Awesome. To everyone listening, the heart of this book is genuinely hopeful, right? I think so much of what we treat as fixed— our reactions, our habits, even how our genes express themselves, right— it turns out that it really is tunable, right, at any age, by where we choose to put our attention. And our attention is one of the most powerful tools that we have. You are far less finished than you feel. That's our series on The Self-Driving You by Allen Bodnar. If it got you thinking differently about your own mind, pass it along to someone who needs to hear that they can still change. Highly, highly encourage everyone to check out the book, check out Allen's work, and thanks for tuning in to Readers. Until next time, keep on learning, keep on changing, and keep on growing.