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What if the person you think you are is an outdated idea?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.

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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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices