You Think That Was Your Thought?
I once heard that 90%+ of the thoughts we have today are the same ones we had yesterday. And so on… If that holds true, most of our thinking is a loop — looping back to familiar tracks, day after day.
Sure, randomness throws in a few new sparks here and there, maybe a comment, a smell, a meme, and that shifts the mix slightly. But overall, the playlist remains on repeat.
When I started looking into psychology, particularly the subtle art of Nudge, I realized: we’re not really “thinking” in the way we imagine. We’re more like computers. Blank canvases – Sponges. Absorbing input constantly and not even consciously.
What do I mean?
Let’s say I want to change my mindset to “nudge” myself into clarity, motivation, joy, or action. You might think I’d need some big, dramatic intervention. Hypnosis? Brain hacking? Nah. All it takes is a subtle nudge a scent, comment, song, color, a passing word and without even noticing, that input is already shaping your internal world — thoughts, emotions, behaviors — all in motion.
Let’s say you overhear someone mention swimming in a lake. The moment passes. You forget it. But later that night, you’re telling your mom how much you miss swimming, how it’s been forever, how you should do it again. You don’t know why you brought it up. But the seed was planted.
Still think I’m exaggerating.
Try it yourself. Drop a small phrase around a friend something emotionally tinged, even meaningless — and watch it come back to you hours or days later in a different form. Nudges work. And that’s where it gets dangerous (I’ve nudged people into eating Tacos)
Inception Was a Documentary, Basically
In the movie Inception, they plant an idea so deep in someone’s dream that they mistake it for their own. It’s fiction, right?
Except it’s not.
In real life, no one needs to break into your dreams. They just have to show up on your screen. All day. Every day. Your attention is real estate, and your desires are up for sale.
If I can be nudged into a craving, a memory, or a mood with just a phrase, imagine what entire industries built on psychology and profit can do?
Even Nikola Tesla wrote in his autobiography that humans are like automatons. Input-output machines, responding without resistance and yet, we still act like we’re making choices.
“I want a burger because I’m in the mood.” No, you saw four ads on your walk home. You heard someone mention it at lunch. You passed the smell You were nudged.
You don’t hate your country because you’ve researched its policies. You hate it because your friends have been complaining about it loudly for months and now that emotional association has soaked in, unnoticed.
The Psychology of Influence Isn’t Always Gentle
Behavioral psychology knows this. Influence, behaviorism, and the art of the nudge have blended into one complex machine. Skinner laid the foundation. Thaler made it charming. Marketers weaponized it.
Take this priming experiment:
Researchers had participants unscramble sentences that either included polite or rude words. Those who were primed with rude words were far more likely to interrupt the experimenter later on. The input was invisible — but the output changed.
And that’s the point: subtle input, invisible change. Multiply this by a hundred, a thousand moments a day, and you start to see the blur between “you” and “your environment.”
Who’s Actually Driving?
You try to “take back control.” You decide to nudge yourself toward goals, fitness, clarity, purpose, travel. You do it consciously, with intent. You quit your job. You get serious. You’re becoming… a Digital Nomad in Bali who does yoga, drinks coconut water, and is free from the 9-to-5.
Sounds original, right?
But… why Bali?
Why yoga?
Why “freedom” that looks exactly like the freedom everyone else is selling?
What if the truth is this: You don’t actually want those things. You just think you do. Maybe the coast of Australia, your love for animals, and a hybrid job with structure was more “you.” But you never got the chance to explore that version — because an algorithm kept nudging you toward this one. Because the idea of “beach + laptop = freedom” got so deeply seeded that it felt like your own.
Enter the Loop
So even when you try to break free using nudges to shape your world, to build your ideal life you hit the same wall:
How do you know that was you?
We’re in a loop. The moment we think we’ve chosen; we may have just absorbed. And the moment we believe we’ve broken free; we might have just walked into a better-decorated cage.
The problem isn’t action. Or outcome. It’s origin. Where did the desire begin? Who gave it to you? And can you ever really tell?
So maybe the question isn’t just “What do I want?”
It’s “Where did that want come from?”
And if the answer traces back to a feed, a trend, a passing comment not a quiet moment of real clarity then maybe we’re not choosing at all.
We’re just reacting.
Thoughts dressed as decisions. Desires that aren’t really ours. A loop that keeps looping, even as we swear we’re breaking free.
Maybe the real rebellion isn’t chasing a different dream —
It’s pausing long enough to ask, “Whose dream is this?”