Does Your Business Have a Borrowed Brains Problem?

You think you’re leading with vision. But what if the decisions shaping your business weren’t yours? Just hand-me-down scripts from parents, schools, hustle gurus… even ChatGPT?

In this episode, Dr. Dave reveals:

• The Silent Saboteur: The hidden code hijacking your focus, leadership, and profits.
• The Mental Trap: Why “thinking for yourself” is often the biggest lie entrepreneurs believe.
• The Escape Code: The LIAR framework that overrides false scripts and installs a true Flow Operating System.

Listen now—before borrowed brains cost you another opportunity, another $10,000, or another year.

🧠 Want profits that grow stronger as AI gets smarter? Every Friday morning, FlowCode delivers you a GPT-powered profit prompt rooted in flow science — the same edge Navy SEALs, elite althletes, and top founders use to outperform. Subscribe for free: FlowCode.news

Transcript

I was looking at some articles online the other night, and one headline stopped me cold. It read, losing our voice, the human cost of AI driven language. And I realize you probably think that's a little nerdy. I call it curiosity, because curiosity is a flow trigger. And flow, of course, is the high performance, high profit state that we're here to talk about. Anyway, back to the headline. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin analyzed 280,000 academic YouTube videos. What they discovered was unsettling. Since chat GPT was released, human speech has shifted. Words like Delve, meticulous, adept realm, all favorites of AI are showing up in our conversations 51% more often. And here's the eerie part, people don't even realize it. They think they're speaking their own thoughts, but they're echoing a machine. And that's when it hit me, this is the latest version of an old problem. Most entrepreneurs aren't actually thinking for themselves. They're running on borrowed brains. Think about it. We inherit scripts from our parents. It might be play it safe, don't rock the boat. And then schools drill into us obedience. Sit down, raise your hand, wait your turn. Then the hustle gurus online shout, work harder, grind longer, as if that's the only recipe for success, and now algorithms nudge what we say, what we buy, even what we believe, and you wonder why your mind feels noisy, distracted and fragile. You're trying to build flow driven profits with a mental operating system that you didn't even install. So let me ask you, is your business running on your genius or on hand? Me Down programming. That's what we'll be discussing today. Let's get started. Welcome to flow driven. The number one problem in business today is flow, Deficit Disorder. You see the symptoms everywhere, burned out, teams, high turnover, employees, sleepwalking through their work and profits that never rise to match the effort. Proof the old way of work isn't working at all. For a century, business ran on industrial age rules, efficiency, consistency, compliance. Then came the information age, where knowledge processes and titles defined value, but those rules no longer apply, because we've entered the transformation age, an era of relentless change fueled by AI. And if you're still using the old playbook, you're experiencing a very bumpy ride. The Cure, of course, is flow. Flow is the state where high performance and deep enjoyment collide, where human flourishing meets business excellence, and it's the only way to keep up in the transformation age. Your host and coach is Dr David Maloley, former Army officer, retired dentist and now a flow obsessed performance coach. And let's be clear, if you're an entrepreneur who's okay wasting your team's potential. This show isn't for you. But if you're committed to unleashing genius and building a business that wins in the transformation age, you're in the right place. Each week, Dr Dave shares strategies, stories and science to help you. Beat flow, Deficit Disorder, grow profits and reclaim your time. Freedom. Want to go deeper. Go to flow code, dot news and subscribe to flow code, your weekly prescription for flow deficit disorder, one sharp idea, one strategy and one GPT prompt to help you build a high profit business that makes people better, all at no charge. The link is also in the episode description. Here's a truth that's uncomfortable to most entrepreneurs, including myself, the biggest barrier to your success isn't competition, capital or even customers, it's the mental programming running in the background. We like to believe that our decisions are purely rational, strategy, analysis, deliberate choice, but most of the time, we're running on borrowed brains, patterns and beliefs handed down from parents, teachers, culture and now algorithms. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, founder of analytical psychology and one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, put it this way, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate and. And modern science backs that up, the conscious mind can process around 50 to 100 bits of information per second. The unconscious, it's running 11 million bits in the background. That means much of what we call thinking is really habit conditioning and old scripts replaying themselves. So I want you to consider this. If you want flow driven performance, if you want that self managing team and high profit business, the answer probably isn't more effort. It's updating the mental operating system that you're running on, because flow isn't about forcing outcomes. Flow happens when your mind is clear, your focus is aligned, and your unconscious is working for you, not against you. The first step to upgrading your mental operating system is this. You have to see the code because you can't rewire what you haven't acknowledged. Most of the thoughts you had today, they're not yours. That voice that whispered, don't risk it, play it safe, that's not you. That's maybe your dad talking the inner critic saying you're not ready, you're not enough. That is maybe an old teacher's judgment that you never deleted, that urge to check your phone one more time, that's not curiosity, that's the algorithm training your dopamine system. And the scary part, these scripts don't just run in your head. They run your business. They dictate which opportunities you ignore how you lead your team, where you cap your prices, and how fast or slow you move. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on decision making, showed how often we default to what he called system one, thinking fast, automatic, unconscious. It feels like choice, but it's habit. It's programming. That's the danger of borrowed brains. You might think you're innovating, but you're just recycling. So here's a new rule for you. If it feels automatic, safe and unquestioned, it's probably not your genius, it's borrowed. So awareness is the first step, but awareness without action. That's just a weak observation. If you really want to stop running on borrowed brains, you can't just notice the scripts. You have to weaken their grip and install something stronger. Here's the framework that I use, loosen, install, act, reinforce, l, I, A, R, yes, that spells liar, which is perfect, because that's exactly what the old story is. It's a liar. The script that says, play it safe, a lie, the script that says, grind harder, or you'll fall behind, a lie. The script that whispers, you're not enough. That's one of the biggest liars of all. So let's break it down. Loosen you catch the script in real time and you name it, you say, Wait, that's not me. This is borrowed. Every time you spot it, it loosens a little power. Eyes install. Now you replace it with a higher identity, not I'm someone who hustles until burnout. Instead, I'm a flow driven leader. My role is clarity, not chaos, genius, not grind. Now A is act. Here comes the proof. You have to take one action in line with that new identity. If you say you're flow driven, maybe that means protecting 90 minutes of undistracted focus instead of reacting to email all morning. Maybe it means saying no to the wrong client so you can make space for the right one. Whatever it is, the action makes the new identity real, finally reinforce. Then you repeat it and you repeat it, because Neuroscience tells us that neurons that fire together wire together, the more often you take action aligned with the new identity, and feel the reward of that progress, the stronger the new operating system becomes. And this is important to remember, you're not just going to delete the old code. That's not how it works. You have to make it irrelevant by proving over and over that you're becoming someone new. That's how you stop running on lies and start running on the boldness that your business really needs. Agency is the moment you stop outsourcing all that power. Most entrepreneurs don't realize how much they still run on borrowed software. They copy the best practices from whatever book. Or influencer is the loudest this week. They wait for someone else to validate their ideas before acting. They obsess over what the algorithm or what the competition is doing. That's not leadership. That is low agency. High agency is different. High agency means that you run your own operating system, you act without waiting for permission. You stop asking what's the right answer, and instead follow the sparks of curiosity, the pull of passion and the clarity of purpose. And here's why that matters, those three triggers, curiosity, passion and purpose, aren't borrowed. They're not scripts handed down from parents schools or social feeds. They're intrinsic. They're uniquely yours. Flow, science shows us that these are some of the most powerful triggers in high performance, because curiosity directs your focus towards what matters to you, passion sustains when the work gets difficult, and purpose pulls you through resistance by tying your effort to something bigger. Albert Bandura, the psychologist who pioneered the concept of self efficacy, defined it this way, self efficacy is your belief in your ability to influence outcomes through your own actions. And he put it bluntly, people's beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. When you believe you can act, and you fuel the action with the curiosity, the passion and the purpose, you create a feedback loop, where every step forward reinforces I can handle this. I'm built for this. That's the essence of agency. This isn't IQ, this isn't luck, this isn't great timing. It's the willingness to stop running on borrowed brains and start running on the only operating system that can't be copied, that can't be corrupted, the one built from your own intrinsic triggers. That's the leap from borrowed brains to flow driven. I know we've covered a lot today, so let's bring it home. The enemy is clear. That's borrowed brains running on scripts that you didn't choose, that hand me down, programming that can come from a variety of sources, parents, preachers, teachers, news, Instagram, reels, YouTube, now, chat, GPT. And the solution is also clear, install your own flow operating system. Shift one was awareness, spotting the borrowed scripts before they hijack your genius today. Two was reprogramming, using the liar framework to loosen, install act and reinforce a new identity. And shift three was agency, the leap to running your own system, fueled by those intrinsic motivators, curiosity, passion and purpose. And now here is my coaching challenge for you this week. Pick one borrowed script that's been running your business. Maybe it's that grind story. Maybe it's some sort of fierce story. Maybe it's a scarcity story, call it out, name the liar, then install a new identity and take one bold action in line with it. Don't wait for permission. Don't overthink this. Just do it, because that single act will prove to your unconscious. I don't run on borrowed code anymore. I run on flow, that's how you start making the shift from borrowed brains to a flow operating system, and that's how you start building flow driven profits that grow stronger as AI gets smarter. Thank you for being a part of flow driven the movement to build high profit businesses that make people better. If this episode brought you value, share it. It's an act of generosity helping other ambitious entrepreneurs navigate AI disruption and thrive in the transformation age. If you want the upgraded experience, make sure you're subscribed to flow code at flow code dot news until next time, stay focused and flow driven.