You're not thinking. Your CONDITIONING is thinking...

Most people think they are their thoughts.
That’s the problem.

If you want to control your reality, you first have to develop the ability to observe the system that is creating it.

That is where metacognition comes in.

Metacognition is the ability to think about your thinking.
To step back from the thought.
To observe the emotion.
To recognize the pattern.
To notice the interpretation before it turns into behavior and reality.

In this episode, I break down how to use metacognition to control your reality by becoming aware of the internal operating system shaping your identity, emotions, decisions, and life outcomes.

Most people live inside their thoughts unconsciously.

They react.
They identify with the thought.
They collapse into the emotion.
They repeat the same behavior.
And then they wonder why the same reality keeps showing up.

But once you develop metacognition, something changes.

You stop being the thought.
You become the observer of the thought.

And the moment you can observe the system, you can begin to change it.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
What metacognition actually is

Not just self-awareness — but awareness of the mechanisms shaping your internal reality.

Why most people feel trapped inside the same loops

Because they are living from unconscious thought patterns instead of observing them.

How thoughts become reality

Through perception, emotion, behavior, and identity reinforcement.

Why the observer state is so powerful

Because it creates space between stimulus and response.

How to use metacognition to change your identity

When you stop blindly identifying with your thoughts, you can begin rewriting the operating system beneath them.

How to control your reality through internal awareness

Reality changes when your internal relationship to thought changes.

This is not about suppressing thought.
It is not about becoming emotionless.
It is not about controlling everything externally.

It is about gaining enough awareness internally to stop being run by unconscious mental patterns.

If you’ve ever felt like:

your mind is always moving
you keep repeating the same emotional loops
you know better, but still do the same things
your thoughts shape your state more than you want
you want more control over your identity and reality

…this episode will give you a deeper framework.

Because the truth is:

You do not control your reality by controlling the outside.
You control it by becoming conscious of the inside.

And metacognition is one of the most powerful tools for doing that.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Most people think they're thinking. They're not. They're being thought by their conditioning. And those two are completely different realities. Every fear that stopped you, you didn't choose that. Every excuse that felt logical, you didn't generate that. Every pattern that you've tried to break, every risk you've avoided, every moment you talked yourself out of the next level. That wasn't you thinking. That was a program that your nervous system inherited, running on autopilot while you believed that you were in control. Think about every version of your life that's never materialized, every timeline that you couldn't reach. Wasn't because you lacked a vision. It was because the awareness behind the vision was still being run by conditioning that was never yours. You see, every mindset teacher out there will tell you to become more aware of your thoughts. Every meditation practice, every journaling framework, every self-development program, they all take you to the same place and they take you to the observer. So let me draw this out here. Three levels. So the observer. This is where you're observing your thoughts, you're observing your reality, your experience. And nobody tells you that just simply observation, observing your thoughts, naming them, and becoming familiar with them is not going to get you transformation. You see, nobody teaches you that there's a level three where you stop observing the thoughts and you start directing it, where you don't just observe the conditioning, you architect what replaces it. Level three is the architect. This is where reality stops happening to you and starts being built by you. You see, most people spend their lives living between level one and level two, right here. Great actor between these two here. Okay, this is where most people are living their lives and experiencing reality. They don't understand and aren't aware that the architect, level three, is the place to be, the cheat code, so to speak, to actually crafting and architecting your reality. And the interesting thing about this all is that I did not just find this somewhere in a book or in a YouTube video or in some kind of podcast. Interestingly enough, I discovered this mid-sentence in my own mind when I actually caught a conditional thought that was dressed up as logic, that was telling me that this is too risky. And then I realized that that wasn't my voice. And as a seven-figure entrepreneur who constantly works with entrepreneurs, business owners, I kept seeing the same thing between all these different groups. People that were intelligent, that were aware, people who could name every single limiting belief that they've ever had. They were still stuck and still being controlled by the pattern that they could see clearly. That's when I understood that awareness without direction is still a prison. It's just a more conscious one. And from that experience, from that understanding, I built a process, a method that I call the metasystem. And it's the architecture that I use to move from observer to architect. And today I'm gonna walk you through every single step of it. And here's exactly what we're going to cover today. So we're gonna walk through the three levels of the mind the reactor, the observer, and the architect, and why most people get permanently stuck between these two here, the observer and the reactor, and then the reality generation chain. This is the exact sequence from thought to emotion to action, to identity, and to reality, or we can call it a timeline. And then the meta system, this is where we map the thought, extract the pattern, transcend the identity, and then architect the new reality. And then we're gonna go through an example of one of my clients who could articulate every single one of his limiting beliefs in precise detail and still couldn't move. When you understand that your thoughts do not control your reality, but the awareness behind your thoughts does. I want to take you back to a specific moment in my life. It was early on my entrepreneurship journey, before any of the acquisitions, before any of the systems that I now teach. I was at the edge of a significant decision, the kind that required me to step into a version of myself that I had never been before. And then a thought arrived, fully formed, urgent, and completely convincing. This is too risky, the timing isn't right, you don't have enough, you're not ready. And I almost listened, but something happened in that moment that I hadn't experienced previously. I caught the thought mid-sentence, and I noticed something. That wasn't my voice, that was my conditioning, dressed up as logic. You see, I recognized it, I recognized the tone, the cadence, the specific flavor of the fear, and I had heard that exact internal voice throughout my entire childhood. You see, it wasn't a rational assessment of the actual situation, it was a conditioned survival pattern, and it was firing precisely because the situation was unfamiliar, and that was the first time that I watched the thought instead of obeying it. And in that gap between the thought and the obedience, I found something that I hadn't known was there. I found this the thinker behind the thoughts. Huge. So there was something there that I had not actually previously become aware of. I didn't know. Like I would sit there and I would have these thoughts, and I would just kind of go through with them, and and when I stopped to really question everything and mid-sentence, I started to observe them, and I started to think about there's gotta be one step above this where I not only observe, but how do I direct them? And so I was working with a client of mine, and for this example purposes, we'll call him Ryan. And so Ryan was one of the most analytically gifted people that I had ever met. He was a voracious reader, so he would dig into psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, personal development. He had gone through a bunch of therapy and could fully articulate his inner world, like his internal patterns. He could articulate all of that, but he couldn't change the actual patterns that were causing him to live a reality, an experience that he didn't want, right? So he would be going through all of this experience in terms of his reality. He would know these patterns, but he couldn't change them. And one of the things that he came to me with was that he knew all about these patterns, right? He could articulate them, he could define them in terms of this limiting belief, you know, I'm thinking about this, which is causing me to have negative thoughts, negative emotions, all of these different things. So he knew all of the awareness aspect of it, could see it clearly, could explain it, but he still felt controlled by them. And he was trying to figure out, okay, what am I missing here? And I asked him one simple question. When you observe the thought, what do you do next? And he said, I watch it, I name it, and I tried to understand it more deeply. You see, Ryan had built an extraordinary level two, observer. He would be watching all of his thoughts go through his mind. He knew exactly what they were, he tried to understand them, he tried to name them, to really think about them deeper, and to try to understand what was the problem. But what he never learned was level three, the architect. Because when you're in observation, you're observing everything. This is still thought about and thought of as a prison that you're in because you're aware of everything that's happening, but you're not able to do anything about it. You're just aware that you're in a box, you're in this prison, okay? And you can't get out of this because you know it's there, but it's just locking you in. Okay, you need a key. There's a little lock right here. Draw a little key. I don't know, little little key right there. I know it's kind of hard to see. Call this a key. You need a key to the lock so that you can get out of the observation box. Because the goal is not to just observe the thoughts here, the goal here is to become the one that decides here, and the architect decides what to do next when you get that thought. And so, what we're actually working with here is metacognition, is where we're aware of the thoughts and then the ability to consciously reflect on those thoughts. So metacognition equals awareness of your mind, plus the ability to consciously redirect it. Two very important components here. It's the awareness, which is the observer here, and the ability to consciously redirect it. Okay, this is the architect. You have a thought, you're aware of that thought, then you reflect upon it, and then you decide which direction it goes, and how you redirect it, how you reframe it, right? Think about reframing as a whole. You have a negative thought, something happens. Let's say you get into a fender bender, okay? Somebody hits your car, and you experience frustration, maybe some fear, maybe some stress, all these different negative emotions and thoughts. Okay. What am I gonna do for my car? It's gonna cost me a lot of money. I can't believe this person hit me. This person's a POS, all these different things, right? Versus reframing that because you're aware that you're going through all of these different emotions and thoughts, but then reframing that as to I'm grateful that I'm alive. Thank God that I was able to survive all of these different things here in terms of the physical external cars, they can get fixed, they can get repaired. I came out alive and healthy. I'm grateful for that. So that's the ability for you to architect because think about it. If you're just observing your thoughts that are coming in and they're all programmed, you're going to continue to get the same thoughts and feelings, experiences that you are having and will have because you're just simply observing them. Hey, I noticed this pattern, hey, I noticed that pattern. Okay, well, what are you doing about it? You need to architect right after and reframe, redirect, right? This is the redirecting, that's the reframing so that you put it into a different box. And this was the case for Ryan, right? He was constantly aware of everything that was going on in his life, but you can still be consciously aware of what's happening in your life, all the negative patterns, the negative issues, the feelings, all of that, and still be run by them because you're not reflecting on those observations and then redirecting them. And this is the chain that your reality is being generated from right now. So we'll go like this. You have a thought that then gives you an emotion, then you take a specific action based off that, which leads to your identity, which gives you reality. This is the actual chain that you're going through, whether you realize it or not. So let me erase here. I want to draw an arrow here. Okay, so an arrow above thought, metacognition intercepts here. You see, when you intercept at the thought level before it becomes an emotion, before it becomes an action, before it hardens into your identity, you change every output downstream. So when you control your thought, you can redirect your emotion. When you control the emotion, you shift the frequency that you're operating from. And when you shift the frequency, you change the timeline or the reality that your behavior opens based off your actions. And when you change the identity that the thought is building, the reality that follows becomes structurally different. You see, metacognition is not positive thinking, it's not suppression, it's not affirmation. Metacognition is your exit from unconscious reality. Now, let me show you where you actually are in these three different levels right now, because most people never leave the reactor. Things happen to them, they react, and then they wonder why things keep repeating, same things keep happening, same type of events, circumstances, situations, and they keep reacting to everything versus observing and then architecting. This is where I would say 95% of people are. They're reacting to the reality. And just think about it. For people at level one, right? The reactors, a thought comes to your mind, you don't observe it, you don't question it, you don't redirect it, you become that thought instantly. When fear arrives, you take on that identity of fear. And when the past activates and you think about negative past experiences, then you take on the identity of the past. Reality at level one is chaotic, reactive, and repetitive because the same conditioning keeps running, the same outputs, the same emotional triggers, the same behavioral defaults, the same ceiling. Because ultimately, when you're unconscious of your thoughts, you're unconscious of your reality. And level two, this is the observer where Ryan was at for most of his time. He would be able to read his thoughts, see the patterns, all of that. Now, the observer is very, very powerful. Don't underestimate this, okay? Don't underestimate the observer because the reactor, 95% of people are here. So think about how small of a percentage is in the observer phase, okay? And this is a powerful place to be in because you have thoughts that come into your mind, you watch them, but you don't immediately interact with them in terms of becoming them. You're able to create space between them and you're able to neutralize them. And that's the beginning of having real agency. But here's the limitation that Ryan discovered firsthand. Observation is liberation, but it's not transformation. Because you can observe a thought indefinitely, you can name it, you can trace it, understand its origins, and if all you do is watch, then it'll keep running automatically. Because the watching in and of itself doesn't redirect the output. Level two is simply the doorway, it's not the destination. It allows you to open the door and walk into new light. Just think about walking into a dark lit room and you're coming in there and you're flipping the light switch on so that you can see everything that's going on. But just that awareness alone doesn't really do anything in terms of redirecting it or creating your desired reality. So let's go to the third one here, the architect, most powerful. Okay, your ability to see and to reflect upon the thought and then redirect it, reframe it. This is where you start to be able to do reality engineering in terms of looking at what reality you want and begin to proactively engineer that. And the way that I want you to think about this is that at level three, your thoughts become tools that you direct, almost like you are playing like a puppet, right? In terms of you are the person that's playing this puppet and you're controlling it, and you're directing it in terms of what it does, what it doesn't do, right? All of these different things that allow it to be under your control. And so at this stage, you're no longer just the reactor, you're not just reacting to things, you're not just observing things, you are the one that chooses what this means, what identity it belongs to, what you do with it, and where it goes. Think about this from this perspective, this lens. So think of yourself as like this wizard, and you have this ball of energy in your hand, and all of this, this whole energy ball, is your thoughts. And you're getting to redirect them, you're getting to have them here and control them, whatever direction you want them to go. Okay, you have all of this power in your hands, and so at the architect level, you're not fighting the thoughts, you're not suppressing them, you don't spiral out of control with them. The architect intercepts the thought, names it, and consciously chooses what replaces it. This is where reality becomes something that you engineer. So let me write out the loop that the architects run. So let me erase this here, and I'll write this loop here. So we'll go to awareness, then interpretation, then identity, and then action, timeline, and then reality. Completely different, right? The awareness, they interpret that particular thought, and they choose the meaning, and then there's the identity that takes on based off of this here, the awareness and interpretation, and then there's action, there's a timeline that is created, that is stepped into, and then there's a reality, and metacognition okay, gives you control over all of the levels here, and more importantly, these two, because one and two, this is your interpretation, and the interpretation is steering the wheel of your reality. Just think about it. Any single event with two different interpretations produces two completely different identities and realities because the event doesn't generate your reality, your interpretation of it does, and the architect controls the interpretation. Okay, so now what I want to go over is the meta system. This is the meta system that allows you to map the thought, extract the pattern, transcend the identity, and architect a new reality. So let's go ahead and erase the board here and we'll walk through that. Okay, so let's go over the meta system. This is an acronym. So step one, we want to map the thought. Because with this, you can't redirect what you haven't mapped, what you haven't located. And so for this, we want to have two diagnostic questions. Number one, what am I actually thinking right now? Number two, where is the thought pulling me? Towards which version of me? So what am I actually thinking right now? Okay? Really think about that. Reflect upon it. And where is the thought pulling me? Which direction? Is it pulling you towards the old version of you or the new version of you? Okay? Which version? You see, most people never ask either question because they're already inside the thought before they realize that it's already arrived. The thought activated, the emotions followed, and the behavioral pattern is already running. It's the reactor sequence. You see, mapping breaks the loop at the entry point. And the moment that the thought activates, you stop and you expose it completely. Not the surface version, but the full thought. And you ask, what is this thought actually saying? What is it predicting? What outcome is it pulling you towards? And who is the version of you that that outcome belongs to? And for Ryan, I told him to pick a thought that shows up most consistently when you're at the edge of something important. And for him, his whole thought was, This is going to fail, and I'm going to look like I don't know what I'm doing. And so I asked him, where does that thought pull you towards? And he said, Towards staying quiet, not launching and preparing more, essentially staying comfortable. And I asked him, Who is the version of you that lives there? And he said, Someone who never finds out what he's actually capable of. And so you cannot redirect a thought that you've never actually examined. You need to map it first completely. Let's go to the next one. We want to extract the pattern. Number one, have I thought this before? Number two, who taught me this? And what identity does this belong to? Because every recurring thought is evidence of a recurring pattern, and every pattern belongs to an identity, and it's usually one that was installed long before you had the awareness to question it. With extraction, this means tracing the thought back to its source. Not to dwell in it, it's to identify which version of you generated it so you know which identity that you're actually dealing with. And for this, you want to ask yourself some questions. When did you first have this thought specifically? You want to get super specific here, like you need to really go back and just all through your entire life, childhood, adult experience, teenager, whatever, think about it and reflect upon when did this thought first come here? And then whose voice does it sound like when it arrives? And what experience you taught your nervous system that this thought was necessary for survival? Very, very powerful questions, okay? And you want to go through these and really be honest with yourself. And what identity does this thought protect? And from what? What is it protecting it from? Is it protecting itself? Is it protecting you? What exactly is it protecting it from? You see, for Ryan, the extraction took one session. Every time success became real, rather than theoretical, that thought arrived. This will fail, you'll be exposed. And the source was a specific series of experiences in his early childhood where his competence was publicly questioned, and the nervous system's conclusion is to provide protection for the next 32 years, where you want to stay small enough so that your failure stays private. 32 years in one extracted pattern. And keep in mind, it's very important that you understand that the pattern is not you. It's a survival protocol that was installed by a younger version of you who no longer needs it. And it's important for you to understand and realize that extraction is not therapy. You're not going back to process the original state or the original situation. What you're doing is you're identifying the source precisely enough to know that this thought belongs to that old identity, not the one that I'm building now, which leads directly to step three. This is where you want to transcend the identity. This is the step here that Ryan had never been shown. He could easily observe his thoughts at level two. He could trace it to its source, but he didn't know what to do with that information once he had it. And the way that you transcend the thought is by remembering who you choose to be, not who the old pattern says you are, not who the evidence from your past suggests that you should expect to remain. It's who you have decided to be and are actively building. Here's an important question. Does this thought belong to my future self? Or the version of me I no longer willing to be. This question here, the does this thought belong to my future self, or does it belong to the version of me I no longer am willing to be? This is the transcendence question. When the old pattern fires, you don't argue with it, you don't suppress it, you don't analyze it further, you identify which identity it belongs to, and you step out of that identity consciously and into the new one that you've chosen. This requires that you have built the new identity precisely enough to step into it under pressure. Transcendence is not suppression of your old identity, it's the precise recognition that it no longer runs you. Let's go to the final step here. The A. So this is where we want to architect the new reality. You see, with the architecting of the new reality and the architect itself, it doesn't just exit the old pattern. The architect installs a replacement, choose a new interpretation, a new belief, a new identity, a new action, deliberately, consciously, from the level of one who directs, not the one who reacts. So now that we've gone through all of this here in terms of the meta system, and we've gone through mapping the thoughts, extracting the patterns, transcending the identity and architecting the new reality. I want to go over some examples. So if previously there was the interpretation of this will fail and I'll get exposed, then we think about what is the architect's interpretation of this? And the architect sees this as unfamiliar territory, which means this is exactly where growth lives. Now, with the belief of I'm not ready. And so what does the future self believe? The future self believes that I become ready by moving, not by waiting. And with the identity, I'm someone who stays safe. And who is the architect choosing to be here? The architect is choosing to be someone who builds in public because the proof only comes from the attempt. And then with action, the architect is asking, what's one action that the new identity would be taking automatically, naturally? You see, the architect doesn't just think differently, the architect acts differently, and the new reality is built from those actions. Ryan spent years watching his patterns. He could name every one of them, he could trace every one to its source, and he still felt completely controlled by them. Not because he wasn't aware enough, because awareness, without direction, is still level two, and I almost made a major decision from a thought that wasn't mine. It was a conditioned survival pattern, years in the making, dressed up as logic, arriving precisely at the moment I was about to step into something it had never seen me do before. Here's what you need to understand. You are not your thoughts. You are the awareness that can watch them, and you are the architect that can redirect them, map what you're thinking, extract what pattern it belongs to, transcend the identity that generated it, and architect deliberately, consciously, what replaces it. You don't control reality by controlling every event. You control reality by controlling the consciousness that interprets every event. When you rise above the mind and become the one who directs it, you don't just change your thoughts, you change your identity, your timeline, and your entire reality.