#22 - Rethinking self: from fixed identity to dynamic process
What Self-Determination Theory, Buddhism, and modern psychology can teach us about autonomy and change.
Earlier this week, I was reading a textbook chapter1 by Ryan and Deci on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) — a core framework for understanding human motivation. They describe three basic psychological needs that underpin growth and wellbeing:
Autonomy: feeling a sense of choice and volition in what we do.
Competence: feeling effective and capable of influencing outcomes.
Relatedness: feeling connected to and valued by others.
What stood out to me was how they described SDT as a theory of the self. That simple phrase caught my attention and prompted me to think more deeply about what self actually means — in psychology, in Buddhism, and in my own experience.
The conceptualisation of self
Essentially, in SDT the self refers to the experience of volition: the motivation to act from one’s own will rather than under external pressure. In other words, it’s wanting to do something because you want to do it, not because somebody else tells you that you should do it.
At first I found this difficult to grasp. Much of Western psychology uses Descartes’ dualism to understand the self: the idea of a mind that owns and directs a body. The self is treated as an independent and measurable entity. Something observable through traits, beliefs and goals, an inner ‘I’ that possesses qualities like consciousness.
In contrast, Buddhism sees the self not as a thing but as a process. Each time we try to grasp what it is, it vanishes under examination, folding back into itself in a self-referential loop.
To illustrate this, my Buddhism teacher asked us, “At what point does the seed become a plant?” When the seed is planted, it begins to germinate. A shoot breaks through the shell, then pushes upward through the soil. At what moment does this unfolding cease being a seed, and instead become a plant? In Buddhism, this is the principle of dependent arising: the understanding that all phenomena exist only in relation to conditions, which are always in flux.
These three conceptualisations appeared to contradict one another, and I wasn’t sure which held the most meaning or practical value for me. I turned to ChatGPT to help me make sense of them and explore how these different views of self might be reconciled.
Reconciling these three definitions of self
At first, I still wasn’t sure I understood. But at least with ChatGPT I could ask without fear of sounding stupid, or worrying that the other person might think they hadn’t explained it well. We went back and forth many times on these ideas. At one point, ChatGPT used a metaphor of a whirlpool to explain the Buddhist concept of self: water has materiality — atoms and molecules — but the whirlpool itself has no physical substance. It’s only a pattern within that substance.
That, I realised, is how to see the self. These three definitions can be integrated if self is understood as a dynamic pattern of information and experience, rather than as a fixed thing. In this sense, the “I” we refer to in psychology and everyday language is the brain’s model of its own ongoing cognitive and emotional processes.
Thoughts and information
This led me to consider what is a ‘thought’? It has no material substance itself, yet it arises from neurones, chemicals and electricity interacting within the brain — all of which are physical things. What we experience as a thought is the informational pattern emerging from those processes, not the matter itself.
So the thinking we do about what is ‘I’, is a particular information pattern, made up of our beliefs, biases, thoughts, feelings, memories, experiences, sensations. We cannot point to any one of those and see it as us uniquely: it is the combination and continuity of these patterns over time that gives rise to personhood.
The distributed self
If we take this line of thinking one step further, we can see that self can also be distributed beyond the material confines of the body.
How?
Through the diaries we keep. Through other people’s memories of us. Through official records in government databases. Through videos shared on social media. Through Substack posts we write. Through our ChatGPT conversations.
These informational patterns exist and endure beyond our corporeal and temporal limits, inviting us to extend our concept of self beyond boundaries, beyond dualism.
It opens the door to consider multiple perspectives and definitions of self, and how each reshapes us through our relationships with others, systems and our environment.
Seeing the self in the real world
These ideas about self aren’t just abstract. They show up every day in my coaching work.
I often work with clients who become tightly bound to professional labels, as if the title itself defines who they are. I sometimes use the example of a doctor: the label stays the same, but it can hold many expressions — a GP, a surgeon, a psychiatrist, a researcher. Even within surgery there are layers of specialisation. The title offers pattern coherence, but not confinement.
When we see self as a dynamic pattern rather than a static label, identity becomes something we can shape and flex, instead of something we have to rigidly defend. I believe that’s where genuine autonomy lives — in choosing to define ourselves by what we do, not who we are, because action is where meaning is realised.
Ryan, R.M., and Deci, E.L. (2017) Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development and Wellness, Guildford Publications, pp. 3-25