This month, we’ll close the year with a hard but healing question: How do you want to be remembered—for your reactions, or for your values?
We live in a time where outrage is rewarded, drama is monetized, and “hot takes” are treated like truth. The more extreme a view is, the more clicks it gets. It becomes tempting to dig our heels in just to be “right” or following controversial voices so we feel part of something. But every time we do, we’re spending something we never get back: our time, our attention, and the legacy we’re building in real people’s lives.
True self-advocacy is not about always winning the argument. It is about governing ourselves—choosing what we attach our name, energy, and character to. That means learning to see when our human nature is slipping into hypocrisy, moral licensing (“I did one good thing, so I can slack here”), or moral disengagement.
It also means refusing to be pulled into the attention economy’s trap where outrage and nonsense get center stage and wisdom gets drowned out.
The Brain on Division: What Happens When We Dig In
Let’s start with what happens in our brains when we decide someone is “other.”
Dopamine’s released when you achieve goals, win competitions, or when you “win” an argument. It feels good to be right. It feels powerful to prove someone else wrong. The problem? This creates a dopamine addiction to conflict and your brain starts seeking out opportunities to argue, to disagree, to prove superiority. The cost: You become someone who chooses conflict over connection.
Oxytocin releases during hugs, meaningful conversations, or acts of kindness. Research reveals that Oxytocin is also tribalistic and increases trust and empathy towards people we see as “us.” When you feel closer to your “tribe,” you feel more justified in treating outsiders with coldness. The cost: You lose the capacity for universal empathy and your social circle becomes an echo chamber.
Serotonin regulates your mood and sense of wellbeing and is the chemical that helps you feel at peace. Spending your days arguing online and judging others depletes your serotonin levels. The cost: You become the person who always sees the worst in others. You lose access to joy, peace, and contentment.
Endorphins, your natural painkillers, are released during laughter, physical touch, and exercise. By cutting yourself off, you stop laughing with people who think differently or experiencing the relief of letting go. The cost: You live in chronic stress with no natural relief. You age faster. You get sick more often.
The Wisdom of Reading Between the Lines
There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from defending positions you don’t truly believe in. Your brain knows. Even if you’re consciously committed to a performance, your unconscious mind recognizes the dissonance between your authentic values and your performed position.
Studies on cognitive dissonance show that maintaining contradictory beliefs creates measurable stress in the brain. Your anterior cingulate cortex (the brain’s “error detection” center) stays chronically activated. You become exhausted maintaining your own narrative.
So how do we escape this neurochemical trap?
The answer is governance of self through conscious awareness. Reading between the lines isn’t about being cynical or distrustful. It’s about recognizing:
- What’s Real vs. What’s Performance
- What Serves You vs. What Serves an Agenda
- What Unites vs. What Divides
When you pause to consciously evaluate rather than reactively respond, you activate your prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain responsible for executive function, long-term thinking, and values-aligned behavior.
This pause interrupts the automatic dopamine-seeking, tribalistic oxytocin, and serotonin-depleting pattern. You regain agency.
Living by Your Standards, Not Someone Else’s
Here’s what the research on affective influence teaches us: Most of our behaviors are unconsciously driven by how we want to feel, not by what we consciously value.
The practice of self-governance means:
- Identify Your True Values. Not what you should value. Not what your tribe values. What YOU authentically value when no one is watching.
- Making Conscious Choices Aligned With Those Values. Even when it’s unpopular. Even when it costs you social reward. Even when it means saying “I don’t know” or “I was wrong.”
- Accepting That Not Everything Requires Your Opinion. You don’t have to have a position on every controversy. You don’t have to engage with every outrage. You’re allowed to say “That’s not my fight” and preserve your energy for what genuinely matters to you.
Living authentically—even when it means less social validation—actually increases baseline serotonin. Your brain rewards genuine integrity over performed conformity.
Time: The Resource We Can’t Recover
Let’s talk about something we avoid thinking about: The mathematics of regret and that time is finite.
If you’re 30 years old, you have approximately 2,080 weeks left (assuming 70-year lifespan), 14,600 days or 350,400 hours. If you’re 50 years old, you have 1,040 weeks, 7,300 days, or 175,200 hours. How many of those hours do you want to spend arguing with strangers or proving your point instead of deepening relationships?
Research on end-of-life reflections consistently shows that people regret losing touch with friends and loved ones and not being true to themselves.
No one regrets: Not winning enough arguments. Not being divisive enough. Not proving they were right more often.
The Legacy Question: How Do You Want to Be Remembered?
Your brain is constantly predicting your future based on your present patterns.
Let’s do an exercise. Close your eyes and imagine someone describing you:
- Tomorrow someone you interacted with today describes you to their family tonight. What do they say?
- Next Week a colleague mentions you in conversation. What’s the adjective they use?
- Next Year an old friend thinks about you. What emotion do they feel?
What’s fascinating is your brain already knows the legacy you’re creating. When we recognize our own patterns, we gain freedom.
Governance of self isn’t about controlling others. It’s about consciously directing your own choices and your own legacy. Every choice rewires your brain.
You get to choose.
There is so much life to live and not enough time to waste it proving we are right to people who may never truly see us. We gain wisdom and fortitude when we learn to govern our attention, filter the noise, and stay close to what we know is good.
The way we treat others and ourselves right now is the soil of our legacy.
© 2025 ChiKobi Health, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
SODE Soundbites: Your monthly gateway to understanding your brain’s natural chemistry and how it shapes your life, relationships, and legacy.
