Biwen Su

Another post. You might be surprised I’m writing so often these days. Here’s why: the other day I was listening to A Bit of Optimism, Simon Sinek’s podcast, and he said something about writing that stayed with me. After he finished his book, he realized it was the act of writing that made him grow — not the finished book itself. That really inspired me.

For a long time I told everyone I wanted to be a writer, but I barely wrote anything. Every time a friend asked how it was going, I’d say I was “working on it.” Why? Because I pictured myself as the best writer in the room, and between the writer I hoped to be and the one I actually was, there was a gap. And writing, as a process, isn’t something you can shortcut or skip.

Once that clicked, I started writing more and more. Now I even carry a little pocket notebook everywhere — on a boat, in Costco, wherever — always jotting something down.

My two favorite podcasts right now are A Bit of Optimism by Simon Sinek, where he talks about how staying optimistic has actually served him, and What Now? with Trevor Noah. Both shows are built around conversations with all kinds of people who’ve succeeded in their fields, and the talks are fascinating because the hosts ask good questions. They’re curious, they listen well, and nothing ever feels dry. Both are willing to be vulnerable when the moment calls for it, so the conversations feel like friends hanging out — light and easy. Perfect company while I’m doing chores. I highly recommend them to anyone hungry to grow.

This morning I listened to a really good Trevor episode — a conversation with Emily McDonald called “Can You Rewire Your Brain?”

I’d already been following Emily on Instagram before I pressed play. The algorithm really does serve you what you need: when you like something, you’re telling it what you want more of, so be mindful of what you consume. I try not to overspend my time on social media. In the episode, Emily made a point I keep thinking about — for people who say they have ADHD, it’s often not that they were born with a short attention span, but that we’re all so well-practiced at distraction now. Our brains have been trained to be distracted.

She also talked about how she used to be addicted to vaping, and the way she quit was by telling herself, every single time, that vaping is disgusting. With repetition, the dopamine hit shrank. It took time and practice, but it worked.

So from now on, I’m going to tell myself that scrolling before bed is disgusting.

When I first heard “rewiring your brain,” I assumed it was some spiritual thing. But when I looked into it, it isn’t. There’s a term for it: neuroplasticity. It means that when your brain repeats something over and over, it can literally rewire its own networks. Isn’t that cool? My quote for it is: you are not a tree, you can always move. You can move upward — grow, become bigger and better — or you can move downward and shrink.

When I was volunteering in Waikiki, there was a Russian girl working there too. For whatever reason, she’d also quit everything in New York — left her immigrant mom and moved to Hawaii with no plan at all. Maybe because we shared that New York history, we bonded fast in the first few weeks. But we drifted apart just as quickly. She loved to talk about her childhood trauma — how her dad mistreated her mom, how her parents neglected her. Sometimes a few of us travelers would be deep in a good conversation, and when she joined, she’d circle right back to the same wounds, again and again. I tried to help. I told her the victim mindset wasn’t doing her any favors, because if you stay the victim, you never build strength and nothing ever changes. And because of that mindset, she wasn’t seeking out work or opportunities — she just begged food off random guests. Most of them gave in out of plain human kindness. I kept telling her to find a job. She wouldn’t listen. Eventually I gave up, frustrated and helpless. I realized you can’t care for someone who won’t care for themselves.

Back then I didn’t know the term “identity shift.” It means that when you tell your brain a new story about who you are, repetition eventually rewrites you into that identity, and your actions start to fall in line with it. Mind and body are connected — that’s why meditation matters too, since it guides the body.

Once I understood this, I started telling myself, “I’m good at organizing,” “I’m good at math.” I can’t wait to see how I change. Growing up I wasn’t bad at math, but next to my other subjects it was my weak spot. And honestly, I think modern Chinese society plays a part in that. People there are intensely competitive, so they carry a “definitive” mindset — splitting kids cleanly into “arts” and “sciences” while Western countries are raising theirs to be well-rounded.

In mainland China, people believe you have to firmly sort yourself into the humanities track or the science track, and that black-or-white, either/or thinking is everywhere. It wasn’t until I came to America that I slowly shifted: a person can be well-rounded. And to grow into a whole person, you have to break the frame. I noticed the same pattern when I looked across modern Chinese history. In the Deng Xiaoping era, during the new wave of Reform and Opening Up, the Chinese Communist Party wanted to rescue the economy and improve people’s lives, and Deng said, “It doesn’t matter whether the cat is white or black — as long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat.” Back then the private economy took off, minds opened up, and literature and art flourished. The Mao and Xi eras were comparatively more closed. Humans are tribal animals, and inside a big enough environment, propaganda sinks deep — just like advertising. The only real difference is whether the message is political or commercial.

That’s the macro view. On the micro level, our parents shape us just as much. In the episode, Emily shared that her parents’ relationship wasn’t good, and it shaped her romantic life. Because she’d never seen a healthy intimate relationship up close, her brain didn’t know what one felt like — so even when a good partner came along, the unfamiliarity made her read “good” as unpredictable, sometimes even unsafe.

That part really resonated. My parents’ relationship isn’t great either, and the kicker is that they won’t divorce — they say it’s for the kids. But decades of simply coexisting isn’t good for the children. Emily said that once she recognized this in herself, she began speaking to herself in the voice of her ideal partner — calling herself “hey babe,” or taking herself on the kind of date she’d want to be taken on.

That’s something I need to learn and practice. It’s not that good dates don’t exist; it’s that my brain hasn’t lived one yet. So to get ready, we should study what healthy relationships actually look like and rehearse them in our minds first — that way, when the real thing shows up, we’ll know how to meet it.

Manifesting is probably the same idea. When I was on Oahu, my good friend Gonzi would drive me through the expensive neighborhoods and take me on a spin past the beautiful houses, so my brain could taste what it feels like to own a place with a mountain-and-ocean view. From there I can build a “to-be list” — and once I have a to-be list, I can start working on the to-do list.