The Observer Effect: How Watching Yourself Changes Everything (Even Your Past)

Listen to an expanded conversation between Bart and Sunny around this newsletter:

Last week, Bart dropped a wild thought experiment:

We asked:

What would you notice about yourself if you watched the playback? What would make you proud? What would make you pause? Are you showing up the way you think and say you are, are you living in an illusion about who you really are? Taking it even further, if a person or a panel of people were watching the playback… what conclusion would they walk away with about who you are based solely on the data of your actions?

At the time it just felt like a powerful awareness exercise…

A few days later, after we sent the newsletter, filed the podcast, and met with our Legion 11:11 Inner Circle to propose this same experiment (pretending a videographer is following them)… we had a moment.

Driving in the car, Sunny turned to Bart and said:

Little did we know, we were both tapping into one of the most powerful principles in all of physics and psychology. But it turns out…we were. It’s called the Observer Effect, and just might be the simplest way to change who you are, how you perform, and what you’re capable of creating in your life. Because what you observe, you change.

🌀 What it the Observer Effect?

In quantum mechanics, particles don’t have a fixed state. They exist in superposition, meaning all possible versions of themselves…until they are measured or observed. But the moment you observe them? Boom. The wave collapses. The particle takes form.
Possibility becomes reality.

The Double-Slit Experiment (Simplified!)

This experiment showed just how weird and real this is:

You are a scientist and you replace the paintballs with electrons or photons (light particles), and you fire them one at a time, just like the paintballs. But instead of two lines… you get a striped wave pattern. Why? Because the particles are behaving like waves, interfering with themselves, like they went through both slits at once. 

So, as a scientist you said, “Let’s find out which hole they are going through. Let’s watch them.”

So you set up a tiny camera at the slits. And guess what? The moment you did that, the striped pattern disappeared. Now the particles acted like little balls again, going through only one slit. 

Just observing them changed how they behave.  

Even Weirder: Delayed-Choice Experiments

Later versions of the experiment observed the particles after they passed through the slits. The result still changed retroactively. It’s like the particle knew whether it was being watched… even in the future! 

So what does this mean?

Reality isn’t fixed until it is interacted with.  The universe doesn’t “decide” what happens until something observes it.  This leads to the profound idea that conscious observation plays a role in shaping reality - not just in physics, but maybe in life itself.

Schrödinger’s Cat – The Paradox of Observation

One more mind-bender. Schrödinger’s Cat is a famous thought experiment in quantum physics, proposed by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It was meant to illustrate the bizarre implications of quantum mechanics - specifically, how particles exist in multiple states until they are observed.

Here’s the idea: 

Imagine a cat sealed inside a box with:

• A radioactive atom that has a 50% chance of decaying in one hour

• A Geiger counter to detect decay.

• A vial of poison that will be released if the decay is detected. 

You close the box. Now:

• If the atom decays, then poison is released and the cat dies. 

• If the atom does not decay, poison is not released and the cat lives. 

Here’s where it gets wild:

According to quantum mechanics, until you open the box and observe, the atom exists in superposition - both decayed and not decayed. So the cat is also in a superposition: it is both alive and dead at the same time. 

It’s not until you observe it that reality picks a side! 

What does this mean for your life?

That business idea you’re sitting on? That conversation you keep avoiding? That version of you you’ve imagined becoming?  Until you act, they both exist and don’t exist. Until you “open the box,” your future is both happening and not. 

Just like Schrödinger’s Cat. Just like the Double-Slit Experiment.

But here’s the catch:

If you don’t decide and don’t act… you keep living. But you live in the unconscious default state - the “you who could have,” not the you who did.

Not choosing is still a choice. And that choice collapses you into the “same as yesterday” version of yourself. Patterns repeat. Your identity stays frozen. The loop continues. Until... You observe it. Name it. And choose differently.

That’s when reality bends. That’s when identity shifts. That’s when a new timeline begins. CRAZY!

Why It Matters (For Real Life)

Self-awareness is your measurement device. It’s your Geiger counter or your quantum detector. Simply noticing a pattern in yourself - procrastination, fear, jealousy, perfectionism - is not the same as watching passively. 

In fact, if the scientists had not put cameras on the slits in the Double-Slit Experiment, the particles would not have changed their behavior. Self-awareness does the same thing as the tiny cameras because it’s an intentional act of observation with meaning.

You’re not just seeing it, you’re consciously engaging with it. And that engagement collapses the wave. 

You stop being the actor in the pattern and you become the observer of the script. And from there, you can write a new one! 

Can You Change the Past?

Kind of. Here’s how:

While we can’t go back and change what happened in the past, we can change how it lives in our nervous system. 

Every time you recall a memory, you reconstruct it. Every time you add compassion or insight to that moment, you rewrite it. 

Let’s say you acted out of fear a few years ago.  

• If you never reflect on it, your nervous system stores that reaction as “This is how I respond to stress.” 

• But if you later observe it with compassion and awareness (“I was afraid, I didn’t feel safe, I needed boundaries”), you update the code. 

Your nervous system now holds a new imprint of who you are in relationship to that event.  That’s healing. That’s integration. That’s quantum reprogramming. 

Just like in the delayed-choice experiment, where observation after the fact still changes the outcome, you can collapse a wound into wisdom.

Final Thought:

You don’t have to hustle harder. You don’t need to fix every part of yourself before you move forward. You just need to become aware. To observe. To see with honesty, with curiosity, with compassion.

And the moment you do?

Patterns shift. Identity bends. Possibility becomes reality. Whether it's a new idea, a new habit, or a new version of you, it’s not waiting for more time. It’s waiting to be seen.

So this week, become the observer of your own life. Watch how you move. Catch the patterns. Name what’s real. And then ask yourself: “If I were playing full out… what would I choose next?” Because you are the measurement device. And what you observe… you change.

Don’t let your future stay in the box.

Open it. Name it. Live it.
Play full out.

Life Updates:

• Our youngest daughter, Kenya, came for a weekend visit with her husband, Kaden. It was really fun to spend time with both of them! We really didn’t get too crazy for the 4th. Just kind of relaxed for the day and did some crazy long sparklers that night. Oh - and of course grilled some burgers up!

• We got our three cameras set up to start filming our podcast… it’s still a work in progress as we are in the thick of our learning curve!

• Bart has been roping a little bit to keep our horses healthy and active. Of course he enjoys it, too! Pickleball has been a little slim because we have been super busy… and Kenya doesn’t play so we also didn’t want to desert her to go do it!

• We will be heading to Sweden, Poland, and Portugal in the first two weeks of August! Send us all your travel tips if you have them! This will be a big adventure for us!

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