9 - The Chain: How Action Expands Your World

Toye Oyelese

Well, welcome back to The Sphere of Reality. I'm Toye Oyelese, glad to have you with me for another round. If you've been with me for the past eight episodes, you probably remember all the bits and pieces we've talked about: consciousness, boundaries, antevalence — all those strange but, I hope, intriguing ideas. But today, I want to gather them together. Tie it all up, at least for now, into one framework you can actually use. And at the very heart of that framework is this simple, stubborn chain: Action leads to expansion. Simple as that. Not intention, not wishing, not waiting — action.

Toye Oyelese

Every time you step out, do something you haven't done before, or pay attention to something at the edge of your awareness, you push that boundary outward. You’re claiming more territory — turning the raw, ambiguous stuff outside your comfort zone into something you can actually navigate. I mean, if you’ve ever moved to a new city or changed jobs, you know this feeling, right? At first, everything is unfamiliar, even a bit intimidating. But every action — walking a block you haven't walked, trying out the local café, embarrassing yourself with the new bus schedule — all of that is literal expansion. Each new experience, no matter how small, adds to the territory of what you know and what you’re capable of. I mess up these analogies all the time, but let’s go with hiking: the more you hike, the bigger your sense of the land. You kind of turn that map from a blank outline into real places. So, expansion through action — that’s the core. That’s the starting point.

Toye Oyelese

Now, there's a bit more geometry here — and not the kind that makes my kids’ eyes glaze over, I hope. Think back to episode six, when we talked about surface area. As you expand, you don’t just make your 'sphere' larger, you actually increase its surface area. And that surface area…well, it’s the space where your personal reality can possibly bump into something — or someone — else. The bigger your surface area, the more contact points you have with the world. It's not about luck or fate; it's basic geometry. If you think of it as, say, a sphere growing larger, its surface grows a lot faster than the center. And with more ‘surface,’ you have more opportunities for contact — for running into new people, ideas, opportunities.

Toye Oyelese

That’s why, as we discussed a couple episodes back, real connections are a function of prior expansion, not something you get by chasing after relationships directly. And I know, sometimes we’re tempted to do just that — to think, okay, if I focus really hard on finding the right friend or partner or job and just optimize for connection, something good will happen. But, at least in my experience, and honestly in the research too, it doesn’t quite work like that. If you expand yourself, your surface area increases, and with it comes a much higher probability of interesting, meaningful contact. Directly chasing after people, or even networking — which, ugh, don’t get me started — often puts the cart before the horse.

Toye Oyelese

If you’re not growing, there’s less of you on offer, so even if you do make contact, it’s limited. In a way, the expansion itself is what creates the real possibility. That’s something I’ve really had to relearn over the years, even as a family doc — if I sit there hoping people will just open up or change, nothing happens. But if I expand my own curiosity and skill, suddenly there’s more shape to my practice, and more contact follows. Sometimes I forget that, but, well, that’s why we’re here, reminding each other.

Toye Oyelese

Let’s flip the chain around now — because it’s a two-way street. Inaction leads to stagnation or contraction. When we withdraw, or just let fear and old habits keep us in a holding pattern, our world doesn’t stand still — it actually shrinks. Happens almost invisibly, doesn’t it? The surface area decreases, sometimes without us noticing, and with that, so do the chances for contact. One less patient I talk to at the end of the day. One photo walk I skip because of rain, thinking I’ll go tomorrow. The people and ideas I could have run into — poof, gone. I’ll admit, there have been times, after a professional setback, I retreated. Closed off. You know, telling myself I’d come back out when I felt better, but weeks later, my world was just smaller. Fewer faces, fewer stories, less richness. Then I forced myself — sometimes grudgingly — to re-engage.

Toye Oyelese

Go back to those community meetings, pick up my camera, chat with a new neighbor in the waiting room. And slowly, the sphere grew again. It feels awkward at first, like trying to stretch out a cramped muscle, but it works. And that’s the lesson: withdrawal doesn’t just feel narrow, it is narrow. The world you can actually touch contracts. So if you want more — more connection, more surprise, more possibility — you’ve gotta expand first. You do it by doing. By showing up. Not by worrying or wishing, but by acting at the edge of what you know.

Toye Oyelese

That’s the chain — action expands, expansion increases chance, and from there, possibilities for rich, meaningful connection. Next time, we’ll look at what remains open — the hard questions this framework doesn’t quite answer, where we go from here. Until then, I’m Toye Oyelese, and this is The Sphere of Reality. Thanks for listening.