We don’t change what we are, we change what we think what we are.

Butterworth’s line reflects a New Thought/Unity emphasis on identity as primarily a matter of consciousness. The claim is that personal transformation does not begin by altering some fixed inner “essence,” but by revising the self-concept—the stories, labels, and assumptions through which we interpret our nature and possibilities. In that view, behavior and circumstance tend to follow belief: when we stop thinking of ourselves as limited, unworthy, or powerless, we become able to act from a different center. The quote also implies a distinction between an underlying self (stable, already whole) and the mental image of self (malleable), making change a process of awakening rather than self-reconstruction.