Mind Hacking

“Close your eyes and imagine your life in ten years, with your best possible outcome. Try to picture your best possible future in vivid detail. Where will you live? What will you do for work? For fun? Will you have a partner? What kinds of friends will you have? How much money will you have? What will your mind look like?

Go on. Close your eyes and see what you find. I'll wait.”

“It's easy to figure out what you don't want: they're the things you're always complaining about, to yourself and everyone else. But do you know what you want? Have you written it down? If you get the dreaded job interview question, "Where do you see yourself in twenty years?" will you have a thoughtful answer, or will you draw a blank?

In a fascinating study by psychologist Laura King®, college students were asked to write for 20 minutes a day about their "best possible future self." She challenged them to stretch their imaginations to envision the biggest, best-case scenario for their lives. After just a few days, the test subjects who spent the time imagining a positive future were significantly happier and more positive than a control group. Another longer-term study by King showed that writing positively made them healthier as well, with fewer visits to doctors.”

“Each night before I go to sleep, I mentally repeat the loop:

> My ability to bring amazing things into the world is exponentially increasing.

What will this simple thought bring over a lifetime of repeating it? I intend to find out.

You can believe that your mind creates your internal reality, and to a large degree, your external reality as well. Using imagination, you can learn to not only be happier and think more positively, but to create bigger and better things for yourself and the world: to create your own "reality distortion field.”

“Consciously reshape your thoughts, and you can actively reshape the world around you. Once you think about it, anything is possible.”

“I want to convince you that imagination is real. In some ways, it is more real than the world around you. And with a little training and practice, you can develop your power of imagination to not only change your life, but to change the world around you.

Your world can become anything you can imagine.”

“Shiny New METAL” My Emotion-Thought-Action Loop

“By developing the skill of imagination, you can learn to picture what you want, not just what you don't want. Just as a technology hacker finds a new use for an existing gadget (turning a leafblower into a homemade hovercraft), you can construct new ways of thinking about yourself and the world. By choosing to think in larger, more positive terms, you begin to rewrite your personal reality in a larger, more positive direction. Your life gets not unimaginably better, but imaginably better.”

Emotion > Thought > Action

“On your pad of paper, after your daily concentration game, I recommend tracing My Emotion-Thought-Action Loop, using the debugging tools you've learned above. It might look something like this.”

“For the rest of the day, try to "catch" your negative mind loops as they happen. Watch for signs of mental "pain" or friction, which are a good indicator of thought processes that need debugging. Debug each negative thought loop down to its root problem, using one of the three techniques:

- The Five Whys: Ask "Why?" five times

- Worst Case Scenario: What's the worst thing that could happen?

- Third Person Perspective: What would you say if you were hearing this from someone else?

At the end of the day, write down each of the "root problems" you uncovered on your practice sheet, preferably using the METAL method.”*

*see earlier posts for techniques mentioned above.

“Bare Metal”

“Bare metal" is a term we use for a new piece of computer hardware, with no operating system or even an assembler. It's just clean hardware, with no layers of junk added in. “In mind hacking, we're approaching our minds with that same spirit of "getting to the bottom of things," or going for the root loops that are controlling our emotions, thoughts, and actions. In fact, METAL can be used as an acrostic for: M y E motion T hought A ction L oop. 

We've seen how everything we do is preceded by a thought, and that thought is often preceded by an emotion. By developing clarity of mind through regular concentration games, then using the debugging tools outlined in this section, we can track down the logical sequence of Emotion-Thought-Action that is causing problems in our lives. (You'll soon learn how to reprogram your METAL, but you can't fix the bugs until you identify them.) 

On your pad of paper, after your daily concentration game, I recommend tracing My Emotion-Thought-Action Loop, using the debugging tools you've learned above.”

“Method #3: Third-Person Perspective”

“This method is as simple as asking, "If this was someone else's problem, what would I say to that person?”

“When using the "Third-Person Perspective" technique, it may help you to imagine a friend sitting across the table, or it may help you to imagine a scientist, a great leader, “or another trusted person of authority.”

“Method #2: Worst Case Scenario”

“Much of our mental pain is based on fears of imaginary events that simply will never happen. This fear is often just beneath the surface, gnawing away at us. By exaggerating the fear, we can pull it out into the open. We do this by asking one question: What's the worst case scenario?”

“We take our fears to their extreme conclusions to help us identify the limiting belief.”