Джон Харгрейв - Mind Hacking [How to Change Your Mind for Good in 21 Days]

By the age of three, we had grown incredibly complex: walking, running, speaking in complete sentences, and expertly manipulating our parents. We now had a sophisticated operating system, which was learning to program itself through a continuous stream of questions. (“Why are clouds? Who are trees? Where is muffins?”) All these skills, habits, and personality traits were reinforced by constant repetition: loops building on loops.

Over the years, we learned increasingly complicated mental loops. First we learned there were substances going in our mouth. Then we learned some of these substances tasted better than others. Later we learned these substances were called “food,” and then we learned how to get more of the foods we liked.

Along the way, we were continually developing mental models—thought habits or loops—that saved us time later on: I only like white foods. I usually get food after a boo-boo. Grandparents give better food than parents . These loops optimized our behavior, making it more efficient to get what we wanted. Our code grew more elegant.

In school, we learned through repetition. First we learned the concept of numbers, then we learned operations on those numbers, then we learned layers of abstraction like algebra and trigonometry. And always the loops, in the form of practice, exercises, and tests. Later, these loops helped us with specific tasks like managing money, doing home renovation, and acquiring businesses. Our operating system was now fully formed, and specialized apps were beginning to appear.

Society deeply embedded its values into us through continued repetition and reinforcement: Sunday school, teen magazines, pop music, Disney movies, TV shows. And always the advertisements, repeated over and over, expertly crafted loops telling us what to buy. Pop-up ads and spyware were getting installed on our operating system, slowing everything down.

Perhaps the most powerful loops were the ones making up our self-image and our view of the world. If we came from a safe, stable home, we probably grew up to see the world as a safe and welcoming place, thanks to the power of that repeated daily experience, that repeated loop. If we came from a chaotic, broken home, with repeated instances of lying or abuse, the world became a disturbing, dishonest place.

If we were always told that we were brilliant, we grew up believing it. Now, when we meet with difficulty or setbacks, our default response might be Hey, I’m smart and I’ll figure this out . If we were constantly berated for how terrible we were, we grew up with that internal dialogue. Now, when we run into trouble, we think, Just my luck. Another failed project .

If our parents acted like money was always in short supply, our mental loops probably run something like I’ve got to save every penny or I’ll be broke , even when we have plenty of money and such thoughts have far outlived their usefulness. If our parents spent money frivolously or gambled it away, our mental loops might go like It’s only money, and besides, I really need that rare albino giraffe .

If our parents had a reasonably functional relationship, we may have internalized loops like It’s okay to compromise with your partner or We are working together as a team . If they fought bitterly, even after they divorced, we may have deep programming that says Long-term relationships do not work out and I am destined to live angry and alone .

As with the low-level loops of code running the clock on your computer, these loops can be so deeply embedded that they’re difficult to detect. They run everything, yet they’re invisible. That’s because, to a very great extent, these loops are self-fulfilling prophecies : if our loops tell us we’re good with people, then we’ll probably seek out opportunities to meet more people, and through simple practice we will be good with people. If our loops tell us we’ll never amount to anything, we’ll be nervous and afraid to jump on new opportunities, and we ultimately won’t amount to much.

Addiction is a loop. We eat, or drink, or smoke, in order to feel better and better. We feel horrible the next morning, so we start the loop again, while our lives get worse and worse. Just about anything can be made into an obsessive loop: talking, pornography, flame wars, religion, worrying, shopping, sex.

Just as it’s hard to believe that loops of code can build an immersive video game, it’s hard to believe that our thoughts, our behavior, and even our lives could be built through loops. Once you begin to observe your mind closely, however, you’ll find these mental loops control just about everything you do.

Your loops create your thoughts.

Your thoughts create your actions.

Your actions create your life.

Therefore, the quality of our loops determines the quality of our lives .

Fix your loops,

Fix your life.

This is great news: it means that even though many of our loops may be invisible to us, there is one simple way to find them, and that is by looking at the quality of our lives .

When you use a well-designed app, it just works . Think about your favorite search engine: how fast, powerful, and intuitive it is. Behind the scenes are millions of well-designed loops, all optimized to work together harmoniously.

Similarly, if our mental loops are reasonably well designed, our life works . We are successful at work, play, relationships, money, and love. Successful does not mean perfect; it simply means that our lives have a minimum of friction, a minimum of pain . Where there’s pain ( outwardpain, such as a series of failed jobs or relationships, or inwardpain, such as depression or anxiety), there’s usually a faulty loop. In fact, pain is an excellent indicator that we need to examine our loops.

Thus, improving the quality of our mental loops involves tracking down the faulty thinking that is causing us pain. It’s a process that is similar to tracking down faulty computer code, or debugging.

The First Computer Bug

If there were a Geek Hall of Fame, “Amazing” Grace Hopper would deserve a nomination.

In 1947, “Amazing” Grace Hopper was a forty-year-old computer programmer at Harvard University, working on the Harvard Mark II, a huge electromechanical computer that used relays, switches, and vacuum tubes to perform amazing feats like calculating square roots in about five seconds. 2

One afternoon, Hopper and her team of engineers began a routine test of the machine’s adding and multiplication functions, when they noticed something wrong. In those days everything was hardware, so you would manually inspect the computer itself—like inspecting a car or a washing machine—to see if a part had failed. The engineers removed the panels on the enormous machine one by one until finally they found the problem: a small moth had made its way into one of the relays.

For years, the word “bug” had been used informally by geeks to describe hardware malfunctions. Even the grandfather of geeks, Thomas Edison, had referred to faults and difficulties in his systems as “bugs.” 3So you can imagine the pleasure and delight of those Harvard Mark II engineers of literally finding a bug causing a bug. This was like winning the comedy lottery!

They reverently removed the moth from the relay, determined to enshrine this insect in the annals of computing history. They taped the moth into their daily logbook with the words “first actual case of a bug being found.” 4

Grace Hopper delighted in telling this story throughout her career, popularizing the use of the word “bug” to describe a system error or fault. She spent her later years on college lecture tours telling that story, along with many others from her amazing career in technology. She frequently stressed to young people the necessity of personal change. “I find in general that human beings are allergic to change,” she would often say, explaining that innovation and open-mindedness give people the freedom to try new things. 5In a sense, she argued for the debugging of the mind.