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

You probably have your own version of these ideas, which would be funny if they weren’t so frightening. As you become more aware of your mind by practicing the exercises in the previous section, you get better at recognizing them for what they are: imaginative works of fiction .

But even though these stories start off in our imagination, they affect our actual lives. Jim spends hours working on new projects, trying to keep from getting fired. Lucy stops talking to her college friend, convinced they’ve had a falling-out. Chris is nearly in a panic by the time he sees the doctor. What’s true is that each person experienced an initial event (a corporate buyout, an unfriending, a rash), but what’s false is the imagined story that became an Oscar-nominated screenplay.

Every time you imagine how much your job sucks, or how you’re still stuck in a loveless marriage, or how you’ll never get in shape, you are repeating your loops. Over time, these loops become deeply held beliefs, influencing your day-in, day-out decisions that over the long haul determine the direction of your life. Ultimately your loops become self-fulfilling prophecies: if you think, I’m no good at running , you won’t run; therefore, you’ll be no good at running.

That’s the bad news about imagination: if we don’t know any better, it will carry us away. The good news is that imagination, properly wielded, can also be used to come up with powerful new stories .

You can choose what to imagine!

Our natural inclination is to think in terms of what we do not want: I need to get out of this relationship , or It sucks to drive around in this beat-up car , or I don’t want to sit in the cubicle next to the guy who farts . To rebuild our mind, and rebuild our lives, we have to be able to picture clearly what it is we want .

Pull yourself back from the mind movie for a moment and think about how you could rewrite those negative loops. You could just as easily imagine, I can find a satisfying job , or I can work on this marriage , or I’m slapping on some spandex and going for a jog . In your imagination, you can instantly create and destroy these ideas, like variables in code.

If you believe in those negative loops—if you think they’re the way things have to be—I want to chip away at that belief. I’ve got my chisel and I am cracking away at the mortar that holds together the bricks that bind you. Eventually, I hope to open a hole in this wall and let a shaft of brilliant sunlight come streaming in.

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.

Welcome to the Matrix

The man wears sunglasses and a trench coat. He sits across from a young computer programmer in a room with walls the sickly color of split-pea soup.

“The Matrix is everywhere,” the man intones. “It is all around us. Even now, in this very room.” Thunder crackles in the distance. “ It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth .”

“What truth?” asks Neo, the bewildered computer geek.

Morpheus leans in. “That you are a slave,” he responds. “Like everyone else, you were born into bondage. Born into a prison you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison. For your mind .”

He produces a small silver case, then holds out two pills: one red, one blue.

“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Neo hesitates, then reaches for the red pill. Morpheus warns him, “Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”

The scene that follows next in The Matrix is incredibly weird and difficult to explain, so we’ll just say Neo experiences firsthand that he has indeed been living in a simulated reality, a “mind movie.” As this artificial reality disintegrates, Neo comes to understand that the Matrix—this world he lived in—is nothing but computer code. It can be reprogrammed .

Neo joins a group of rebels who have learned to hack the Matrix, reentering the artificial reality they used to call home in order to free other enslaved humans by showing them the truth. And because they now know how the Matrix works, they can bend the physical laws of reality and give themselves superhuman powers, like the ability to dodge bullets while wearing floor-length trench coats. (For most people, trench coats are quite constricting.)

Like Neo, we, too, are in a kind of “prison of the mind.” Our mental loops keep us trapped in this prison with invisible walls, convinced that our current reality is the only reality. But like The Matrix we can hack back into our minds, rewriting our mental code. Once again the key question is: What do you want?

Before I got sober, for example, I would feel incredibly awkward in face-to-face conversations, because I imagined that I was no good with people . I would be talking with someone, and all I could think about was how they were perceiving me. Was I standing up straight? Was I funny enough? Did I have a piece of kale in my teeth? It’s difficult to be really engaged in a conversation when your mind is obsessing over your every potential flaw. This is why many of us drink: to get rid of that sense of awkward self-consciousness.

What did I want? I wanted to feel comfortable around people. After sobriety, one of my mind hacks was to start telling myself, I’m good with people . Through hundreds and thousands of repetitions of that simple idea, I was slowly able to turn things around, so that now I really am pretty good with people. It happens slowly, a gradual metamorphosis, but you can work on those old thoughts of why you suck and reimagine them as thoughts of positivity and self-esteem.

Let’s take My Emotion-Thought-Action Loop from the previous section and start to imagine what shiny new METAL might look like.

Emotion

Thought(s)

Action(s)

New Loop

Anxiety about a new assignment at work

I don’t know if I can deliver this in a way that will make my boss happy .

Doubting the results of my work, redoing the project multiple times, unnecessary overtime and stress

I’m very good at this job .

Depression about my relationship with my partner

We’re not as close as we were before, and we’re drifting further apart .

Getting angry at my partner over minor issues, passive-aggressive behavior, and frequent criticisms

We are growing closer every day .

Self-criticism over that stupid thing I said

Why did I say that? Why did I say that? WHY DID I SAY THAT?

Being self-conscious about everything I say to this person in the future

I’m confident in everything I do and say .

Regret about that decision I made in the past

I shouldn’t have done that. I wish I could go do it all over. My life would look so much better .

Self-doubt and procrastination about making any decisions in the present

I’m grateful that I am older and wiser, and making great decisions because of it .

Worry about my career after graduation

The job market is terrible. I have no experience. There are lots of other people more qualified than me .

Reading gossip sites and watching funny llama videos instead of looking for a job