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

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that technique of “redirecting the mind” was my first “mind hack.” It was a technique I would use over and over again in the following months as I struggled to stay sober. Over time, I developed a catalog of these mind hacks, slowly reprogramming my craving for mind-altering drugs with mind-altering mental habits .

Just as it took some time to really see the transformation of my mind, it took some complicated legal wrangling before I finally gave up Barack Obama’s credit card. It seems crazy now that I didn’t just hand it over immediately, but it shows how we can become blind to our own insane thought patterns. The agents sitting in my living room were just a symptom of my bad thinking; the real problem ran much deeper.

Now I’m just incredibly grateful for that experience, because it not only changed my mind, it changed everything. I have come to have incredible respect and gratitude for the Secret Service. Never mind protecting the president: the way I see it, the Secret Service saved me .

Reprogramming My Mind

The first few months of sobriety were unbearable, and so was I. Every day was a roulette wheel of emotion: I could be furious, anxious, sulky, moody, or depressed, often simultaneously. One thought, however, slowly began to sprout a little bud of hope. What if there was a way to reprogram my mind?

Programming is in my blood. One of my earliest memories was my father taking me to visit the computer lab at the university where he worked. In my mind, the college’s mainframe computer stood illuminated by a shaft of divine light, with a choir of angelic voices. In reality, it was probably fluorescent light and the whir of industrial air-conditioning units. But the effect on me was no less profound: somehow, that moment implanted a little seedling of geek into my tender eight-year-old uterus. Please don’t ask me why I had a uterus.

My father approached the resident computer programmer, a heavyset man with a large, walrus-like mustache. “Ronald, this is John,” my father introduced me.

“Hey.” Ronald looked down at me, tape reels spinning in the background. (I might be mixing up some details of this story with a series of TV commercials for Control Data Institute.) “What can I do for you?”

“Can you create a punch card with John’s name on it?” my father asked.

“Sure.” Ronald handed me a card, a little larger than an index card, with small rectangular holes punched out. It was mind-blowing to stand in that computer lab among those massive, mysterious machines that required a swimming pool of coolant to keep them from overheating. I had the distinct feeling that in here was another world . I’ve since lost the punch card, but I’ll never lose that memory.

When the cost of your own computer— your very own computer!— finally became affordable, I would pore over computer catalogs like earlier generations of kids would fantasize about Red Ryder BB Guns. I drooled over the latest machines with sexy names like TRS-80 and TI-99/4A, the pages of my catalogs stuck together with saliva and nerd sweat. I begged, cajoled, and badgered my parents until they finally bought me the legendary Commodore 64, the computer that changed my life.

They didn’t just buy me a computer, they let me keep it in my room . There I began programming with a vengeance. There wasn’t much to do in my hometown, so I immersed myself in the secret language of computers, teaching myself the basics: flowcharts, algorithms, variables, loops. I was lucky enough to get in the first programming class taught at my middle school, and by the end of the semester I was teaching the teachers.

Details are sketchy on when I lost my virginity, but I distinctly remember when I made my first computer hookup. I had just bought a modem for my Commodore 64, and I dialed into a friend’s computer—one of the few people in my town who also had a modem (or who knew what a modem was ). At first, there was nothing but a blank screen. I waited, not knowing what to expect. Slowly, the following letters appeared across my screen:

> Can you see this?

With that, the back of my head exploded. Here was my friend, across town, typing into his computer and having it instantly appear in my room . It was one of those transformative moments—my own version of Samuel Morse’s first telegraph message: “What hath God wrought?”

At that moment, I realized THERE WAS A WAY OUT. Growing up in a small town, without much to do, I suddenly understood my modem was a portal into another world . I could communicate with other people, no matter where they were, in a strange digital world, which somehow existed alongside the physical world. But, unlike the physical world, the digital world gave me new powers, and I had the profound realization that we could master these powers .

After college, I landed a job at Ziff Davis, the world’s largest computer magazine publisher, just as the Digital Revolution hit. I remember the first time I sent an email, the first time I saw the Internet, the first time I published a web page. Each time there was a feeling of incomprehensible joy that the world is so much bigger and cooler than I imagined —a feeling that continues to grow and expand to this day.

Because I grew up viewing the world through this lens of world-expanding technology, when it came time to get sober, it seemed natural to view my mind as a kind of computer. It struck me that a lot of the feelings and thoughts I was experiencing were like Adobe products: powerful, but riddled with bugs.

Could I reprogram my mind? Could I hack into the source code and change the way my mind worked? Was there an algorithm for recovery? I began to look for “mind hacks,” techniques to identify and reprogram my problem thinking. I scoured textbooks of psychology, neuroscience, and computer science. I immersed myself in the latest research. I collected techniques from the greatest minds in history, from Albert Einstein to Benjamin Franklin to Nikola Tesla.

My goal was to create a formula, a collection of specific exercises—things I could do and measure —that would allow me to debug my problem thinking, then write powerful new code to rocket my life into exciting new orbits. As I practiced these mental exercises day after day, I found that not only was I staying sober but my mind was getting better . Like the world-expanding moments I had experienced with technology, my mind itself was expanding, and so was my life.

Years later, I come to you with a powerful message of hope. Not only have I become healthy, wealthy, and wise, but I have become friends with my own mind . I am happily married, a successful entrepreneur, surrounded by amazing friends. My life is rich in every sense of that word, and growing richer by the day. I want to share with you what I’ve found.

Think of the problems you’re facing in your life—whether that’s work, finances, health, relationships, kids—and reflect on how much time you spend thinking about them. If you hate that sense of obsessive worry and anxious doubt, then mind hacking is for you. You’ll learn how to debug the negative thought loops that are keeping you stuck, to untangle your spaghetti mess of thinking.

Alternately, think of your goals and dreams, whether they are finding happiness, building relationships, achieving success, growing rich, or mastering the game of life (actual life, not the board game). Mind hacking teaches you how all these things begin in your mind and how you can reprogram your thinking to get there, to soak up the best things that life has to offer.

This is not just a book about overcoming addiction; it’s a book about overcoming your mental limitations . You’re about to learn powerful techniques that can help you accomplish anything you can imagine, whether that’s losing weight, changing habits, starting a business, finding love, or building wealth. Your mind holds incredible untapped potential; get ready to learn how to unlock it.