Apps for Your Meat Computer
Our “meat computer” runs routines we call habits, but what if you could hack that code? Explore how to transform negative patterns into helpful habits with practical “mind apps” that change not just what you do, but who you are.
Our mind is basically a meat computer. Just like its silicon counterpart, it runs software in different layers of abstraction. There are lower-level languages that are further away from our everyday conceptual human understanding and higher-level languages where we can understand the code more readily, even without a PhD in Neuroscience.
Code that we run without actively choosing to do so seem to us like things "we are", since it just runs, without you deciding for it to do so. The meat computer takes input from events within us and the world around us and triggers output responses. In the lower levels of code we call it the autonomic nervous system but in the higher levels we call them habits. But is it really things "we are"? Isn't it really things that "we do"? Are we really a noun at all? Aren't we really a process? A verb?
If this is the case, you can still treat aspects of you that are helpful as things that you are, codebase that you don't mess with. "I am a person who works out every morning" would be an example of that. Other aspects that are not helpful on the other hand, you can stop looking at as something you are and start looking at like a routine or habit that you can and should rewrite. "I'm just a realist" is something you sometimes hear people say to rationalize a negative outlook on life, but if that gets you into depression or sadness you can treat is as a habit and put that code up for review.
We can't simply rewrite our minds' code on a keyboard, but we can create ideas, philosophies, stories, and ways of thinking and then consciously run them enough times to train our minds to change their code, routines, and habits – thus changing what we do unconsciously, thus changing who "we are". Interestingly, that is kind of where silicon programming is heading as well with us training software systems rather than writing them.
I think of these ideas, philosophies, and stories as apps for the mind that you can install and run to improve your life. Whenever I find one that works for me, I'll try to write it down and post it here so you can try it out. Mileage may vary, but if you find anything that works for you, let me know.
