Jailbreaking the Mind

Your brain is a supercomputer running old software

As we close the year, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the journey so far.

Professionally, I’ve grown more this year than the previous 7 combined.

This will sound a little weird, but my biggest unlock was figuring out how to jailbreak my mind.

Here’s what I mean…

Your entire existence is made up of the thoughts you have on a daily basis.

Those thoughts are either:

• Directly implemented/embedded by some stimulus (things you saw on TV, heard on a podcast, heard from your family/friends, read in an article, etc.)

• Created from within but indirectly influenced by some stimulus

Everything you think (therefore everything you are) is a direct result of or influenced by the stimulus around you.

This is why parental influence is such a major predictor of success for a child.

When you’re growing up, the stimulus influencing you comes from your school, your community, your sports, your parents.

Those sources shape your world view.

For most of us, we don’t know anything outside of those influences…so that’s often who we become. We grow up into derivatives of our surroundings.

When I grew up, I didn’t have access to social media or podcasts.

This meant my stimulus was either going to be books or my physical local environment.

And if stimulus completely drove my world-view, that basically meant that my environment would dictate who I became.

In other words, the software (thoughts) that my brain ran on was pre-installed and influenced based on where I grew up.

This is true for almost everyone.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that it’s possible to retrain your brain…to upload new software…and completely change your world-view.

To do this, you need different stimulus. That means a different environment, different people, or different media pumping into your head.

If you’re able to tap into this new stimulus, your world view will slowly start to change and your brainOS will update.

Realizing this is possible and then doing it is what I call “jailbreaking the mind.”

I’m still me, but I feel like I have completely upgraded the firmware.

I now realize that things I thought to be true (e.g., typical career paths, life models, money, societal constructs, etc.) are mostly nonsense made up by someone else that was able to jailbreak their mind.

You have to be careful though…once you realize the process of retraining, the content you consume and people you surround yourself with become extremely influential.

Think of it like this…

Without learning how to upgrade the software, people’s worldviews are hardened. They become very set in their ways and difficult to influence.

But once you realize that most of the world’s rules and constructs are all made up, your world view becomes more malleable. You’re much more open to change.

There has been nothing more valuable to my mental growth than jailbreaking the mind.

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