(This article is a follow-up from the ones published in previous weeks, episodes 0, 1, 2, 3 4, 5, 6 and 7, and the last episode will be published next week)

And we finally arrive at the eighth and last tip in "reprogram your life"; thanks for reading this far 🙂

As we have seen over the last few weeks, there are plenty of similarities between how our mind works and how a mobile phone works, or a computer.

This mobile phone metaphor can be really useful for us to understand and assimilate concepts coming from various disciplines (neuroscience, mindfulness, neuro-linguistic programming...), and also to apply them in practice, as part of our daily life, tweaking our habits in such a way that they actually help us to achieve our goals, improve our vital energy, become more efficient, enhance our communication skills, and ultimately, understand ourselves and others better.

But I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that this is nothing more than a metaphor, a comparison, and that it can only go so far, because mobile phones and computers are not people; they're just machines. They are very complex and sophisticated, that's true, very smart in their own way, but they're only machines at the end of the day.

And humans are not machines; we are so much more.. You are so much more..

We humans have the capacity to live, create, and feel. The ability to connect with other human beings, with nature, with the deep wisdom of the Universe. To laugh, cry, share, imagine and learn, enjoy the present moment and visualize the future we want for ourselves.

There are certain questions that a machine will never be able to answer... I invite you to reflect on some of them and find your own answers:

• What excites you and motivates you most in life?
• What's most important to you? What do you value most?
• What do you want your contribution to this world to be?
• What's that dream you would love to be able to make come true?

(This article is a follow-up from the ones published in previous weeks, episodes 0, 1, 2, 3 4, 5 and 6, and more episodes will be published in the upcoming weeks)

Throughout the day, our phone sends us notifications about multiple things, displaying alerts and reminders in the form of text messages. Sometimes we can choose to enable or disable certain notifications, for example, from email services or social media platforms, but others are unavoidable as they are related to the device itself, like when the battery is about to run out, or the Wi-Fi connection is lost; also, once every few months, it tells us that the operating system needs to be updated.

The human body also has an inbuilt notifications system that's highly effective and sophisticated: the emotions..

• Emotions are produced as a reaction to a stimulus, which can be real, imagined or remembered.

• They have a physiological component: our body gets activated in a particular way that's different for each emotion.

• They also have a cognitive component: our brain interprets the signals it receives from the body in order to make sense of the experience.

Some emotions are learned or have a cultural component, but a handful of them have been recognized as universal: those emotions are shared by all human beings, and all of us can identify the facial expressions that go with them.

Each emotion brings us a message; it comes to tell us something about what's happening at a particular moment, and if we know how to listen, that message can give us very valuable information.

Emotions can be really intense, but their duration is actually short, approximately ninety seconds. The problem comes when we get "stuck" in an emotion, going over it again and again in our heads, because those repetitive thoughts keep re-triggering the emotion in a vicious circle. That's how we generate a specific mood or state of mind, which is less intense than an emotion but lasts longer and has less defined beginning and end moments.

So, what can we do to avoid getting stuck? We can embrace that emotion as it appears, and allow ourselves to feel it. We can let it pass right through us, staying present, without trying to avoid it or run away from it. That will allow us to acknowledge it, recognize it, give it a name, and listen to the message it brings. Because once the message has been delivered, the emotion has accomplished its mission and can leave. And we can let it go, using the information received to make a decision and act accordingly.

Joy

Surprise

Fear

Anger

Sadness

Disgust

Which of these notifications do you receive more often? And what do you do when you notice them? If you´re interested in this topic, here´s another article about emotions that I wrote some time ago.

(This article is a follow-up from the ones published in previous weeks, episodes 0, 1, 2, 3 4 and 5, and more episodes will be published in the upcoming weeks)

A tremendous advantage of mobile phones is that they can be used for a virtually endless amount of things, as long as the appropriate application is installed. Typically, new phones come with a set of basic apps already installed, and in order to add more, all we have to do is search in the "app store", find the one we need and press a button to install it, often for a symbolic price, or even for free.

Even during those times when it appears to be idle, while it's switched on, the phone is always "doing something". At a minimum, it stays vigilant in case there's an incoming call or message. Then on top of that, it may be running other applications "in the background", for example, to count your steps, calculate your physical location, or play music for you, if you feel like it.

Similarly, our mind is always "doing something"; it's always thinking. And if we don't consciously give it something to think about, it will find its own thing, often in ways that don't help us at all.

So then, what "apps" could we "install" in our mind that will help us instead of harming us? Here are a couple of suggestions.

Positive thinking and thankfulness

Our brain unconsciously searches for more of whatever it is we pay attention to. Therefore, if we focus on being thankful and appreciating the positive things already in our life, our brain will start finding more of those for us, and as a result, we'll perceive more and more things we like, and we'll feel better and better.

Systematic use of negatives

The same applies in the opposite direction; that is, if we focus on negative things, we’ll start finding more and more of those. But what if there was a trick to take the things we don’t like so much and present them to our brain more positively? According to neuro-linguistic programming, that trick exists.

For example, if I feel very tired on a particular day, I can choose to say: “I’m exhausted”. The word “exhausted” has a certain effect on my mind and body, so much so that just thinking about it makes me physically tired. In contrast, if I say: “I don’t have a lot of energy”, the meaning is very similar, but the effect of the words on me is completely different. By expressing it this way, chances are I’ll feel a little more energetic, instead of tiring myself even more, and that may help me to carry on with my day until I can finally go home and rest.

(This article is a follow-up from the ones published in previous weeks, episodes 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4, and more episodes will be published in the upcoming weeks)

Have you ever seen the source code written for a computer program or mobile app? There are many different IT programming languages, which are basically ways of giving machines instructions in a format they can understand. Each program or application is a list of step-by-step instructions showing the device what to do to accomplish a particular task.And many of those steps are related to the functions of processing information coming from the external world (either the internet or the user, who interacts with the system through buttons, the keyboard, the microphone...), storing that information in memory, and representing it through the screen, the speakers, etc.

We could argue that we humans have something similar to instructions stored in our brains, in the shape of filters with which we process the perceptions of reality that we receive from the outer world through our senses. Our conscious mind receives millions and millions of information bits per second, and it wouldn't be able to absorb such a relentless flow of incoming data as is, so our brain builds filters that automatically select and simplify the most relevant parts of the information, which allows us to make sense of the world around us and interact appropriately with it.

These filters are essential for our survival and tremendously helpful in general, but they can also very often play against us if we are unaware of them. This is because our mind is made to work with patterns, and while it's in the process of simplifying all the information coming from the senses, it builds patterns that generalize, distort and omit parts of our perception of reality..

And how does it do that? Through language. The "programming language" we humans use is literally our language, as in our words. It's what we use to communicate with each other and convey ideas, but also internally to think and make sense of the concepts in our minds.

The neuro-linguistic programming identifies those generalization, distortion and omission patterns as part of what it calls the meta-model. The meta-model explains how each pattern can create ambiguities that hinder our capacity to understand our current situation, limiting our options when dealing with it.

These meta-model patterns are present in our everyday life; As we start paying attention to our internal and external dialogue, we'll discover that we use them very frequently. And it's usually OK for our language to contain a certain level of ambiguity; it's our natural way of communicating, and it would be exhausting if we had to be precise and exact at every single moment. But there are occasions when being more precise can be really beneficial, like when we're ruminating about something, looking for a solution to a problem or trying to overcome a challenge.

Let me give you an extreme example: if I think and say: "my life is a disaster", that sentence is so vague that it gives me a sense of overwhelm, so I end up feeling that I can't do anything to fix the issue, I don't even know where to start. In contrast, if I think and say: "I feel sad because I just had an argument with my partner", that sentence is a lot more specific, more tangible, and it clearly expresses what the problem is, which makes it a lot easier to try and find ways to tackle it.

Now, let's look at a few examples of generalizations, distortions and omissions, some tips on how to recognize them, and what to do when we find one. The key point is always to try and minimize ambiguity as much as possible, "filling in the blanks" with explicit words instead of leaving room for interpretation; this way we get a lot more clarity on the situation.

Generalizations

• Symptom – Using absolute words: everything, nothing, always, never...
• What to do? – Question if that general rule applies in all cases.
• Examples:
  • I need to continue in this job.
  • It's impossible to get rich quickly.
  • They're all against me.
  • I can't change.
  • I'm always last.
  • I never get to do things my way..

From this group, the easiest ones to catch are "always" and "never" - you can ask my daughters, I´m sure they´ll agree 🙂

Distortions

• Symptom – Arriving to conclusions by taking things for granted.
• What to do? – Shed light onto whatever is being assumed.
• Examples:
  • Your dad doesn't understand me
  • You didn't call yesterday, you don't love me...
  • That woman's voice gives me headache
  • Which one are you going to clean first, the bathroom or the kitchen?

This last formula is a powerful one to use on purpose, for example, to give your kids options but within the parameters that you decide (what kind of fruit are you going to eat, apple or banana?), or even to motivate ourselves – there´s no option not to clean!

Omissions

• Symptom – Missing information or using abstract words.
• What to do? – Specify what's missing, and make it concrete.
• Examples:
  • There's no solution for this.
  • His attitude annoys me.
  • You need to drink eight glasses of water every day
  • People gossip a lot.
  • You can do it better.
  • I have a problem.

The idea here is to keep asking so that whatever was left unsaid finally comes up. What exactly? According to whom? Better than what?

What do you think about all these patterns? Are they clear to you? Try to "catch yourself" using them this week, you'll be surprised to see how often they appear...

(This article is a follow-up from the ones published in previous weeks, episodes 0, 1, 2 and 3, y en las próximas semanas se irán publicando más episodios)

Have you ever stopped to count the number of applications running simultaneously on your phone? Mobile phones, like all computers, are designed to be able to run multiple programs in parallel; some of them are very easy to identify, like the different apps we have installed over time and we frequently use, and then there are others, like the operating system processes, that we don't usually even notice but that are indispensable for the device to work.

We as human beings work similarly: our conscious mind performs certain voluntary tasks, the ones we choose to do, which would be the equivalent of our phone's apps. But in addition to that and at the same time, our unconscious mind is performing a variety of other tasks in an automated and completely involuntary way, without any thought intervention: it's constantly receiving and processing information coming from the external world as well as the body's organs, and it regulates all our bodily functions in order to better adapt to the environment and our current situation.

Now, it's worth noting a fundamental difference in how computers work compared to humans: the human brain can only focus consciously on one thing at a time. We can fool ourselves into thinking we're doing several things at the same time (what's commonly known as multitasking), but in reality, what we're doing in those instances is just changing context very quickly, very often. And each of those changes requires an extra effort to get back to focus on the task again.

Multitasking = continuous partial attention

So, similarly to those times when our phone is really slow because it´s overloaded with too many apps running simultaneously, and as soon as we close a few of them, performance improves, the more we can close other applications in our mind and focus only on the task at hand, the more efficient and productive we will become, and the less mental tiredness we will suffer.

In fact, that´s the basis for all mindfulness techniques and exercises, learning to focus on the here and now, on the present moment, and being able to direct our attention consciously..

This also gives us an additional advantage, something that´s badly needed in this modern world: the ability to focus more deeply on a particular task, which is something we can never achieve through multitasking.Once we recover our ability for deep focus, like when we were kids and could play for hours, it´s much easier to let creativity and ideas flow more freely.