Do you have habits or beliefs that you’d like to be free of?
Maybe it is eating junk food, smoking, gossiping or thinking that you are a failure, just as some common examples.
Take a minute and write them down – anything that personally bothers you.
Now here is another question:
Does anyone that you’ve spent a lot of time with have this habit/belief too?
In all likelihood, the answer is yes.
What is happening is that every time you witness a behavior in your environment, your subconscious is registering it, whether you are consciously aware of this or not.
Your subconscious is programmable and is composed of a lifetime of mental impressions formed through this kind of repeated exposure since you were in the womb.
And this is really the key point of this article:
If you are exposed to a pattern repeatedly, your subconscious will eventually accept it as true.
This is likely to happen whether or not your conscious mind accepts it as true. And it is the source of much unintentional hypocrisy in the world.
Interestingly, whether the repetition is external or internal does NOT matter to the subconscious. Someone may tell you that you are stupid ONCE, and it is unlikely to change your life.
But if you yourself then repeat the phrase “you are stupid” over and over again in your mind, it would eventually become a part of your subconscious self-image.
Repeated exposure is a large part of what forms the stable subconscious, which is why brainwashing anyone can actually work!
It is also why marketing works. And why many of us practice the beliefs of our parents and our environment, whether we actually agree with them or not.
Having a programmable subconscious isn’t inherently good or bad. It simply allows you to rapidly acquire skills, behaviors and information from other people. That means that instead of passively acquiring a random set of patterns, you can actually start programming yourself to your advantage.
What I’m going to describe in this article is a very simple method of re-programming your subconscious to hack yourself into your ideal form.
You are going to need to write or type this out, as suggested below. We are hacking the mind itself, so externalizing thought patterns in a physical way is critical – it is not enough to just think about it.
STEP 1: Identify an undesired pattern
Write down any of your thoughts or behaviors that make you feel bad. For each of them, underline the undesired pattern itself.
Do not include the “I” and underline the pattern only. YOU are not the problem, the absorbed pattern is the problem.
e.g. “I feel guilty whenever I criticize my friends.”
I want to note here that this is about changing your own behavior, not the behavior of others. Although you might be quite amazed at the way people around you will start to change when you change yourself, this is not your goal and is not even within your control.
If you are having trouble focusing on your own behavior, think of a situation in general that always makes you feel bad.
e.g. “Nobody ever gives me the help I need.”
And then try to determine how your own behavior causes or contributes to the situation.
e.g. “I never ask for help.”
STEP 2: Identify the existing core belief
For each underlined pattern above, try to identify the painful core belief behind it. Remember, you are full of these subconscious patterns. But the reason that this one bothers you is that it is rooted in a painful core belief.
The closer you can get to a core belief, the more transformative this process will be once this belief is changed.
A simple method to get down to a core belief is to ask yourself 3 Whys. Let’s take an example above, which was one of mine:
PATTERN: “I never ask for help.”
WHY?: “Because I don’t want to be a burden on others.”
WHY?: “Because they may not have the time or energy to support me.”
WHY?: “Because supporting me is not important to them.”
CORE BELIEF: “Other people do not care about helping me. They will not support me when I need it.”
And you can drill down further with more Whys.
A great sign that you are getting to the root of it is when the thought causes you pain. It will hurt you to think that it is true. You might feel an actual pain in your heart, general emotional distress, sadness, despair or hopelessness.
Note that your negative response will probably feel familiar because you have carried this belief around for a long time and it has made you feel like this multiple times throughout your life. Don’t be afraid, though, you’re getting rid of it soon!
Write down the core belief next to its undesired pattern, choosing the phrasing that activates the most painful response in you.
You should feel like: “Nooo, I wish this wasn’t true!”
STEP 3: Write down your desired belief
For each core belief above, write what you most deeply wish you could believe if you lived in an ideal world with perfectly loving people and could be your best self.
You are the hero in your own fairytale, and everything is perfect. What belief would you have instead?
Let’s continue with the example above:
CORE BELIEF: “Other people do not care about helping me. They will not support me when I need it.”
DESIRED BELIEF: “I am completely supported and loved by everyone around me. Whatever help I need will be given to me as a matter of course.”
Note that we are working against current beliefs here, so do NOT limit yourself to what sounds reasonable or practical to you at this time. You must create a new picture of reality, or you will stay exactly where you are.
If you are doing this right, repeating the new belief should actually make you feel uncomfortable and perhaps silly, but you should also feel happy, amused and idealistic.
You should feel like: “I really wish this were true.”
STEP 4: Repeat, repeat, repeat
Now, your goal is simply to reinforce this belief internally and externally for at least 21 days.
Do affirmations daily
The practice of reciting desired beliefs to yourself is often called Affirmation. Write down your desired belief on a post-it or on the computer.
Keep it in a location where you will see it every day – like the bathroom mirror or above your desk for a post-it, or your computer desktop or browser home page for a file.
Make an effort to read and repeat the affirmation to yourself at least once a day, up to as many times as you like, as follows:
- Use gratitude to enter a receptive and hopeful state.
Think of several things that you are already grateful for. Sometimes I use very simple things like being alive, feeling well-rested, having food, being clean, being comfortable, or having people that love and care for me.
As you start to realize how much you actually have, let your heart fill with hopefulness and a happy little fullness.
This is an open and receptive state for positive action. - Read the affirmation with the happiest, fullest feeling in your heart.
The words should naturally inspire you to feel that way if you wrote it for emotional impact as suggested in Step 3.
Believe it as deeply as you can. This will get easier over time as the belief takes hold.
If you have trouble believing at all in the beginning, just allow yourself the freedom to wonder:
“What if? What if my life could be like that?”
Some part of you believes it could be possible or you would not be doing this exercise in the first place.
NOTE: Affirmations ALWAYS sound too good to be true at first because they are in opposition to your current beliefs.
Finding them hard or even dangerous to believe is normal.
I often feel a happy, excited little tingle in my heart when I repeat an affirmation for the first few times, almost as if I can’t believe I’m allowing myself to believe this. My method is to leave post-its right above my desk at home, so that I see them at least every morning and night.
Within 2 weeks to 1 month of daily recitation, I will read the affirmation and see it as simply a statement of fact. This is the power of simple repetition.
In fact, I will usually begin to wonder how I ever could have believed otherwise. This is when I know that my subconscious has accepted the ideal belief, and I can move on to new affirmations.
Spend time reinforcing your belief with the right people
Are there people in your life who already hold your desired belief? Spend more time with them!
Any time spent with them in general is good, but you will learn from them best when they are demonstrating your ideal belief in some way. You will begin to see that your ideal belief is no fantasy – people are out there living by it!
For example,
DESIRED BELIEF: “I am completely supported and loved by everyone around me. Whatever help I need will be given to me as a matter of course.”
BELIEF-SUPPORTIVE COMMUNITIES: Any group where members take care of each other or they take care of others.
BELIEF-SUPPORTIVE ACTIVITIES: Charity and caretaking work, serving those in need, highly collaborative volunteer work.
Reduce time spent undermining your desired belief
Make the choice to disengage from situations which undermine your ideal belief until it has firmly taken hold. You can always re-engage afterwards.
Don’t take part in thoughts or behaviors that your fairytale-hero self would not take part in.
If the people around you engage in such thoughts and behaviors, don’t participate and consider excusing yourself from the activity or from their company, if necessary, during this reprogramming period.
The time taken to change a subconscious belief is typically estimated at 21 days. Of course, depending on the particular belief and the particular person, it can take more or less time.
Generally, I consider myself reprogrammed once I start seeing my ideal belief as a fact.
At the end of the process, what you have done is simply allowed yourself to seek out and live within spaces of the real world that have always matched your ideal self.
These people, beliefs and behaviors may have always been around, but your consciousness filtered them out because your absorbed fears enforced a restricted view of reality.
Eventually you will naturally be surrounded by people who share and support your new, expanded perception of reality and of yourself. These relationships could be new or old, but everything will feel different from before because YOU yourself are transformed.
And that is one way to hack reality!
I hope this was helpful to you in some way. If you try it, let me know in the comments below.
Happy hacking!
Love,
Kavi.
A Thing of Beauty & Power 