How I Programmed Myself
bezan.io
bezan.io
All I know personally is that through repetition, behaviours/habits become more ingrained into your identity.
It could be something to do with neural pathways getting 'deeper' the more a certain behaviour is repeated?
Anecdotally, this method has worked well for me for a bunch of habits (like social media addiction, exercise, diet etc.) for a 2-3 months now.
Definitely recommend grabbing a pen and paper and giving it a try for 10 minutes with a habit you want to change!
Thank you for breaking it down in simple steps.
He talks about how he changed bad habits/implemented new ones. But also on using affirmations for bigger goals. Very interesting book.
“Maltz became interested in why setting goals works. He learned that the power of self-affirmation and mental visualization techniques used the connection between the mind and the body. He specified techniques to develop a positive inner goal as a means of developing a positive outer goals”
These concepts definitely aren't new, probably as old as humans. But I wonder who in history harnessed these methods to 'maximise' themselves really, really well?
It's very interesting how just repeating something makes it more "real".
It's almost like a stubborn mule (your physical avatar) and a rider (your self aware consciousness).
The mule just wants instant gratification, while the rider wants to get up the mountain. So you have to work with the mule, by providing instant gratification that gets you both up the mountain.
I'm not sure if you've read much about neural plasticity - where behaviours get programmed into the brain like a trail path. The more the trail gets walked on (repetition), the deeper and more permanent it becomes.
But I don't think the animal mind understands logic that well, so you can program it through repetition, hence making it more "real".
Generally life can be seen as a copy mechanism for DNA. The logic of it is (drumroll) to make more copies. I'm not sure about artificiality, but mentioning that reminds me that we are already capable of simulating neural nets that very much correspond to some (simple) real organisms.
In any case, I agree that our brain is structured over time and old "animal" areas of the brain appear sometime to have a firm hold over the cortex . Deeply ingrained habits have indeed 'deep pathways', and of course they're not only localized single neurons that can be flip-flopped.
Neuroplasticity refers to the ability of the brain structurally change, or rather to correspond to thought. The software/hardware analogy is useful but I want to add thar the human brain is really not just a programmable computer, but much more.