Oh, to be the mechanic of the human mind, to look down at a world full of beings who all seem so similar in biology, able to speak, listen, create, and explore. Not unique to a single group but to the whole. And yet, to two individuals with similar biology, one can, and one cannot.
Imagine if humans were like vehicles, taken to a mechanic who is asked, “What’s wrong with this one? All the parts seem to be working just fine, but it just won’t do the things I want it to.”
But instead of looking from the outside in, we often sit inside our own mind and, rather than asking why we can’t do something and searching for the answer, we simply succumb to, “I just can’t.” Our perception of ourselves responds to a programme or belief that was never ours to begin with.
We didn’t come into existence with a belief about what we cannot do. We either learned it through failure, or we were told by someone else, and most of us never question these inherited, limiting beliefs.
It’s the same question historians have asked when looking at Germany under the Nazi regime: How did so many agree? A culture so trained to follow orders that it wasn’t such a far stretch to go along without asking questions or critically thinking, as evidenced in Milgram’s obedience experiment.
If we want to change our behaviour — to override fear and limitations that hold us back — we must first look at the programmes and beliefs forming those very limitations. Most people resist themselves rather than reprogram and rewire. They try to brute-force their way through life while carrying the weight of their old programming.
That’s a lot of hard work.
Instead, by finding the origins of our patterns and programmes, we can bring clarity to the mechanisms that lead us to the places we don’t want to be, to the behaviours that no longer serve us. I don’t believe anyone is incapable of change. I believe that everyone makes choices, out of love or out of fear, and those choices are only judged as good or bad depending on the lens through which we view them.
Reprogramming is not about fighting your patterns. It is about discovering why they were created in the first place, thanking them for keeping you safe, and allowing them to serve a new purpose. Then, we create new perceptions and perspectives to write new programmes that serve our growth.
I am healthy and fit not because I resist being unfit, but because I am a person who goes to the gym every morning. I don’t do it because I don’t want to be fat or because I want to be healthy, I do it because I am the kind of person who trains daily.
If I woke up every day and said, “I go to the gym because I want to be healthy,” then every day I’m also telling myself, “I am not healthy.” That creates resistance.
Instead, I simply embody the action: “I go to the gym at 5 am and work out for 1–2 hours.” It becomes routine, without the emotional charge of running toward or away from something. The repeated action becomes a pattern that eventually leads to an outcome, an outcome that feels natural rather than forced.
Next time you brush your teeth, ask yourself: Do I do this because I want to avoid cavities? Or do I do this because this is simply who I am, someone who brushes their teeth every day?