Once upon a time, I stabbed myself in the neck with a kitchen knife.
All the Dale Carnegie books, and Stephen Covey exercises didn't save me from that fate.
But in that brainwashed-by-manic-delusion state, I started a new life.
My recovery (in a mental sense) took years, and I didn't have an existing roadmap to help.
So, in the over 10 years since that event, I pieced together my own strategies and processes, taking inspiration from others (Ajahn Chah, Werner Erhard, W. Timothy Gallwey, etc.), while also figuring out a lot of things on my own.
That brings us here.
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When you hear the word "brainwashed," you may think of someone vulnerable getting roped into a terrorist organization at worst, or an MLM at best.
You might picture a living zombie, or a flesh and bone robot, doing the bidding of someone that rests in the background, bringing themselves rewards at the expense of the wellbeing of the 'brainwashed'.
But I believe you can brainwash yourself to better achieve your own personal goals, and live a life you actually want to lead.
What follows is a system I've used to improve my mental health, outside of a mental health system that wants to take insurance payments, and dish out prescriptions.
And outside of a mental health system that sometimes treats everyone with kids gloves, hampered by laws that would rather you put on medication weight, than find a way to push through the discomfort of everyday dissatisfaction.
While this piece is no substitute for actual medical treatment, I believe it offers a system to take some more control over your life, and recovery, from whatever circumstances or diagnosis you may have to grapple with on a daily basis.
We talk about how to "crack yourself open", to understand the uncertainty and permeability of life, and how that can all be a good thing.
Then we discuss my PRPS Process for handling day-to-day stressors.
Lastly, we'll discuss how to be the one brainwashing yourself into a better life, instead of being used by any malefactors that may exist.
Let's get into it.
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Cracking Yourself Open: Making Your Physical Operating System Ready For New Beliefs
I think the important thing to start with when brainwashing yourself is your perception of reality.
I call this 'Cracking Yourself Open', and what I mean by that is getting yourself to see that the nature of reality is a little wobbly, a little permeable, a lot impermanent and uncertain.
This isn't a green light to get you to believe in supernatural goblins, because that would impose some form of certainty.
The goal here is to rest in the not-sure-ness of it all, and Experience Mind, instead of subscribing to this or that belief.
By applying the not-sure filter to your perception of the world, you're able to adapt better. You're able to try different things and see what works. You're able to overcome some static image you may have of who you *really* are.
All of these things allow us to grow, to change, to get smarter, wiser, and more effective.
So, follow that Crack Yourself Open, and when you start to see things a little differently, move on to the next step.
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The PRPS Process: A Framework To Handle What Life Throws At You
The PRPS Process is the next step, and what it is, is a toolkit for dealing with the inevitable daily troubles that come our way, so you can get back to being present, and experiencing life, instead of getting stuck in your head.
There's four steps here, and if you only ever exist in the first one, you're doing it better than I am:
P - Be Present
R - If You Can't Be Present, Be Resilient
P - If You Can't Be Resilient, Be Prepared
S - If You Can't Be Prepared, Be Strategic
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Try to put those steps into practice. Apply it to your life, your relationships, your job, and see if it works.
If it does, continue getting the reps in, to make it second nature.
If it doesn't work for you, maybe it's just not right for you at this moment.
But I find having that framework has helped me handle daily stressors much better, so I can get back to just living life.
Let's get into the last part: the actual brainwashing of yourself.
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How To Actually Brainwash Yourself Into Having A Better Life
In 'Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control', Kathleen Taylor writes:
"Brainwashing describes three approaches to mind-changing: by force, by stealth, and by direct brain manipulation technologies. The first two, as I describe in the book, use standard psychological processes; in this sense there is nothing unnatural about mind control. The aim is to isolate victims from their previous environment; control what they perceive, think, and do; increase uncertainty about previous beliefs; instil new beliefs by repetition; and employ positive and negative emotions to weaken former beliefs and strengthen new ones. (Collectively, these can be labelled ‘ICURE’ techniques.)"
I use the ICURE framework, but what follows has a last letter, S - Sigils, to make it ICURES. But we'll begin this with two questions that you should actively write down your answers to:
- 1) What would need to be true for you to have a life you hate
- 2) What would need to be true for you to be a person you hate
Isolate
- For all of those answers to the above questions, how many things that could create a life you hate, or make you be a person you hate, are in your environment in some form or another
- Ask how you can remove those things, and then do it
- Ex: Excessive social media use being something that would make you hate your life, so you remove that particular app from your phone
- Ex: Taking a different route when you go for a jog
Control
- I wrote about a Slow Media diet, and you can find out more about that here.
- I wrote about how to create and stop habits, and you can find that here
- For both of the above, you can dictate the information you take in (to control the kinds of thoughts you have), and your behavior/actions by dictating which habits you create, and which habits you stop
Uncertainty
- Ask what are things you've wanted to change, or things you've complained about more than once (I want to ____, but ____)
- Separate the actual facts of what happened with the story you made up about why you haven't
- Rephrase all of this as I want to ____, and ____
- By separating our stories from the actual events and facts, we're able to see how uncertain these things we *believe* are true, really are
Repetition
- Celebrate new wanted habits, beliefs, and thoughts a minimum of 7 times as per BJ Fogg
- If you've created new habits in the "Control" phase, celebrating them is very important
- With anything you want more of in your life, repeat it, and celebrate it
- I would also recommend visualization, and the piece I wrote about it, so you can get more mental reps in of things you want to make second-nature
- Ex: Me visualizing the act of driving a car, in-between driving lessons, because I wasn't able to get more practice time
Emotions
- What are things you're afraid of, things you don't want to be, things you don't want to experience, things that regularly distress you
- If you bring them to mind, force yourself to smile as you visualize them, so you can contradict those impulses
- Double-breathe as you visualize them, so you can condition yourself to be more calm when you experience them
- What are the things you wish to believe about your life, your self, the person you want to be
- Smile when you visualize those things to reinforce the positive feelings about them
- Celebrate when you think of those things to reinforce the positive feelings about them
Sigils
- Create sigils using my 'manifestation' guide
- Create drawn sigils using my post about the Easiest Way To Practice Sigil Magic
- For a more in-depth look at that kind of thing, read 'Prescription Magic'
- Look at your answers from the 'what would need to be true for you to have a life, and be a person you hate' prompts
- Reverse those to create sigil intentions
- Ex: Procrastination being something that would make you hate your life, so you create the sigil intention "I am completely and permanently free from procrastination"
- Root sigil phrasing ideas:
- I always ____
- I always avoid ____
- I completely and permanently ____
- I am completely and permanently free from ____
- I immediately ____
- I am immediately free from ____
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Since the ICURE Framework describes processes that have actually been used to turn people into terrorists, it seems there's something to the steps.
But when they're in our hands, we're able to create a deliberate life for ourselves, that's closer to our ideal than whatever an ill-intentioned outside actor may have in mind for our one life, and one body.
While we're not "robots," humans created some through programming. And through our physical and mental experience of the world, I believe we can push our own buttons to end up in a better place.
Isn't that what the tech companies have done to foment foaming-mouthed vitriol to generate ad dollars?
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Final Thoughts
As you can see, this isn't a system that works at the snap of your fingers.
Like all worthwhile things in life, it requires work and effort. Also, some strategic thinking.
But I believe that if you're willing to put in the work, you can create a life for yourself that emphasizes and increases the positives, while sidestepping the danger and delusion that can arise when we're not the ones controlling our behavior.
I hope that the years of algorithmic manipulation encourage us all to take control of our lives in any way that we can. Because our own peace of mind isn't always what the outside world wants.