Does your mindset need a do-over? Does your worldview truly make you happy?
Vishen Lakhiani helps people achieve their personal and spiritual development goals. In his book The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, he writes that—just as you can keep upgrading a computer—you can continuously upgrade your mind.
Continue reading to get Lakhiani’s strategies for lifelong personal growth.
Upgrading Your Mind
Lakhiani—who started his career in Silicon Valley—says the human mind works a lot like a computer. As such, you need to regularly upgrade your mind in order to stay current and optimize your mental performance. He therefore proposes a continuous, lifelong process of personal development focused on two areas: your mental hardware (beliefs) and mental software (habits).
(Shortform note: Many people before Lakhiani have described the brain as a computer, although they usually mean it more literally. In Determined, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky says that everything we do is the result of our brains taking in countless pieces of information, processing that input, and calculating a result (the action we decide to take at that moment). In Sapolsky’s metaphor the brain itself is the hardware, and a person’s beliefs would just be one part of the software they use to interpret what’s happening.)
The first area of improvement is your beliefs. Continuing the computer metaphor, Lakhiani refers to beliefs as your mental computer’s hardware: What you believe determines what you can do, just like a computer’s components determine which programs it’s able to run. So, after you “upgrade your hardware” by overcoming a limiting assumption or adopting an empowering belief, you’ll find that you can do things you previously thought were impossible.
The second area of improvement is your habits, or your mental software. This is all about finding practical ways to improve your life by overcoming bad habits and adopting good ones. The software metaphor emphasizes that improving your habits will be difficult, perhaps impossible, if the improvements you try to make go against your beliefs. For example, if you want to lose weight but don’t believe that you’re capable of cutting back on eating, you’ve created a self-fulfilling prophecy: You don’t believe you can eat less, so you won’t eat less, so you won’t lose the weight.
| An Alternative: Start Updating Your “Software” First Lakhiani’s computer metaphor falls short in this instance because, while there’s no program that can change a computer’s hardware, it is possible to start updating your beliefs by changing your behaviors first. In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson says that the best way to make a positive change in your life is to just get started—and, if it’s something difficult or intimidating, then start small. So, you don’t really need to believe that you can totally change your eating habits in order to get started on doing so. Instead, make just one small and simple change, like bringing a salad to work one day instead of a sandwich, or skipping dessert for a night. That one action will have two important effects. First, you’ll see that it’s possible for you to eat healthier, meaning you’ve started to update your beliefs as Lakhiani describes. Second, that small success will motivate you to keep working toward further successes, meaning that you’ll be more likely to want to change your eating habits. |
Empowering Yourself
It’s important to constantly update your beliefs and habits, but Lakhiani also says that it’s important to do so in the right ways. Specifically, to update your mental models in ways that make you feel powerful and self-assured. There are two separate categories to concern yourself with.
The first category, and the more obvious of the two, is how you view yourself. The author suggests that you practice self-empowerment by taking a few minutes each day to remember what you love about yourself. For instance, maybe you’re a hard worker, or a kind and generous person, or you have really attractive eyes.
You can also think about things you’re proud of doing. This could be something as impressive as winning a prestigious award, or as mundane as offering a ride to someone who needed it. In short, anything that helps you remember how great you really are will improve your self-image.
(Shortform note: The scientific term for self-empowerment is self-positivity bias. In simple terms, this means that you have a largely favorable view of yourself, emphasizing your strengths and positive attributes over your weaknesses and flaws. Some psychologists suggest that self-positivity bias has a number of evidence-based mental and physical health benefits, such as lower stress levels, boosted confidence, and increased motivation.)
The second category, which is equally powerful, consists of your mental models about how the world works. However, these external models can be harder to update. This is because doing so involves thinking about what you’ve observed and learned, then filtering through those observations to find useful, empowering insights.
For example, young people may think that you have to be wealthy or attractive to find a great romantic partner. However, by thinking rationally about the couples they’ve personally seen, they’d realize that people of all different economic classes and body types can and do end up in happy relationships. With that update to their worldview, they could then realize that it’s also possible for them to find such a relationship.
| Counterpoint: Even False Beliefs Are Powerful Beliefs about the world in general fall under the category that life coach Tony Robbins (Awaken the Giant Within) calls global beliefs. These are universal beliefs about your life or the world as a whole, such as believing that you’re an intelligent person or that people are generally good at heart. Notably, whereas Lakhiani emphasizes developing more accurate beliefs about the world to empower yourself, Robbins argues that it doesn’t really matter whether global beliefs are true or not—they’re powerful motivators as long as you believe they’re true. This means you can adopt empowering mental models of the world even before gathering enough evidence to “prove” to yourself that those models are accurate. For example, one common mental model is the idea that people who work hard will be successful. Adopting the belief that hard work pays off will motivate you to work hard and keep trying to reach your goals. Conversely, adopting the belief that hard work has no benefit will only lead to feelings of helplessness and despair, because it implies there’s nothing you can do to improve your situation. Therefore, one could argue that it’s better to believe in the value of hard work whether or not that belief is objectively correct, because it makes you feel empowered rather than hopeless. |
Evaluating Your Progress
Lakhiani promises that your life will improve in numerous ways as you continually update your beliefs and habits. However, it’s likely that some aspects of your life will improve less than others, and you may still find yourself dissatisfied in some ways. To help correct this imbalance, the author provides a rubric for assessing the various areas of your life, so that you can give extra attention to updating relevant beliefs and habits.
For this evaluation, Lakhiani wants you to rate each of the following aspects of your life on a scale from 1 (very dissatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied):
- Your love life
- Your friendships
- Your finances
- Your environment—the quality of your home, car, workspace, and so on
- Your health
- Your learning habits—how much and how often you’re learning
- Your emotions—how happy you feel
- Your spirituality, including practices such as meditation and connecting with nature, not just religion
- Your career, including future career opportunities
- Your self-image—how satisfied you are with yourself
- Your family relationships
- Your contributions—how much you’re making the world a better place
Once you’re done, Lakhiani urges you to choose one or two areas that you’d like to focus on improving. Don’t try to work on every aspect of your life at once because that’s likely to be overwhelming and discouraging.
| Meditate With Your Ideal Self Even in areas of your life that you know you’re dissatisfied with, it might be difficult to figure out how to boost your satisfaction—what do you really want, and how can you get it? Brianna Wiest (The Mountain Is You) offers some practical advice for answering those questions: Meditate, and connect with your ideal self. To do this, start by finding a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Sit down with a pen and paper, take deep breaths to center yourself, and release any fears or negative emotions. When you feel relaxed, visualize the best version of yourself sitting across from you: a “you” who’s completely satisfied with every aspect of their life. Then, take note of how they look, behave, speak, and communicate through their body language; what are they wearing, how are they feeling, and what do they do every day? Next, listen to the advice that this ideal self wants to give you, even if it’s something you might disagree with at first. This advice should be uplifting, caring, and helpful. Now, imagine the particular aspects of this person’s life that allow them to live their values—where they’re living, what job they’re doing, the relationships they have, their daily tasks, their habits, and so on. Finally, imagine them giving you the key to that life—their life, routines, behaviors, and skills are now yours. This final step will put you in an “action” mindset that encourages you to set appropriate goals and enact the tasks and behaviors necessary to become your ideal self. |
Exercise
- Based on the self-evaluation Lakhiani provided, which aspect of your life are you the most satisfied with? Which are you the least satisfied with?
- What’s one thing you could do today to improve the part of your life that you’re least satisfied with in some small way? For example, if you’re dissatisfied with your environment, perhaps you could improve it by cleaning one room in your house or buying a new decoration.
