Deprogramming

Deprogramming is something that happens when you choose to live with purpose and be mindful of your actions, words, and thoughts.

Your brain is a fantastic piece of work, handcrafted by the greatest of all creators. The brain has the ability to process and store information that is impossible for computers. While it’s processing information in milliseconds, it is also running our bodies without missing a heartbeat, literally.

The brain is so advanced that it seems that it needs no real help from us to run efficiently at top speed. It emanates reactions to our environment by reaching into its vast endless memory, calculating scenarios, possibilities, and outcomes, to produce and conclude the best action.

But how do our brains determine the best action? The action that your mind chooses is a mix of the memories that have been stored as a result of the experiences we have had in our lifetime, from the second we are born up to that exact moment.

The brain’s sole purpose is to self preserve. Its purpose is to survive. To keep you alive and ensure you are able and ready to handle the world around us. It takes in every circumstance, event, smell, touch, experience, memory, taste, noise…everything. And everything it takes in then stores into categories that are broken down into groups.

All things good and bad, everything we like or dislike, are labeled and organized with reactive behaviors stored in connection with these categories or groups.

As each category increases its contents with more experiences and life events, we get a more and more defined reaction to life. We may not remember trauma from childhood, but our bodies do. Our fingers remember that a flame causes excruciating pain and so we tell ourselves to stay away from fire, even though we don’t remember the burn. Long after the incidents, the references remain.

The result is preconceived bias. Even memories that lay dormant shape our decisions, attitudes, and choices towards every action we take. We may not remember the why behind our choices, but we make them anyway. We don’t even care if the reason behind the decision is valid or not. We just accept the fact that our nervous system tells us, “This makes me uneasy.”
You are no longer in control because even if you don’t seem to remember the trauma, your nervous system does. And because of all of this, your life’s experiences make up your state of mind.

Somewhere in your brain, even though you have no recollection of it, your mind stored the memory of your football coach telling you that you were no good and played like a loser. You may have forgotten the moment but not the words and, more importantly, the feeling of sadness, shame, depression, and anger.

Your brain stored this information in the sadness category and linked it with anger, depression so when something doesn’t go as planned, you label yourself as a loser and feel shame, sadness, and anger. And because it happened to be a rainy day at that practice, your bain stored rainy days under sadness, so the next time it rains, you feel sad, and you can’t figure out why. It’s not your fault you feel sad, but you just do.

The brain has taken over on auto-pilot, and you must turn it off. You need to be aware of yourself, your feelings, and triggers in order to change the pre-defined actions that the brain chooses to make. This will allow you to react accordingly. It’s like emptying the files in each category, so you have room to see things in a new way again.

This is no easy task. After all, you have been this way you’re whole life. Changing your mindset is no easy task, your body naturally reacts in a way it has done so many times before, and to change that now requires conscientiousness and extreme effort.

However, doing so will allow you to see the actions your brain presents from an entirely new point of view.

The actions become merely recommendations that you can choose to act on or act differently. This action is known as deprogramming. The more you practice deprogramming, the more you become aware and are able to stop yourself from the body’s natural directed response and can respond in the way of your choosing.

Becoming aware of yourself, your thoughts, actions, and feelings are vital to deprogramming and begin living with intention. This how you can start to change your life and the lives of those you encounter. Begin with something small and start to deprogram today by following these five daily practices.