Vishen Lakhiani argues that your beliefs about the world and your daily habits shape your life, but most are absorbed passively through culture and schooling rather than chosen. Both are hackable: swap them out deliberately, like adding meditation, and you get multiplier gains in how you feel and perform.
Chapters
Have you ever wondered what makes you you? What defines you as a human being? What determines where you are in life right now, how successful you're going to be, how happy you are? Well, it's two things. The first is your models of reality, which is nothing more than the things you believe about the world and how that world works with you. And secondly, your systems of living. Your systems of living are the daily things you do to just function as a human being. The way you eat, the way you make love, the way you wake up in the morning, the way you commute to work, the way you work, the way you make money. All of these are systems. Now the thing is, what many people don't realize is that your models and your systems are so powerful that they shape your life. And that these models and systems are things which are highly hackable. Your models of reality are so important because what we tend to believe about the world will be true about the world for you. And as we grow up, we tend to take on beliefs about our world. Beliefs such as money is the root of all evil. Beliefs such as there's a certain thing that's going to happen to your body and as you grow older, beliefs of how smart you are or how accomplished you are based on the school you went to or the people you grew up with, these beliefs will be true for you. Problem is, many of us take on these beliefs not through rational choice, but through conditioning or indoctrination. We take on these beliefs when we are a child and we hold onto them. As we get older, we never bother to question them. Some beliefs come from culture, some. Some beliefs come from an industrial age schooling system that has hardly evolved in the last 100 years. Others come from religion that has hardly evolved and has been passed on generation to generation for 2000 years. But once you understand that your beliefs don't make you, they are simply things that you can swap in or out and that you have the ability to change your beliefs, you develop immense personal power. Now let's talk about systems. Systems are what you do to function in the world. Your systems determine how you eat, how you work, how you exercise, how you take care of your body, how you function in a relationship, or as a parent, or with your boss and your career. But many of our systems have hardly been updated either. And if you think about it, there's a better, more optimized system for just about everything. There are always new ways to enhance your body, or to develop your thinking ability, or to improve your creativity, or your ability to make money or your ability to be a better lover or a better parent. But few of us bother to upgrade our systems. The thing is, once you learn new optimized systems, take meditation, for example. A system like meditation improves every aspect of your being. When you learn a new optimized system, it creates a multiplier effect so that you start seeing huge leaps in how you function as a human being. So how do you figure out if your current models and your current systems are really serving you well? Ask yourself this question about who you are and how you function. Do you have these models or systems because you chose them through rational choice, through study, through personal experience? Or do you have them because you're simply blindly following what what everyone else has been doing around you? When you understand that you can upgrade and swap in and out your models and systems, you develop incredible personal power to elevate your potential as a human being.
