A nice way to view our own world (without the responsibility of children) is, what can I add to the next version of myself. Every night when we sleep, we reset and our brain stores information that we have deemed important.
What your brains deem important are:
- Conversations you've engaged in
- Experiences you've lived through
- Information you've consumed or learned
- Books you've read, and
- Thoughts you've explored
So when you're taking risks and trying things you've always wanted to, meeting new people and asking their opinions on new topics, reading literature and playing music, then every day you will have given yourself a gift for the next.
What gifts do you give yourself to bring into the next day?
The same principle can also be applied in a physical aspect, as we are both mind and body in unison. Everything you do to your body will also be brought into the next day. If we break down our day into it's physical components:
- Our consumption of food
- Consumption of liquid, and
- Good stress we've put our body through
Then it makes it easier to evaluate and reflect on the positives and negatives that we will bring into the next day. If we work off the idea that carbohydrates are the food group we should consume the least of.
- How much sugar do we consumed through both food and beverage in a specific day?
- How much walking have we done, or for how long have we raised our heart rate to 80% of our maximum?
This concept is very similar to how computer companies like Apple view their operating system, they've created versions from, iOS 1.1.1 through iOS 11.3.1.
Every year of our lives has 365 iterations or changes we can make. When you're 9 months old, you are version 0.265, having been through 265 iterations of yourself, in which you've coded new information into your hardware and software.
When you turn 25 you move from version 24.364 to 25.001 and so on.
This idea is important to play with, because every day you record new information that continues to stimulate your biases and conversations that you bring into the next.
With this knowledge, habits and behaviours that you don't like can be readdressed, the first step to changing them is identifying which version of yourself created them and why they are there to begin with.
- In which version of yourself did you pick up the behaviours and why?
- Does the original reason those behaviours were picked up still exist?
- Are the same people who exaserbate the behaviours still in your life?
- Is the same stress still following you? or
- Are the constraints on time still an issue?
We now have the ability to update our operating system past version 90, with so many iterations of ourselves being created day by day and new versions being updated when we celebrate our day of birth. Can you imagine what you would like to upgrade 10 versions/years from now? Would you like to program a guitarist into your operating system? What about a new language? Or to become stronger, healthier and a more flexible person?
The awareness that we can change is the first step, the rest comes from our actions to update your system.
