This age of super-fast technological progress has brought to us many new inventions hitherto unknown and unseen.
Brain hacking is one of such great things with some very intriguing implications.
Here, we will look into the reality of brain hacking to clear the mystery surrounding it and find out how you can use it to advance your personal growth.
What Are the Possible Meanings of Brain Hacking?
Now, the term brain hacking actually means many things to many people. There is a lot going on in that department.
Mind control by sci-fi tools
The most bizarre scenario of brain hacking would mean to hack and control your brain through some sort of science-fiction-like technology. The name of the movie Inception comes to mind instantly.
Propaganda or misinformation
The second scenario, and the one that is perhaps currently being used to control your mind, is creating opinions or beliefs through various means of propaganda, design formation, or other tools.
Improving your brain functions by practice
And the third scenario of brain hacking and the one we need right now occurs when you deliberately hack your brain to make yourself function better. This is precisely the type of “brain hacking” we will be discussing in this post.
Is Brain Hacking Possible?
Up until very recently, any such idea was the “stuff of fantasies.”
But in the past 20 years, we have learned so much about our brain that such notions of “hacking your brain for improving its performance” are gradually becoming more and more mainstream.
New and advanced research in the areas of brain waves shows us how we can control our brain waves to make them function the way we want. Meanwhile, research in the field of neuroplasticity tells us how, contrary to traditional beliefs, our brains are actually flexible and adaptable.
So, in light of this new research, it can be said, beyond any doubt, that brain hacking is very much possible and you can very well use it to improve your life.
How Can You Hack Your Brain?
There is so much going on and so many practices and tools available right now that it is very easy to get lost in it all if you embark on the journey all by yourself.
To make it effective for you to successfully hack your brain, you must follow the experts in the field. The first and foremost expert is Jim Kwik, author of Mindvalley’s Superbrain Quest.
According to Jim Kwik, one of the major pitfalls of the traditional education system is that it only tells us what to learn and it never tells us how to learn. And exactly that’s where lies the trick — to learn how to learn so that learning becomes lasting and effective.
And from there starts the journey of mind hacking or brain hacking.
You learn how your brain works and then improve on it. You learn new techniques to enhance your brain’s power and gradually turn it into a “superbrain.”
Let’s focus on an intriguing example at hand for now.
60-Minutes Brain Hacking
In 2017, the TV show 60 Minutes broke news on how tech companies are designing phones, apps, and social media in such a way that they are hacking our brains to make us addicted to them.
According to the report, the trick they used is quite simple and makes a lot of sense.
They designed these to form a habit by creating the reward loop. Each time we look at our phones we expect to get some sort of a reward in the form of a notification.
The notifications tell us about someone liking our photos, we are getting a new follower, or something like that. All these acts like rewards for us that release happy hormones and form a strong habit to keep us hooked.
This scenario clearly shows how our brains work and how they are hackable. Now, we can take this very example and use it to our own advantage.
How to use the reward mechanism for brain hacking
We just have to tweak the reward mechanism and create our own rewards.
Taking inspiration from the name of the TV show, you may simply invest only 60 minutes of brain hacking time a day to make the transformation.
We can read for 60 minutes, take an online course for some time, or just walk in the park and turn these impactful exercises into our rewards. Do not go to sleep until you invest 60 minutes into learning. This, in turn, can become your 60 minutes brain hacking mantra.
Practicing compassion, meditation, mindfulness, and radical forgiveness are just a few other exercises to name at first that we can use for our 60 minutes of brain hacking.
It is only one of many such tools and techniques that are super effective to hack our brains for the better. There are many more advanced and simpler tools available.
