Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture

“Much of the pain we experience is caused not by events we wish to avoid, but by the identity we wish to have.”

“1. All-or-Nothing Thinking The tendency to think in extremes like “always” and “never” without considering nuanced degrees between. “My boyfriend broke up with me; I always ruin my relationships.” 2. Overgeneralization The tendency to make broad assumptions based on limited specifics. “If one person thinks I’m stupid, everyone will.” 3. Mental Filter The tendency to focus on small negative details to the exclusion of the big picture. “My A+ average doesn’t matter; I got a C on an assignment.” 4. Disqualifying the Positive The tendency to dismiss positive aspects of an experience for irrational reasons. “If my friend compliments me, she is probably just saying it out of pity.” 5. Jumping to Conclusions The tendency to make unfounded, negative assumptions, often in the form of attempted mind reading or fortune telling. “If my romantic interest doesn’t text me today, he must not be interested.” 6. Catastrophizing The tendency to magnify or minimize certain details of an experience, painting it as worse or more severe than it is. “If my wife leaves me, then I will never be able to recover from my misery.” 7. Emotional Reasoning The tendency to take one’s emotions as evidence of objective truth. “If I feel offended by someone else’s remark, then he must have wronged me.” 8. Should Statements The tendency to apply rigid rules to how one “should” or “must” behave. “My friend criticized my attitude, and that is something that friends should never do.” 9. Labeling The tendency to describe oneself in the form of absolute labels. “If I make a calculation error, it makes me a total idiot.” 10. Personalization The tendency to attribute negative outcomes to oneself without evidence. “If my wife is in a bad mood, then I must have done something to upset her.”

“The way your mind is structured will determine the person you will become, the life you will live, and the fulfillment you will realize. When you modify your mind, you make changes to the operating system at your core and change your personal trajectory. And when you make a persistent occupation of this endeavor, you become the architect of your own character.”

“Satisfaction is not found in the achievement of goals, but in their pursuit”

“When you modify your mind, you edit the operating system at your core and change your personal trajectory. And when you make a persistent occupation of this endeavor, you become the architect of your own character.”

“The demarcation between a positive and a negative desire or action is not whether it gives you an immediate feeling of satisfaction but whether it ultimately results in positive or negative consequences. - Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness”

“Societal pressures work to pull you up to the line of psychological adequacy, and psychotherapy can be used when society falls short. But these aims are far too low. Falling within the current normal range of psychological health is nothing to aspire to. We are interested in far exceeding this line - in psychological greatness.”

“The modern fascination with neuroplasticity has led many to try to optimize their intelligence, memory, and concentration. People obsessively track and optimize their sleep, nutrition, and exercise regimens. But people who obsessively and directly optimize the structure of their minds for flourishing are less common."- Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture”

“The default human mind is an inherently disorderly place to be. The odds of being well adapted to this world by default are virtually none. The reason kids cry and scream so much more than adults is not just because their brains are less developed. It is because experience in the real world forces you to develop coping strategies over time that give you increased control over your mental state. The tantrums, agony, irrationality, and impulsiveness of childhood represent the epitome of being a slave to one’s own default software.”

“It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul. For things themselves have no natural power to form our judgments. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Imagine how much fun it would be to be physically invincible. To enter a sword-fight unarmed and to exit without a scratch, leaving your opponent frustrated and exhausted. When you become emotionally invincible, your opponent may be another person shelling out insults, your own inner critic, or simply the unexpected blows life deals to us all.”

“you could practice mindfulness to hit pause on the negative emotions and observe them for what they are, or you could engage in cognitive restructuring (better yet, combine the two). Once you understand that your painful emotion is the result of a distorted thought, you can begin to restructure the algorithm.”

“In order to do this, you need the habit of not only noticing the triggers for common biases, but of taking stock of your desires to hold certain beliefs, and the intensity of these desires. Notice which ideas you are attached to and which ones you resist. The areas you tend to turn your curiosity away from - that make you defensive when they are called into question. Perhaps you feel highly resistant to questioning a certain belief because you are a part of a group which is based on that belief. Or maybe you feel like one belief provides you with a critical coping mechanism - one that you would be lost without. Write these observations down.”

“If our sights are clearly set on the reworking of our own thoughts, emotional reactions, and behaviors, what is stopping us from gradually rerouting the neural pathways of well-being?”

“The Buddha may have been the Beethoven of his psychological state, but Beethoven got to where he was gradually, and still fell somewhere on the endless continuum of musical mastery by the end of his life.”

“To see them from above: the thousands of animal herds, the rituals, the voyages on calm or stormy seas, the different ways we come into the world, share it with one another, and leave it. Consider the lives led once by others, long ago, the lives to be led by others after you, the lives led even now, in foreign lands. How many people don’t even know your name. How many will soon have forgotten it. How many offer you praise now-and tomorrow, perhaps contempt. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations,”

“Psychitecture is a high-level design and implementation process - creative problem-solving for the subjective experience - and when utilized persistently, it can take a mind that is like a prison and gradually transform it into a palace.”

“Psychitecture is self-directed psychological evolution. The act of deliberately reprogramming your psychological operating system.”

“Your entire life runs on the software in your head—why wouldn’t you obsess over optimizing it? …And yet, not only do most of us not obsess over our own software—most of us don’t even understand our own software, how it works, or why it works that way. - Tim Urban23”

“Stop honoring externals, quit turning yourself into the tool of mere matter, or of people who can supply you or deny you those material things... It is enough if I hold the right idea about poverty, illness and removal from office: all such challenges will only serve my turn. No more, then, should I look for bad, and good, in external conditions. - Epictetus, Discourses”

“What if you could identify the roots of these emotions and unplug them for good? Cognitive therapy offers a basic toolkit for dealing with emotions to people who lack it.”

“In the past, we humans have learned to control the world outside us, but we had very little control over the world inside us. - Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century”

“The tendencies and patterns built into our psychological software are called algorithms.”

“Metacognition and the closely related mindfulness allow us to step outside of our software and analyze it, and vipassana meditation is one of the best methods for cultivating these qualities.”