Hack Yourself
The mentality of computer hackers is a powerfully potent state of mind. The drive is what makes them so dynamic--the constant compulsion to keep asking why, how, and what if i...? This drive, combined with an outlook that is frequently less clouded by social preconceptions than the average person, allows for many unique ideas and outcomes.
It might be surprising to realize that hacking is not relegated to the field of computers and technology. Hacking can be applied to anything.
One of my favorite examples on the matter is that of a mechanic, who takes apart his car again and again, just trying to squeeze out that extra horsepower. He is a hacker. He just hacks cars.
He does it because he wants to--to see how far he can take it.
If you can take this attitude, this outlook on life, and direct it at yourself, you can gain a powerful tool for affecting change in your own life.
Keep an open mind.
Don't let preconceptions and other people telling you what's impossible rule out possibilities for you. Make up your own mind, and try to stay open for all the options, no matter how ridiculous they may sound at first.
Do it 'cause you love it.
Part of what makes hackers so fruitful is that they are doing what they love. Steve Wozniak said about his development process of the Apple computer line, "I was just a kid with a crush on technology." That's powerful. He loved what he was doing, so it didn't feel like work to him, so much as a wonderful game--seeing how far he could push it.
Take that same mentality in your own life. Fall in love with being alive. The universe we live in is an amazing place, and we are living in very dynamic times. Do what you do to see how far you can take it--how far you can make yourself go. Try new things and don't rule out possibilities until you've thought them through.
Protect your box.
If you think of your brain as a piece of biological computer hardware, then it stands to reason that your mind would be the software running on top.
Continuing with this metaphor, there are negative influences or 'malware' coming in through your senses in order to attack your mind. These mal-memes are put forth from a variety of sources for a variety of reasons (to make them money, to control your actions, to make them feel better about themselves, etc.), and work in a variety of ways (confusion, fear, peer pressure, subconscious, moral, emotional).
If you think of it like that, you can begin to develop mental tools for excising these mal-memes, and controlling them as they continue to be introduced to you in the future.
This metaphor can even continue to another level--in computer malware removal, there are a number of tools which are utilized to control different types of threats. Just as in the real world, we have multiple vectors to protect against. Pattern recognition snags a lot of the unclever, copycat known threats. Once bitten, twice shy--after you know what to look for, certain techniques stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. They lose their power over you.
Heuristic analysis algorithms and run-time protections attempt to find new threats by examining what code is trying to do, rather than relying on a signature of something you've seen before. More proactive, but you have to weight the results for what they are because of the increased chance for false positives.
Immunization patches. If you deal with the underlying vulnerability, the threat is nullified. If you control all of your wants, the push/pull engine of consumerism loses its hold on you and commercials don't affect your judgement as much. If you come to complete acceptance of the reality of a particular situation, the emotional poison of someone taking jabs at that certain subject begin to lose their sting.
Footprinting.
Gaining knowledge about a particular subject or target before directly engaging. If you're the target, you'll need to footprint yourself. Find out all you can about yourself.
Take personality quizzes, write yourself up a character sheet, tally up your likes, wants, needs, and vulnerabilities and strengths. You need to be honest with yourself, and I think this may be the hardest part. If you're not honest, you won't have accurate information to work with.
Luckily there are tools you can wield to help clarify your objectivity somewhat, but it still has to come with that inward desire to seek the truth, or else you'll simply see what you expect to see, what you want to see.
Journals can be a powerful form of externalization. When you go back and read some of your older entries you'll be astounded by what you may have been thinking. There are several tests which can give you some sort of external perspective, but you must again be careful--if you're deceiving yourself, and you're intelligent, it is often easy to manipulate the results of these tests. The Alexander technique is another tool for gaining an external perspective on yourself. The more objective, honest, and complete your information gleaned from the footprinting, the better equipped you will be to maximize your own efforts.
NLP.
There is also some research being done into fields like neurolinguistic programming, hypnotic suggestion and the like. I've heard of techniques similar to buffer overflows where many topics or ideas or loops are opened in rapid succession and the mind assigns some part to keep track, but none of them are ever resolved, and eventually, the person becomes lost, and as such more susceptible to influence (i.e. more likely to involuntarily run somebody else's code).
-cid
0wn yourself