Ever since my wife got an Ipad, I’ve been increasingly intrigued by the idea of Human Apps; little powerful programs that, in a given situation, click in, triggering a set of actions, responses or thoughts.
The code for these Apps is laid down and act below conscious awareness - it’s this that makes them so powerful.
Most of the time they sit on the machine (you) and go unnoticed but in a given set of emotional circumstances kick in and take over control; their effect is often amazingly destructive.
What if your response to being bullied by your big brother and your cousins was to put yourself in a position that no one would mess with you; you could take up boxing weightlifting and all the Martial Arts going. You grow in confidence and you develop an antenna that is tuned in to pick up on anyone who is out to best you. You then take the “Norman Hunter” approach and where possible get your retaliation in first and voilà - your App is in place. What if twenty years down the road your older brother is now your best buddy and your cousins are fine? Do you ditch the App?
No, by then you don’t even recognise there’s an App running; you assume that’s the way you are rather than the way you became in a specific set of circumstances and by now it’s broadened out to encompass the whole world.
Apps on your phone or Ipad, are idle most of the time and don’t interfere with the running of the machine, only clicking in when you choose to activate them. Human Apps are different; they seem to click in when the emotional circumstances in some way reflects the conditions prevailing when the App was formulated. Since the App was originally formulated to deal with a specific emotionally difficult situation we can assume that it started life as an asset. Ten, twenty, thirty years on there’s a fair chance that you are now more mature and have more choices available to you. And yet ……. the App takes over, does its thing and shortly after you’re either biting your knuckle asking yourself, “Why did I do/say that?” or even worse, attempting to justify your, out of all proportion, behaviour. It’s now a liability
OK, so how do you delete this Human App?
You can’t. Well, at least that’s my experience. You can however corrupt it. Eh?
You have to assume that the App originally had a benign intent and purpose, that it was formulated in an emotionally charged set of circumstances and that it now is triggered unconsciously. So the first thing to do is to recognise that it’s there, what emotional circumstances trigger it and take a guess at what the circumstances were when it was formulated. I used to think that this was a sort of Bingo! Moment and this realisation in itself would have some sort of transformative effect; not now. But it’s only at this stage that you can choose to override it. It’s surprisingly difficult but it can be done. You have to work out what you’re “clutch,” is going to be (apologies to those who have only driven automatics). You have no control over what you think or feel but you can control what you do or say next.
Once you start to exercise some control over how you respond to the App when it triggers, then it seems to corrupt and have progressively less and less power.
