There is an expression in the computer world called GIGO — it stands for Garbage In-Garbage Out.  It literally means that if you program garbage into your computer code, it is impossible to get anything out of it except garbage.

You know, we all have a computer in our head, it’s called our brain.  Think about it, isn’t our brain (our mind) programmed just like a computer?  Information is fed to us throughout our lifetimes, we process it, and then spit it out in our words, our attitudes, our beliefs?  If that be the case, then isn’t it possible that sometimes we can get some bad programming in our human computer?

In most lives, the first computer programmers in our lives are our parents.  They are charged with preparing us for adulthood, making sure that we are nurtured, loved, and taken care of in the process.   Nearly all of our early programming comes from those closest to us who take care of us before we can take care of ourselves.

Then as we grow older, there is a new set of programmers introduced to us, they are called our teachers or educators.  It is their responsibility to take us beyond the programming of our parents and family, and teach us about the physical world around us, how it operates, how it is built and held together, the science and mathematics of the universe; how to read, write, think and calculate.  These teachers are also some of our early role models.  I still remember my First Grade Teacher, Miss Crawford, who I fell in love with and quickly dumped for my Fourth Grade Teacher, Miss Krempasky, who swept me off my feet.  They were both sweethearts! So while our teachers are sometimes our first love puppy love, their real role is take up where our parents left off in terms of teaching us trust, respect for authority, and how to interact with others.

Then there is a third set of programmers that come along — call these programmers perhaps the most influential of the bunch.  They are our peers, our friends, who have often been programmed much differently than us.  They can come from vastly different backgrounds, have a different moral code, a different set of values than we have heretofore been exposed.   Often it is during our teenage years when we become most influenced by this set of programmers while our judgement is suspect and our brains are not yet fully developed.  So we start to emulate the behavior of these new influencers.  If they smoke, we smoke; if they drink, we drink; and so on.

Then we go away to college and we meet perhaps our last and strongest group of influencers/programmers — they are called professors.  They are usually very intelligent, sometimes very liberal, and often amoral.  They seem to have authority within the hierarchy of education to take it upon themselves to deprogram us from the fundamental and often conservative values that we may have learned in our youth and awaken us to the “real world.”  They don’t judge, but they challenge our minds to think differently than we have ever been exposed to before.  In fact, they often reprogram us to see the world as they do.

So what’s wrong with all of that?  Well, nothing really, except what if along the way some of the programming missed the mark?  What if we have bought into behaviors and attitudes that in the real world don’t serve us, inhibit us from becoming all that we can be, stymie our ambition and growth, give us a false picture of what the world is really about, and what our role and responsibility should be in that world?  What if along the line we have been programmed with a false set of beliefs — let’s call it garbage.  Remember GIGO — garbage in-garbage out?  What if we have been fed a false set of beliefs through at least some of the programming we received along the way?  What can we do, and how do we recognize this issue in the first place?

If you have reached adulthood and you are unfulfilled, depressed, unhappy, without purpose and drive, perhaps you need reprogrammed.  Perhaps somewhere along the line you have bought into some bad philosophy about life that needs reprogrammed out of your life.  Maybe you have been told or influenced to believe that you are not truly worthy of success – success in your personal life, your career, your relationships. Maybe you have low self-esteem, a fearful view of the world, a distrust of the opposite sex – just think, it could all be in your programming, and it can all be wiped out and reprogrammed!

Perhaps it’s time to reboot, just like you do with your computer when it seems to get confused and overworked, clear your mind and start over again.  The way we do that in the human condition is we stop, look and listen.  We stop and take stock of ourselves.  We see what’s working and what isn’t.  Are we happy with our lives, our mate, our occupation, our income, the person we see in the mirror each morning?  If not, we need to change what we are doing and look for  additional input, perhaps new habits, maybe a new occupation, a new perspective, maybe even a different mate.  We need to then listen – listen to mentors, loved ones, people who have more experience in life than we do, and to our hearts.  We need to figure out where the programming went wrong and write some new code for ourselves.   Once you figure out where the code is defective, the easy part is fixing it.

So if your life isn’t working the way you want it to work, just reboot, rewrite, and relaunch!  It’s as easy as rebooting your computer!  There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

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Hear these and more ideas for successful living every week on my weekly radio show: Makin It! (www.makinitnow.com)

Tommy Runfola

Keep fighting the good fight – “GET BACK UP!”