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(This blog was originally posted on March
24, 2015)
Many years ago, a friend warned me not to turn on a computer on Friday the thirteenth—any Friday
the Thirteenth—because a computer virus was supposedly automatically
triggered to infect every machine on that date. Was it true? I had no idea, but
I believed that the source was reliable, so I didn’t really question the
veracity of that claim. Furthermore, I was also fairly computer illiterate at
the time, so I reasoned that the safest bet was to stay off a computer on that
date—which I did, for many years—just in case.
That subconscious
mental script was pretty much locked in and faithfully followed until last
month. For whatever reason, perhaps because I simply had too much work to do
online to stay off the computer that day—I decided to test and rewrite that script.
I ignored the whining, “Oh, but you can’t!
You shouldn’t!” protests of my subconscious
mind and turned to the logical, reasoning, and decision-making part of my
conscious mind to evaluate what kept me stuck in this behavior.
The first and
obvious reason I followed this suspicion was, you guessed it, my suggestibility
to friends and perceived influential people (Friendly
influences, December 3, 2014). According to Hypnosis
Motivation Founder John Kappas, Ph.D., we get our early suggestibility from
how the primary caretaker (usually the mother) takes care of and interacts with
us during early childhood (birth up to age 5). When we are around eight years old,
the secondary caretaker (usually dad) has more influence over our
suggestibility, while peers, teachers and others impact suggestibility between
the ages six to nine years old. By the time we are adults, our suggestibility is
pretty much established, but our subconscious mind remains receptive to other
people’s suggestions if they resonate with our established known behaviors or
interests. Since a friend originally told me about that computer virus, and I
trusted this person and believed his knowledge about computers and technology to
be superior to mine at that time, I believed the warning was legitimate. While
it was fine to be cautious, the error in judgment was not investigating whether
the threat was legitimate.
The second
thing I noticed was, I had been using this date as a defense mechanism—specifically,
undoing (Defense
Mechanisms: Undoing and Superstitions, March 23, 2015)—to avoid doing
necessary work on a specific date. Since the middle of the month is typically a
very busy time of the month, the thirteenth of the month is when a lot of
companies are really gearing up to get things done. With news of so many
technological advances being made in computers, it was reasonable to worry that
someone has also designed a super-bug to disable computers whenever its
inventor decides the time is right to launch it into cyberspace. Since I enjoy
a three-day weekend as much as the next person—who hasn’t heard about “bad things”
that happen on this day?—I was willing to indulge in my superstition so I could
kick back a little bit.
Make no
mistake, I took every precaution to stay “computer safe” when I decided to test
that superstition for myself. I had recently installed a very high-end
anti-virus program. One of my good friends is a computer guru, and I am on a
first-name basis with the computer technicians at Staples. No one I know has
ever been “contaminated” with the Friday the Thirteenth virus (or whatever it’s
really called). The time had come to make a stand. I logged on. And nothing
happened.
Nothing bad happened, I mean to say. Something
very good happened, too. I rewrote a
negative, subconscious mental script that no longer worked for me so I could
get back to work.
I do love it
when a subconscious script has a happy ending—even if it’s a rewritten happy
ending.
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