… no other way round it, it must be programmed! You want your dog to sit, dance, somersault and do God knows what, you have to train it to do so. Some will take to the training, some will not, of those that will, some will do it quicker than others. Most things operate in similar version, our computers do what it does because someone at some time programmed it to do so. The same applies to our smartphones, cameras, vacumm cleaner, blender etc. We press a button and it happens and we don’t give much taught to how things come to operate the way they do, they just do. We jump into a car, press a button and it zooms. It takes just a few seconds to press the button that brings about the desired action, but the real truth is that it probably took days, months, years, failure upon failures, trials upon trials, frustrations upon frustrations, a lot of stop start headaches to get that amazing stop start function in our cars.
Imagine if we just hurriedly put together some iron, steel, plastic in the shape of a car, stick a button on it and expect it to drive like car, nothing happens and we get very frustrated and despondent. Or imagine waking up one morning, without any training, we start screaming ‘sit’ at our dog, the dog stares at us like we are loosing our marbles and strolls away. Now, most rational being will nor behave in this manner, but yet we do. We decide that we want to do a certain thing, become a certain person. We make New Year’s resolutions, we decide we want to turn over a new leaf and off we go. We want to loose weight, be healthy. So off to our local gym, we go register, set up the direct debit, emptied out the local fitness shop with the required gear, did the same to our fridge and cupboard, got rid of all the healthy food and stock pile the whole house with healthy food. Now no one can argue with the will or the intention. But come two month’s time, we have only been to the gym once and that was the day we carried out the registration, also all the fruits and veg have rot, our cupboard seems confused, all our healthy choices still there but so also are the unhealthy choices that have somehow made their way back into our lifes. We are now very frustrated and despondent. We can’t understand why we just can’t seem to do the good we set out to do, why we are not who we want to be. We don’t know why the car is not moving or the dog not sitting. The answer is actually a lot simpler than we realise.
We have not been program to do those things we are trying to do or to be! And in some instances we have not remove or replace the existing program and we wonder why we keep going back to our bad habits. At the end of the day we are just a living computer programmed to behave in certain manners, and if we want different behaviour we have to instal a different program and that means someone has to create or write the program. Someone said to me, “but I never programmed myself to eat unhealthy food, I just find myself doing it, craving it” the honest truth is we are programned to behave in that manner, to make those choices, we might not have done it ourselves but some one or some situations or circumstances did. The TV ads, billboards, supermarket displays, family and colleagues eating habits, experiences, choices etc are all progamming us.
I have had small dabble in programming and I have also had the privilege to observe people training to be programmers. It is no kid’s play. It requires hours and hours of study. Concentrated effort to get the program right. And depending on what needs doing, there could be hundreds and thousands of lines of codes that needs to be put together, and heaven helps if there is a bug in the system, then the whole thing needs to be checked and redone, otherwise the program will not run. Any glitch will hinder or restrict the performance, the same applies to us as human beings.
The first step, in changing and becoming who we want to become is in our mind. We have to program the computer, called the mind. This is easier said than done. It takes time, consistency, persistence, trial and retrial, stop/start, stop/start etc. We need to read, research, learn, observe, put right before our eyes continually that which we desire to become. We need to be testing, debugging, maintaining, implementing. We need also to be patient, very patient indeed, change takes time, and depending on who we are and where we are, it could be a very long time, but if we are not weary in well doing, sooner or later, we will partake of the labour of our hands. The dog will sit but we have to train it.
Automation is the name of the game, programming is the process. Set it in motion, sit happens!
Beautiful Ivory 