Change your password — Change your life

You interact with one everyday. It’s your calendar. Your timepiece. Your diary/journal. Your ever-present portal to creative expression and guilty pleasures. It’s that item whose loss or damage would signal a minor cardiac episode (for some).

For technological fruit lovers, it’s your I-this, that, or the other. Your smart phone. Your laptop. Your desktop. Your tablet. Your e-reader. It’s the ever-growing list of gadgetry that has seamlessly merged with your life. And if you are like most people all those gizmos require a password.

There are moments in the journey of life that just straight up suck. During these times, it is hard to think about anything other than what’s going on. What if you could use passwords as a mantra to get through those sucky moments?

In 2011, Mauricio Estrella was facing a life changing event. Divorce. Swept up in relentless waves of hopelessness and meaningless, he resonated with a deep desire to change his current disposition. A reminder from his company’s email server of an expired password turned out to be his life changing ‘aha’ moment. “I’m gonna use a password to change my life,” he recalls thinking.

Wanting to be free of the anger that comes with divorce, Mauricio decided to change his password to “Forgive@h3r”. In his words he explains … “That simple action changed the way I looked at my ex-wife. That constant reminder that I should forgive her, led me to accept the way things happened at the end of my marriage, and embrace a new way of dealing with the depression that I was drowning into.”

“Change your password — Change your life”

Positive affirmations help you return to a sense of balance when things feel a little out of whack. They remind you to put your energy and focus on what really matters. Mauricio found this to be true and within a month he says he felt the healing effect of his chosen mantra.

At Mauricio’s workplace, the Microsoft Exchange server is configured to ask employees to change their passwords every 30 days. A list of some of his passwords and their results are listed below.

In writing about goals; specifically goals that get accomplished, I stated that once you have learnt how to write your goals and link them to a specific action, you will need to establish a trigger or a cue that will remind you to initiate the action. Your password can be that trigger.

Every thirty-days Mauricio had something to look forward to and subsequently work towards. This is a great example of how the overlooked details in our lives can help us shape the way we live. Make the link between an ordinary activity such as entering a password with changing a habit, or living a bigger dream, or even achieving a life aspiration.

Is your password helping you focus the attention of your unconscious on the stuff you want to attract into your business or your life? If it could use some help, how about giving this a try.

*Inspired by Mauricio’s post on Medium.

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