Image: Girls’ Hannah Horvath probably struggles with passwords too (HBO)
Next time you’re racking your brain to come up with yet another computer/social media/online shopping password, dust off your list of life goals.
Most of us view the process of devising new passwords as a necessary evil, and resort to the same tired mix of nicknames and numbers, only slightly tweaking it each time. In doing so, it seems we’re all missing a crucial opportunity to absorb positive messages with the potential to change our day, if not our whole lives.
This all sounds a bit coo-coo, but hear us out.
Mauricio Estrella, a Shanghai-based creative director, has credited his monthly computer passwords for helping him tick off a number of major life goals.
In a fascinating blog post on Medium, Estrella explains how the process began when he changed the password on his work computer to “Forgive@h3r”. He chose those words to convince himself to move on after breaking up with his ex-wife:
I had to type this statement several times a day. Each time my computer would lock. Each time my screensaver with her photo would appear. Each time I would come back from eating lunch alone. In my mind, I went with the mantra that I didn’t type a password. In my mind, I wrote “Forgive her” everyday, for one month.
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.
Seeing how effective his password-as-mantra approach had been, Estrella continued to use his life goals to guide his monthly password choices. Days after changing it to “Quitsmoking@forever”, he successfully quit smoking. Three months after using “Save4trip@Thailand”, he jetted off.
We know, we know, this all sounds very The Secret, “ask the universe and you shall receive”, etc – but the list of achievements Estrella has checked off over the past two years, thanks to his daily affirmations, is nothing to sniff at. For example, “Ask@her4date” led to him falling in love, and at the end of last month he confirmed via Twitter that “Save4@ring” had also been successful.
