How Your Password Can Radically Change Your Life

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• September 18, 2014
• By Kelly Gurnett
• 4 Comments

Don’t tell Oprah, but we’re onto an awesome new way to take control of your life. And it’s as easy as taking advantage of something you do every day.

A recent post on TODAY Health has been making the Internet rounds and caught our attention as a great way to keep yourself on track with your big goals and dreams. In it, the author discusses how he used his company’s mandatory monthly password changes to do some serious self-motivation.

It’s incredibly easy and has the power to transform your daily habits, all with a few simple keystrokes.

How it works

The post’s author, Mauricio Estrella, worked for a company where the Microsoft Exchange server prompted employees to change their passwords every 30 days. You probably know the drill when it comes to the guidelines — passwords had to contain “at least one lowercase alphabetic character, at least one symbol and at least one number,” etc. We’ve all had to do it, and we’ve all found it highly annoying. What’s more is that he had to enter this new password throughout the day — whenever his screen saver came up, he’d have to re-enter his password to unlock his computer.

But rather than fume over the inconvenience of having to go through this every month, Estrella decided to seize the opportunity to “regain control of his life.”

At the time, he was dealing with a tough divorce, feeling depressed and resentful. So he chose to create a password that would act as a positive mantra, reminding him he was in control of his life and had the power to make things better. His new password? “Forgive@h3r” — a password designed to remind himself to let go of hard feelings towards his ex-wife. Every time he typed this into his computer, he reports, “the healing effect of it came back almost immediately.”

After that, he chose a new password every 30 days that corresponded with his goals at that time: “Quit@smoking4ever,” “Save4trip@thailand,” “Sleep@before 12,” etc. The results have been life-changing. Since starting his password experiment two years ago, Estrella has quit smoking, improved his health habits and has even fallen in love again.

What have your passwords done for you lately?

How to make it work for you

Can this digital version of a Post-It note on your monitor help you make some big life changes? Estrella thinks so, and here are some tips he offers to make it effective:

Turn it into a mantra. Don’t let yourself fall into the habit of mindlessly typing in your password; really pause to consider it each time. Every time Estrella typed in “Forgive@h3r,” he repeated the mantra “forgive her” in his head to drive the meaning home.

Change that mantra as needed. When “forgive her” started to lose its impact, Estrella changed the mantra to “I forgive her.” This kept things fresh over the course of the 30 days he had the password.

Be safe. Don’t forget to keep online security in mind; this may be a life hack, but it’s still a password. Even if your password requirements don’t specifically say so, try to scramble your password with things like symbols and numbers to make it secure.

What password mantra would you choose for yourself?

Kelly Gurnett runs the blog Cordelia Calls It Quits and is the Editor-in-Chief of All Things Career. Follow her on Twitter @CordeliaCallsIt.

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