Default Settings
Pick up any new device and it comes with default settings. Brightness, notification preferences, language—all pre-configured by someone else. Most people never change them. We simply accept whatever came programmed and call it “normal.”
Our minds operate similarly.
We’ve been running on default settings we never consciously chose. React defensively to criticism. Feel anxious about uncertainty. Seek validation from others. Compare ourselves constantly. These responses feel so automatic, so natural, we assume they’re simply “how we are.”
But here’s what we’ve missed: every default setting was installed by the past. Defined in such a way to reinforce a sense of innocent me-ness.
Watch what happens when someone criticizes something about your life. Notice the instant tightening, the surge of defensiveness. Did you choose that reaction? Or did it simply execute automatically, like software running in the background?
The remarkable thing about our “default settings” is this: they can be changed.
Not through force or pretending to feel differently. But through recognizing that what feels like “just who I am” is actually a learned pattern, no more permanent than the brightness setting on your phone.
As A Course in Miracles teaches: “I am not the victim of the world I see.” Those automatic reactions aren’t your nature—they’re simply the current configuration. And what was configured can be reconfigured.
The first step? Noticing when we’re running on defaults. When criticism arrives and defensiveness activates—can we catch it? Just observe it, without judgment.
In that space of observation, something shifts. We’re no longer the program seemingly running automatically. We’re the awareness witnessing it.
Join me in Thursday’s class where we’ll explore how to access these settings and discover the freedom that comes from conscious configuration. I look forward to seeing you then.