Video summary

How To Upgrade Your Core Personal Operating System | Simon Reilly | TEDxChilliwack

Main summary

Key takeaways

Wellness and Self-Improvement

Core wellness + self-management message

The speaker frames life change as constant and argues that your “core personal operating system” (your inner values and beliefs) determines whether you respond with fear of change or love of creativity.

Upgrading this system is compared to updating a smartphone: without updates, you freeze, get stuck, and slow down.

Key wellness strategies / self-care techniques

  • Reframe the root problem

    • Don’t judge yourself for your “operating system.”
    • It’s described as an absence of understanding.
    • Building understanding enables change.

  • Reset / reboot yourself

    • When you’re stuck, take a time-out and reset/reboot your core state.
    • The goal is to move forward from creativity, not fear.

  • Use forgiveness as an emotional regulation tool

    • Forgive yourself for seeking approval and safety
    • Forgive yourself for the linked emotions of anxiety and fear
    • Forgive yourself for mistaken perceptions that you’re worthless or unlovable
    • Forgive yourself for forgetting your deeper identity/connection to light, love, peace, and joy

  • Breathing + affirmations (somatic / affirmation practice)

    • Take a deep breath, exhale, then repeat.
    • Inhale while affirming:
      • “Love and light and happiness and peace and joy radiate through every cell of my being.”

Productivity / mindset methodology (“upgrade” steps)

  1. Step 1: Be honest

    • Identify the needs driving your fear responses (e.g., safety/approval)
    • Notice the anxiety/fear emotions connected to those needs
    • Recognize the beliefs you’ve formed (e.g., “I’m worthless,” “I’m unlovable”)

  2. Step 2: Forgive yourself

    • Release guilt and self-judgment tied to those needs, emotions, and beliefs.

  3. Step 3: Reconnect to your values and identity

    • Return to values described as sense, teaching, wisdom / “vision and sense”
    • Reaffirm the belief system that supports confidence (described as you are infinite)
    • Use the affirmation while breathing to reinforce this state

Additional actionable concept

  • Upgrade from the “information age” to the “inspiration age”
    • Like removing overload from an overly app-filled phone, shifting your internal operating system helps you move from constant information intake to deeper inspiration.

Presenters / sources

  • Presenter: Simon Reilly
  • Referenced source: Time magazine interview with Bob Dylan
  • Organizations/people mentioned (acknowledgements):
    • TEDxChilliwack team: Ray, Rachel, Mike
    • Supporters: Chris Barl, Derk Wolsack, Pat Fenukin
    • Laura (wife) and his parents (mentioned)

Original video