why you should rethink how you experience everything

I’ve definitely realized that how we experience things isn’t what we think it is. It's not just "what happens" to us. It's more like architectural design than we give it credit for. See, when I was younger, I had this moment where the whole framework I viewed the world through just collapsed, and I was left standing in the ruins of what I thought was "true experience." It was a bit like realizing you’ve been living in a weirdly constructed plywood house when you thought you had a skyscraper.

The thing about it is, experience is profoundly subjective, right? That’s not news. But what's wild to me is how we’re always so sure that what we’re experiencing is the "real" thing. You ever catch yourself in a moment where life feels like a set list you didn’t create but somehow ended up performing?

And I’m not just talking about the obvious stuff like listening to the same music or eating the same thing for breakfast. I’m talking about the entire way you interact with reality.

I mean, experiences are like these old slides that project onto the screen of your awareness. And sometimes, it’s like the slides are stuck. You know when a projector jams, and you get this burned-in image that just won’t change? That’s what we do with our perceptions.

We allow them to burn into a pattern we didn’t choose, then we live with the scorched marks thinking it’s just how things are.

So, what I’m getting at here is, we’ve got to start rethinking how we design our whole experience catalog. It's not enough to just accept the set list we’re handed. Experience is like taking a piece of clay and constantly shaping it; every little thought, assumption, and interaction leaves a mark. And depending on how you mold it, it either ends up as a mish-mash or something you actually want.

When I was much younger, college-aged, I was dead broke, and I actually chose to be homeless for a while. That experience shattered my default setup. I went from seeing life as something that happens according to this structured timeline, to seeing it as this chaotic art project. And let me tell you, as uncomfortable as that sounds, it was liberating.

Because suddenly, nothing was fixed; everything was open to re-design.

Here’s where it gets tricky though: even the awareness that you can design your own experience has its own limits. It’s like trying to draw a straight line on paper and finding out the paper keeps moving. Or like trying to build a house while the ground beneath you keeps shifting. The reality you think you're building on is constantly changing.

You know what’s funny? Once, I was on a train, headed somewhere I didn’t even want to go, but had to because of some family obligation. I was sitting there feeling stuck, not just in the train, but in life, and then I noticed the reflections in the window. I could either focus on the smudged glass, the dirt, and my dreary reflection, or I could look past it to the rapidly changing landscape outside.

It was like that moment cracked open a box of reminders about how we focus on what’s right in front of us and miss the bigger, vibrant scene passing by.

And you’ve probably noticed this too, right? This tendency to hammer away at the tiny details of our current perception rather than pulling back to see the broader canvas. In a way, we're all architects taking orders from our past assumptions and forgotten blueprints without even realizing it.

To break this pattern, you've got to start with a reality audit, a kind of internal monologue turned practical task. Ask yourself, "What experiences am I shaping without even knowing it?" Make a list of small things you assume, tiny beliefs you never question. For me, it was realizing I had this belief that success looked like one thing, a college degree, a stable job, and my experiences were all being routed towards that end.

Exploring this with architectural metaphors helps because architecture is all about deliberate design amidst constraints. Think of your experiences as these modular structures, rooms you enter, some designed beautifully, others rushed and cramped. You've got the drafting table there, and you can either keep scribbling the same old plans or start drafting something radically new.

One concrete thing you can try right now is this: Pick a routine that feels stale. Maybe it's your morning ritual, the way you approach work, whatever. Instead of following the blueprint, reroute it. Add something unexpected.

If you always drink coffee, have tea. Instead of checking your phone first thing, read a couple of pages from a book by the window. Notice what happens to your mental architecture when you start changing the tiniest details. It’s like taking a sledgehammer to a fake wall and discovering an entirely new room.

We’re also dealing with culturally installed structures, which complicate the redesign even more. Society builds these phantom mansions in our minds, complete with complicated floor plans labeled "success," "happiness," and "normalcy." You think you’re walking in your house, but much of it was prefab delivered in cultural containers you accepted without question.

Take for instance my friend Jay. Jay was always the kind of guy who did what was expected. He went to school, got a corporate job, played by the rules. But somewhere along the line, he realized he was living in a house without windows, everything was enclosed, safe, predictable but suffocating.

Jay started questioning the walls of his metaphorical building. He took a sabbatical, went off to learn woodworking, of all things, and found that crafting something tangible changed how he saw everything else. It was like he punched through the drywall society had built around him.

We often don't even know these structures exist until something cracks. It's like walking through a museum of your own habitual thinking processes, architectural relics that you think define who you are. But when you realize they’re just relics, not realities, it’s like the gallery walls start shifting, revealing new exhibits.

Now, the game of life, it's filled with hidden rooms you never noticed because the old blueprints were too simplistic. That's why the idea of "debugging your reality" feels so apt even though I’m not using the tech metaphor today. The concepts are there, underpinning everything as these psychic notifications you frequently miss.

When I remodeled my life, it wasn’t just about adding features. It was taking things away. You know, you always hear about addition, add skills, add connections, add habits. But what about subtraction?

Sometimes the most significant transformations happen when you subtract. You pull away the layers and suddenly see the simple, functional beauty underneath, like stripping back paint from an old wooden chair to reveal the grain.

So, you should consider taking out some walls of expectation. Knock down a few that seem imposing and non-negotiable. Experience your mental architecture without all the clutter. It's freeing.

Start small; find a tiny belief that’s a load-bearing wall and poke at it. See if it really needs to be there. A lot of the time, it doesn’t.

The final thought I want to leave you with: what if the entire structure of how we experience the world is wrong? Maybe not wrong, but built on a rickety premise. What if we've been focused on constructing experiences that don't serve us because we let society hand over the blueprints without a second glance? There’s so much out there that we default to without wondering if there’s something else behind that blank wall begging to be painted on.

But you know what, maybe that’s the beauty in it. The chance to keep designing, keep building, keep tearing down. Someone’s bound to find a hammer and chisel eventually, right? And then, there it is.

A new space, previously hidden, now open to be lived in.