# Honey, your programming is showing *It's time to build your own operating system* By [ACIE by Anna Chittick](https://paragraph.com/@acie) · 2026-06-19 operating system of the human soul --- You’re working on yourself. You’re following intuition. But somehow you’re still solving the wrong problem. ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/4c559d9bf1a98138af0d9762ea846d98f196b22bc91cd926bb6da5c42c1334cd.jpg) When I was trapped in a cell with nothing but time and a pen, I realised my thoughts must become useful or they would consume me. So I did what I was programmed to do. I tried to fix everything. The source of my poor choices. My husband dying. How my kids would survive without me. The grand comeback I would make upon my release. Inside a two by three solid box with nothing but time on my hands, I went about solving these problems, so I could declare myself **useful.** I decided that this experience had to have meaning, otherwise none of it mattered. I didn’t matter and I would become just like everyone else around me. My father used to tell us all the time that if we didn’t achieve greatness, then we would be perceived as useless. That without a career, skills, and money, you were absolutely nothing. I grew up believing that this was the only way to exist even when it didn’t feel right. I kept trying to make my life seem important. Failed living arrangements, constant churning of jobs, never finishing anything. I was doing everything right. I was following all the rules I was given. I was listening to everything that I was taught. Even when I stepped out of line, I would use those rules to bring me back. I was fully programmed to bring myself back to this factory setting no matter how far away I was from it. Get married. Then someone will _love_ you. Have kids. Then you will have _purpose_. Get a degree. Then you will be _smart_. But none of that worked. All the control I gave to the systems of my life, led me toward having no control at all. None. Zero. Nil. Talk about a reverse manifestation. [Share](https://annachitticksego.substack.com/p/honey-your-programming-is-showing?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share) Yet inside that experience I was forced to learn that the only control I actually have, is in the **choices that I make**. The choices though, can only be drawn from _my own_ programming built inside _my own_ operating system. Which means they can be changed. Ask yourself this question right now. What makes you, _you_? Don’t answer with what you do for work or what your relationship status is. I am talking about the you underneath everything. This is your code. The unique sequence of you. From the way you wake up in the morning to how you greet a new person to the way certain images cause a reaction in your body. These intricate and uniquely coded patterns that cannot and will not ever be repeated make you the only program that ever matters. To build your own operating system, you have to see what programs you are running. This is the core work. One. **Think**. Define your source code. This is your foundation. Separate the truths you have claimed as your own from the factory settings you were taught to believe. Two. **Act**. Map your preferences. How do you move when no one is watching? By observing your natural inclinations, your sleep, your solitude, your pace, you identify the behaviour that is truly you. Three. **Feel**. Trust the signal. Your body is the diagnostic tool. When something feels right, it is not an accident. It is a system match. Learn to recognise the warmth, the clarity, and the ease of a code that is actually yours. The answers to these questions create your own baseline, and this is where you expand from. This eliminates the constant struggle of trying to fix things in your life as soon as a problem arises. Instead you create a foundation so strong that nothing causes you to waver. You will no longer chase the life you were programmed to live. By rewriting the code, you stop running the old program. And when your life is finally yours, you get to exist instead of just existing. I’m creating a whole interactive Operating System that you can watch unfold in real time. Subscribe --- *Originally published on [ACIE by Anna Chittick](https://paragraph.com/@acie/honey-your-programming-is-showing)*