Thought: Can we simply decide to upgrade our minds?

Somewhat inspired by Homo Deus and my recent appraisal, I have been wondering if we can simply decide to upgrade or change our minds.

So instead of having to traipse through the Kübler-Ross model of five stages of grief, or mistake based learning approaches encoded in memory or something else - can we just adopt a new piece of insight or mental model?

This is a view of the mind as an operating system. So if we don't like MindOS 1.0 - we can upgrade to version 2, pick new software (mental models) to run or switch OS completely. For example (and vastly simplifying) here are some different human OS and their interpretation of a natural disaster like an earthquake:

Medieval MindOS: If something bad happens it's probably because of a supernatural entity. I have limited agency over this, but maybe I can try paying better homage to the deity.

Late 20th C MindOS: If something bad happens, it's probably for reasons that can be understood, and in many cases, we can take preventive action to stop it happening next time or to mitigate its effects.

In some cases, we might also run fragments of operating systems which compete with each other or one version coming to the fore under particular circumstances.

Now the operating system(s) that dominates in our culture affects our collective reality. For example, we collectively decide that worthless pieces of paper have value and power (money) - and so they do.   But generally radical change to our collective MindOS takes time, resources and likely a lot of resistance.

But would happen if, we simply decided we were going to all upgrade together for a better reality e.g. perhaps a more fulfilling one?

It turns out that some leaders have attempted it and sometimes over comparatively short timescales. For example, Elizabeth I practically turned England from a Catholic country to Protestant one in the roughly the space of a decade or so.  There are plenty of other examples from other revolutionary leaders.

Mindfulness seems to be another recent attempt (at least in Western culture). This is in part the vision of ourselves watching ourselves and deciding our response rather than instantly reacting:

Mindful  MindOS: If something bad happens, I recognise it and the suggested response offered and I decide how I will respond to it.

or from the Navy Seals:

Responsibility MindOS: If something bad happens, I take personal responsibility for learning from and fixing it.

Interesting that these last two are variations of the late 20th Century MindOS.

It also makes me wonder if there are restrictions in what OS you can run due to limitations in our brains and bodies.  We might be kidding ourselves in terms of the progress we have made because we are unable to recognise those limitations generally.