SOMOTE is an app for Windows and Android that shows the affirmations and photos you choose on your screen, over whatever you are doing, hundreds of times a day. Here is why I built it.
Why I built SOMOTE
SOMOTE started with a frustrating realization. I knew exactly which thoughts I wanted to think, and I had no way to make myself think them often enough. I had written the sentences in a dozen notebooks. What I lacked was a way to see them again and again. You can’t adopt a belief the way you make a decision, once and done. You have to hear it many times.
Meanwhile, I noticed that other things were repeating at me all day. My screen showed me red notification badges, headlines designed to alarm me and the same five worries over and over. Everything on my screen was repeating something, except the words I actually wanted to believe.
How the first version worked
The idea was simple. My eyes are on a screen for eight hours a day, so I put my chosen words there. I didn’t put them in an app I would have to remember to open. I put them on top of everything, at whatever visibility I chose, on a schedule that didn’t depend on my motivation. The first version was rough, but it worked right away in one important way: for the first time, my own sentences were the ones I saw most.
What SOMOTE is today
Since then, the work has been about making sure SOMOTE never gets in your way. Your phrases appear over your work without interrupting it. SOMOTE uses almost no computer power, and there are no pop-ups or badges to dismiss. Underneath is one of the most reliable findings in psychology: repetition makes things familiar, and familiar things feel true. Until now, the sentences repeating in your head were chosen by accident. With SOMOTE, you choose them. Every setting is based on research, which you can read about in how SOMOTE’s settings work.
That is what SOMOTE is: a simple, beautiful way to give your own words as much screen time as everything else gets. Foundations is free, because everyone who wants to think differently deserves a way to start. See everything SOMOTE does, and download it for Windows or Android at somote.app.