The subconscious mind is the program that controls and determines who you are and what you think. As a child, we start to create this program by analyzing the people around us. However, your subconscious acquired much of its beliefs by the time you were seven.
There is a saying that Ed Mylett loves to say, and it goes like this; most things are caught, not taught. There is an immense amount of power and truth to this statement. If most of who we are is in our subconscious and the subconscious has been formed through observation, then it’s no wonder that most things are caught, not taught.
You’re just like your mom/dad.
Different programs obtained through childhood affect the rest of our lives unless we can learn to access the subconscious and rewrite those programs. You may not want to hear this, but you have many of the same emotional triggers, beliefs, and attitudes as your parents. Often the only person that doesn’t see the similarities is you. Relationship behaviour is one of the predominating behaviours we pick up from our parents.
Aware or not aware?
The conscious mind is the part of the mind that is “aware,” and the subconscious mind is a part that resides below our consciousness. The subconscious mind is like a program running a computer; it just does its thing without needing any prompting whatsoever from the person using the computer. As a result, the subconscious mind is in control for 95% of our day. Therefore, we can consciously believe that we will become happy, wealthy, and healthy, but if the subconscious doesn’t agree, there will be a problem; we get a David vs Goliath-type battle.
In a past blog post about habits, we uncovered how to transfer a task from the conscious mind to the subconscious mind. This time instead of creating habits that get completed on autopilot by the subconscious mind, we will reprogram our desired state of being into the subconscious.
The importance of thought
If our thoughts determine the outcome of our lives and 95% of our thoughts are subconscious. Then we must figure out how to control our subconscious thoughts; thoughts matter. You’ve heard of “I think. Therefore I am.” Your thoughts make you wealthy or poor, happy or sad, healthy or sick, motivated or lazy; you get the point.
To tap into the subconscious and change/improve, we must think greater than our current circumstances. We must learn to overcome our environment, our bodies, and time.
Environmental Programming
Your environment comprises your daily routines, the people you interact with, the car you drive, the breakfast you eat, etc. At some point, our lives become so predictable that we subconsciously recreate the same emotions repeatedly, day after day. When your environment doesn’t change, but you want to change, you must begin to think greater than your current environment. All the great peoples of history knew how to do this, from Gandhi to Buddha, to Einstein, to the Wright Brothers. They were ahead of their time; they thought greater than their current environment. For example, Gandhi spent more than 30 years trying to free India from British Colonial Rule. At first, he saw no signs that his beliefs were being played out in the real world. However, he thought greater than his environment until his environment changed to match his beliefs. This way of thinking is fundamental to change.
The first step to changing your personal reality is to begin by changing your personality. Someone’s personality is nothing more than a set of memorized emotions, you can change your personality, but you must change how your environment triggers your emotions. Most of our daily routines go like this;
We wake up and brush our teeth the same way, have the same breakfast, go to work on the same route, and see the same people at work that trigger the same feelings. Then hurry up to get home, to hurry up to make dinner, to hurry up to watch our favourite tv show, to hurry up and get to bed, to hurry up and do it all over again.
How can we expect different emotions and outcomes from this routine set of memorized behaviours created by our environemnts?
The Body Remembers
We’ve all heard of athletes doing visualization reps (mental reps) when injured. These mental reps are almost as effective as doing the real thing. The mind creates such a powerful effect on the body that the body starts to memorize movement patterns without ever having to do the movement. It’s the same thing with thoughts and the words we tell ourselves. Tell yourself you’re inadequate long enough, and your body and mind will start to believe it. Your subconscious is so objective that it doesn’t know the difference between the emotions created from your experiences in the external world and those you fabricate in your inner world by thought alone.
The body stores past experiences and emotions. In other words, the body is part of the subconscious mind. Unfortunately, the body can become so good at memorizing emotions that it often gets in the driver’s seat and takes over.
Emotions felt by the mind get sent down to the body. When the same emotions are sent to the body repeatedly, the body starts to know how you will respond before your conscious mind ever has a chance. So the body starts to create emotional states for the mind. Road rage is a great example.
The body stores information. Don’t believe me? How do you explain habits like brushing your teeth? Your hand remembers that habit so well you could be half asleep and still manage to get it done. Another great example is a mother driving her three children to school; she’s driving, sipping on coffee and breaking up fights simultaneously, all while asking the kids if they have grabbed their lunch. She’s done this so often that her body has memorized some of those actions.
We now know that the body acts as the subconscious mind to help us, but we can’t give it all the power, or we will continually recreate the same emotions. When you repeatedly recreate the same emotions until you cannot think any greater than how you feel, your feelings are now the means of your thinking. If this happens, you lose power over your life.
By itself, conscious positive thinking cannot overcome subconscious negative feelings. This puts you in a polarized state where you are trying to think of one way to override how you feel inside. When the mind and body are in opposition, change will never happen. To change, we must think greater than how we feel.
Conditioned by the time
In 1890, Pavlov experimented with his dogs. Every time Pavlov rang his Bell, he would feed the dogs. Eventually, Pavlov rang the Bell and the dogs automatically salivated in anticipation. He created a conditioned response within the dogs. A conditioned response is one of the reasons why it’s so hard to change because the conscious mind may be present, but the subconscious body-mind is living in the past.
Combine time and emotions to make up who you are.
An emotional reaction that lasts 4 hours to 2 days is considered a mood. Over a more extended period, it becomes a temperament, and eventually, that emotional reaction becomes a personality. Most of the time, our personality, how we think, act, and feel, is anchored in the past, hence why we must overcome time to change our personalities.
You’ll find that you are either thinking ahead or looking back most of the time. Living in the moment without being conscious of time, moments when you transcend the big three, are what some people call being in the flow.
Closing thoughts
The conscious mind is just the steering of how we live our lives. The subconscious mind is where self-doubt lies, where all of your beliefs are stored, etc. Every experience you have is a direct result of the beliefs you hold in your subconscious. Moreover, every reaction you take part in is because of your subconscious.
This week’s blog was about creating a desire in you to want to understand and take more control over your subconscious mind. Keep an eye out for a later blog post on exactly how to do that.