I’ve always loved learning how the mind works. Our brains are designed to keep us safe. And, for the most-part, it works beautifully! The mind is truly amazing and complex. It is comprised of three main parts: the conscious, the unconscious and subconscious.
The conscious mind is that part of our mind that represents our current awareness. It includes things like our feelings, memories and perceptions.
The unconscious mind is where we store the things we don’t want to remember. Often this area of the mind includes painful memories, anxiety and unpleasant conflicts and is inaccessible to us. It is a deep dark place that our mind has created to store the things that might otherwise harm us.
Lastly, there’s our subconscious mind which is pretty much running on auto pilot all the time. It’s the part of your mind that keeps you alive, breath by breath, without you even thinking about it. It’s the part that actively takes over what needs to be done when your focused on other things at the same time. It’s also the part of your mind responsible for your reactions, preconceived ideas and automatic actions.
Your subconscious mind holds significantly more information than your conscious mind. Think of it like a computer. It stores all sorts of files, documents, and images that it pulls information from when it’s needed.
Think of a song on the radio you haven’t heard in 20 years but, the moment it plays, you remember it word for word. That’s your subconscious mind stepping in and providing you the information that you need in that moment.
That’s the thing. Your subconscious mind remembers everything and every experience you’ve ever had.
But as you can imagine, you don’t need to keep all of that information in the forefront of your mind all of the time. Your subconscious mind pulls up the information that you need when you need it. And when you don’t need the information in real time, it gets stored in your mind for a later and relevant time.
Because it’s on auto pilot, this part of your mind dictates the thoughts you have, why you have them and when you have them. When your mind needs information, it pulls out the documents and images in an order that it has deemed supportive and serves you based on your previous experiences or pre-determined beliefs.
However, even though it sounds like you’re at the mercy of your mind’s agenda, you actually have quite a bit of control over its programming.
And, even though your subconscious mind rules your life, here’s 3 reasons why you should let it:
1.Your subconscious mind is subjective
It can not think independently and requires instructions from your conscious mind that it obeys. When you want to change your dreams, goals and ideas, your subconscious mind will follow the instruction it receives without question resulting in your ability to achieve the results you want.
2.Your subconscious mind is your guidance system
It is constantly navigating the dangers and opportunities that you encounter every minute of every day keeping you safe according to the rules and boundaries you’ve developed for it.
3.What you expect it tends to realize
If you focus on something over and over again, it’s very likely that you’ll actualize it at some point in time. This is why affirmations and good habits are so important in regards to our behaviors. If we think something is a real thing, our subconscious mind does everything it can in an attempt to make it real. This is why the Law of Attraction works so well.
Ultimately, your subconscious mind can not decipher between fact or fiction which is why how you program it becomes really important to your success plan. If you repeatedly tell yourself that something is hard or scary, even if you have no first hand experience with it, you’ll make it so. Your subconscious mind will continue to play out your ideas in the same auto-pilot ways until you replace them with new ideas that are more aligned with who you want to be, what you want to have or what you want to do. You have an amazing opportunity to create a career and a life that you love but, it all starts with the thoughts you think and how you think them.