POWER of the SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

Roles Of Conscious And Subconscious Minds

The classic view of the conscious mind it that it is responsible for logic and reasoning as well as so called ‘voluntary’ actions such as consciously deciding to move a limb or some other physical action.

The classic view of the subconscious mind is that it is responsible for all our so called ‘involuntary’ actions like emotional response, keeping our heart beating and other bodily functions. It is also seen as the repository of all our beliefs and memories.

I believe these definitions are over simplistic and not a good indication of how things really work.

Conscious vs. Subconscious Mind

In my youth I placed the highest value on the process of thinking with the conscious mind believing it to be superior to the subconscious mind, which I saw as instinctual and emotional. I accepted the Newtonian model of a mechanical universe where everything had measurable cause and effect, rejecting everything outside of the model including religion. I saw people that based their actions on their feelings as intellectually inferior.

Today I have the opposite opinion, now realizing that the subconscious mind is infinitely superior to the conscious mind and is what actually runs our lives anyway. Most of our responses to life’s day to day situations come from learnt patterns residing in memory.

Conscious Awareness

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) informs us that our conscious mind can only process 7 +/- 2 (seven plus or minus two) chunks of information at a time. In other words only that limited number of things can be in our conscious awareness at any given time. Our subconscious mind is taking in thousands of chunks of information all the time but internal programs filter (process of deletion, generalization and distortion) this input only delivering to the conscious mind what it determines to be relevant.

In other words we do not consciously decide what to take notice of as most of us think we do. Our awareness of the environment is determined by what the belief based programs running in our subconscious allow us to see.

Building New Neural Networks

If you have learnt to drive a car, or some other new multi-tasking skill, then you can remember how much attention it required in the beginning. There seemed to be so many things to remember and pay attention to that it often overloaded your conscious mind using all available attention chunks. But over time you needed to allocate less and less of your conscious awareness until you no longer needed to actively think about driving. Many long term drivers will have had the experience of driving some distance only to arrive and realize they could not remember how they got there.

For them, the task of driving the car and navigating has become like the so called “involuntary” actions such as regulating your heart beat. Of course, had some obstacle or dangerous situation arisen then it would have been brought to your conscious awareness and hopefully in enough time to respond appropriately.

In the same way, our responses to just about all life’s events come from stored memory and beliefs with our conscious mind acting more like a librarian, retrieving them from our neural networks using pattern recognition or memory hooks (anchors).

Speech is another good example. Many think this is a function of the conscious mind especially given the location of the area of the brain associated with language in the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe is considered the seat of consciousness, based on brain maps made by recording what areas become active when specific stimulus or activities occur. This association seems logical but it is far from conclusive.

If you have ever attempted to learn a new language then you know the effort involved in remembering the vocabulary and then structuring a sentence based on the grammatical rules of the new language. If you remember back to my example about first learning to drive a car, you will recognize that the process is the same. Once mastered, speech flows effortlessly with conscious attention focused only on the content.

Subconscious Mind Is Really In Control

The conscious mind is not the objective executive decision maker most of us would like to believe it is. Most of the responses and decisions people make use subconscious value and belief based programs based on filtered information. Their conscious mind then retrieves the most “appropriate” responses from their neural networks. As new information and feedback from the environment is encountered, it is also subject to the same subconscious value and belief based programs,  filtered and stored accordingly, thus reinforcing existing neural networks.

This reactive mode is the default for the vast majority of humanity and is not conducive to new ideas and personal growth.

Subconscious Mind Power And Creating Your Reality

Breaking free of this reactive mode requires conscious effort and is often very challenging.  You begin to examine your values and beliefs and question their validity, determining if they serve or inhibit your personal development. The biggest obstacle to change is that many consider these values and beliefs to be an intrinsic part of their identity, regardless of their validity and usefulness.

When you are able to take control of your conscious mind and start to harness the power of the subconscious mind, then you can start enjoy success in whatever endeavor you want!