How your mind works – The Conscious and the Unconscious Mind (Part 1)

Thank you for joining me on this journey into the unconscious aspects of success!

In this edition I start to delve into the Conscious and the Unconscious Mind, how each of them works and the different roles each of them plays in your life and your success (or the barriers to it!), as I believe that understanding those concepts is fundamental to understanding why you think, feel and act in certain ways - and the outcomes that you get - in certain situations.

I’ll try and keep it as simple as possible, but it’s likely to take a couple do editions to do justice to the topic.

So……

Let me ask you a question: as a percentage, how much of your daily activity do you think that you consciously control?

?Unless you have looked at this area previously, you will probably be stunned to her that it is between 3% and 5%.

?Yup – no more than 5% of what you do every day, is done consciously – everything else – the other 95- 97% is done unconsciously, controlled or directed by your unconscious, or subconscious, mind (I will use the terms “conscious mind” and “unconscious mind” interchangeably). ?

?You are probably familiar with the concept that we all have two parts to our mind, ?the conscious mind and the subconscious mind, but there are probably a lot fewer of you who know what each of these parts does, far less why they do it, and, in the subconscious mind, how large chunks are “programmed” ?to respond in certain ways to certain situations.? Understanding that is key to understanding why you react ?the same way - with the same thoughts, feelings and/ or behaviours – ?ever time in the same circumstances: and why it is very difficult to change these reactions by conscious thought alone!

Let’s Look at each of them:

Your conscious mind is your everyday thinking mind.? It is rational, it is logical, it is limited and it likes linear thinking—proceeding from what it perceives as facts to a logical conclusion. It is based on the here and now. It houses your short term memory, but can really only handle between 5 and 9 things (typically 7) at once – in fact, even that may be overstating it as I recently saw research that said that it could really only hold 3 things at once.

The unconscious mind is everything else other than the conscious critical mind. It’s primary function is to keep you safe (although what it perceives as danger can sometimes seem a bit skewed).? It is where your amygdala – which is responsible for your “fight, flight, freeze” response sits.? But it does so much more than that: it is creative, intuitive and seemingly endlessly scalable and flexible.?? It regulates all of your bodily processes, it stores and manages your memories, it takes every learning from every experience you have ever had (and even some that you have never had but have vividly imagined!) and files it away, and uses those to create the mental patterns and templates that shape your life.? It is instinctive, and can instantly change the way you think, feel and behave.

In simple terms, you can think about? your conscious mind as, for the most part, an observer and commentator on your life - ?it observes and comments on life, life events, and how you are feeling. So, the conscious part of your mind thinks that you might be feeling a bit anxious, or that you don’t belong in a meeting with senior executives, or perhaps you have a general feeling that you are not good enough, or have a fear of failure that you cannot account for. Equally It might notice that, for example you feel panic rising when you see a spider or go to get on a plane, or that you are craving a cigarette.

?These are things that we notice ourselves every day.? However, when you think about it and ask yourself what created the feelings, you will realise that they are actually reflecting something coming from much deeper. ?Your ?conscious mind may have noticed those feelings, but they were created in a different part of your mind - the part that we call the subconscious.

?It’s a bit like when you went on a long road trip with your parents when you were a child – perhaps on holiday or to go to see old aunt Agatha: your conscious mind is like the child, the passenger, while the subconscious mind is like the parent who is driving the car.

?The child? - your conscious mind – may be enjoying the trip, noticing the passing fields and the cows in them, or the passing buildings, maybe deciding to dip into his or her pick & mix - but he or she is not really able to influence the journey at all. While he or she can decide what pick & mix to eat, they can’t really do much when it comes to the destination, the route, the speed - or even the choice of music or the temperature in the car. ?

?It is the parent, the driver – your subconscious mind - ?that controls these things and decides whether to keep them as they are or change them. So, it doesn’t matter how much the child might want to go somewhere different (not old aunt Agatha’s again!!) or change the route so they pass a toy shop or a theme park (or, in my case, as a child, a football stadium!), unless they can get the driver to pay attention to them, communicate with the driver and convince the driver that it is a better option, and is at least as safe, then nothing is going to change and the journey will proceed just as it did every other time before.

?If, in that analogy, the child wants to make the change then he or she must have a way of getting through to, and then communicating effectively with, the parent.

?Similarly, if we want to make changes to “the way it has always been” in terms of our thoughts, feelings and/ or behaviours, and the outcomes that we get as a result, we have to have a way of accessing and communicating with our subconscious mind.

?We will explore how your subconscious mind processes things, and how a number of ways in which you can make the changes that you want in future newsletters.? ?

Best? regards,

Donald

Website: www.donaldhamilton.co.uk

eMail:[email protected]

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