Are You Listening? Life Is Talking to You!

The Thought Process What is thought? First of all, thought can be divided into two areas - conscious and subconscious thought. Conscious thought: What you are normally thinking about, at any given point in time. Regardless of how intricate our thought process is, we are only able to hold one thought at a time in our conscious mind. Things like, ‘I must remember to put the washing away’. The conscious mind is responsible for all your voluntary physical actions. It is the part of the brain responsible for logic and reason. The subconscious mind stores information perfectly; it’s the conscious mind that has trouble recalling everything perfectly. The conscious mind filters the information that goes in and out of the subconscious. It acts like a gatekeeper. The subconscious mind: While the subconscious performs many tasks, the following nine are vital roles: 1. Storage Device: The subconscious acts like a huge warehouse for all your thoughts, beliefs and memories of everything you have ever seen and experienced, as well as your attitudes, fears and some ideas that you are usually not aware of. The subconscious also stores all the information for your programmed activities and skills (such as walking, driving a car, playing a sport, etc.). 2. Initiates Emotions and Thoughts: While emotions are often directly related to your thoughts, you can have emotional reactions that are ‘knee-jerk reactions’ to your subconscious feelings, ideas and attitudes. Your automatic thoughts (the thoughts that just pop into your minds as if from nowhere) are usually triggered by your core values, beliefs, and ideas, which are all stored in your subconscious. So in many cases, our subconscious triggers our emotions and thoughts. 3. Influences Speech: When you communicate with others, much of your conversation stems from the subconscious, as it stores your belief system, your self-concept, your ideas about life and your attitudes. Moreover, in Freudian psychoanalysis, your subconscious thoughts/feelings can come through as a slip of a tongue, called a ‘Freudian Slip’. You may say what you are thinking, what you may not be consciously aware of, and not what you were planning to say. 4. Affects Your Behavior: So this incredible computer, the subconscious, is responsible for your knee-jerk reactions in life, love, business, relationships and more. Your subconscious propels you through life, directing you. It is the master program that many of your actions, emotions, reactions to others and attitude to life originates from. If we can change these internal beliefs and programs, we can change our life! (I will show you how to instigate this powerful change later in this chapter.) 5. Defense Mechanism: Our subconscious will often suppress painful memories. According to Sigmund Freud, your subconscious mind stores your repressed memories, which may be traumatic; these may slip through to a person’s consciousness in dreams. In many situations, suppressed (hidden) traumatic memories can cause dysfunctional behavior, or in some extreme cases, psychosis. 6. Fast and Powerful: The subconscious mind is many times faster than the conscious mind, and much more powerful. Think about how fast you react to near misses while driving. Before you have time to analyze the car that has just pulled out in front of you, your foot has hit the brake, you moved to a different part of the road and your heart is pounding. These fast reactions are controlled by this incredibly fast computer - the subconscious. 7. Finds Answers and Problem Solves: The subconscious mind is like your own personal secretary - except it never sleeps! You may be thinking, ‘Oh, I forgot that person’s name’, and then remember it hours later. While your conscious mind is on other things like watching TV, resting, socializing, your subconscious mind is actively problem solving. 8. Keeps You Alive: The subconscious mind is responsible for keeping you alive; coordinating all your organs in perfect harmony. The subconscious is responsible for keeping your heart beating, your lungs functioning continually, your central nervous system working, and coordinating all the billions of your cells, day after day, year after year, until you die. 9. Likes Consistency: The subconscious keeps you behaving, speaking and functioning in accordance with your standards set in your subconscious mind. This is why change is so incredibly hard. Your subconscious mind is king of homeostasis - it keeps everything in your body functioning well, day after day, year after year, and it is not a fan of change. Your subconscious mind wants to keep you in your comfort zone. Your subconscious mind loves routine. How else could it co-ordinate your organs so perfectly? This is why when you want to change it is difficult…but not impossible! I will show you how. Reprogram Your Mind The subconscious mind is the warehouse of information, but this storage system controls much of your behavior. This mass of information creates many of your emotions, impacts on your behavior, changes the way you view and perform in life, hides things from you and keeps you functioning the same way you always have. So how do you change? Well, your subconscious does not reason - the conscious mind does. Your subconscious accepts new programs, as long as the program passes through the gatekeeper. The conscious mind is the gatekeeper. If you convince your conscious mind of a new plan, idea, self-concept, it will filter through to your subconscious mind. If you can change your thoughts in the conscious, the subconscious will obey the commands from the conscious mind. The conscious mind needs to accept this new information and filter it through to the subconscious mind. Let’s assume you want to change an unhelpful habit. First you will need to reprogram your thoughts, if you wish to improve your life. Over ten years ago I tried to give up smoking cigarettes. I tried over twenty times. Then I listened to Passion, Profit & Power, by one of my favorite authors, Marshall Sylver. One tape was designed for giving up smoking and Marshall spoke of becoming excited about being ‘a non-smoker’, about admiring non-smokers, watching what they do with their hands, how they cope without cigarette smoking. This tape was integral to my success, and I was able to become excited about being ‘a non-smoker’ and called myself ‘a non-smoker’, even before I was! Marshall Sylver is a world renowned hypnotist. He is experienced in re-training the subconscious, which is an integral part of changing our habits. Habits are very difficult to change. Why? Because our subconscious mind is so powerful! It has been said that our thoughts are only up to 10% conscious and up to 90% subconscious. This explains why we try to change, and yet have great difficulty, as our subconscious mind may have many thoughts and provide reasons why we do not want to change the habit. Being aware of many of these ‘hidden thoughts’, and working with our ‘hidden motivations’ can help us to achieve the changes we seek, not to mention, working on re-training both our conscious and subconscious minds. We need to ensure our mindset is right, before we take the first step towards change. We are constantly programming our thoughts, so we need to consciously decide what we want, then carefully re-construct our thoughts and words. After our thoughts, words and emotions are in alignment, action can begin. Once I changed my conscious thoughts, and convinced that part of the mind, the message made it through to my subconscious. I changed my thoughts, feelings and beliefs around smoking and smokers. Once I admired non-smokers, used positive self-talk, called myself a non-smoker and became excited about success, I was ready for action! I have never turned back (or lit up another cigarette) since. By convincing my conscious mind, my subconscious mind followed and I became a non-smoker.