We have two main areas to our minds. A conscious and a subconscious mind. While we often think we run the show, make all the right decisions and take action, the reality is, the subconscious mind is the part that runs our lives. Furthermore, even though it is hidden and beneath the surface, it has immense power in your life. It has many functions and works tirelessly behind the scenes. Moreover, it has been said that the subconscious mind is a million times more powerful. Moreover, it is the storehouse of memory, home of your habits, past experiences and unresolved emotions.
Being the source of memory it remembers everything you have ever experienced. Specifically, it is the area where all learning, behaviour and change takes place first. The key, therefore, is to make it your friend and learn how to program it with clear instructions so that you stay on track and achieve your goals. Failing to do this certainly means you will be pulled off course. Undeniably, you will not fulfil your potential and may inadvertently sabotage your success. Let’s see exactly how to program this powerful part of the mind.
The primary function of your subconscious mind is to protect you
First, it is important to understand that the primary function of your subconscious mind is to protect you and keep you safe. This means anytime you think about changing, it signals danger to your brain which releases warning chemicals. We often interpret these as doubt or fear and fail to move through them. Second, as it is the storehouse of memory, it often runs from old redundant memories that no longer serve you.
Third, your subconscious mind controls your involuntary bodily functions like breathing, digestion, pumping blood around your body and distributing nutrients and clearing toxins. Significantly it does amazing things that we are unaware of and take for granted, while we get on with our day.
Your subconscious mind is the storehouse of your memories
All your memories are stored in your subconscious mind, your body. Your subconscious mind never sleeps and remembers everything you have ever experienced. All the pictures, thoughts, sounds, and words that it picks up on from your experiences, way back from when you were born. Furthermore, it stores the meanings you attach to your experiences, your reactions and emotional responses. Importantly, many of the beliefs you have today are from experiences years ago which have no relevance to what you want to achieve today. Moreover, many of them you are unaware of. Assumptions you have taken on, believing them to be true whether or not they really are.
For example, when you were young you may have been told money is hard to make. As your subconscious mind is always listening in, it may have taken on this belief. More importantly, if you struggle with earning money as an adult, it is likely this belief is still influencing your life. Years later, your powerful subconscious mind is still filtering your experiences through the lens of this belief. A scary thought.
Working at the root cause of the problem is the key to achieving lasting change
Unless you become aware of your beliefs, they may continue to limit your life, keep your income below a threshold or your career stagnant. Likewise, if you are anxious as an adult this could be related to an experience, associated memory and emotion from when you were young. The key, therefore, is to work within this area of the mind. Remember, your subconscious mind is where learning, behaviour and change occurs. The exact reason why I focus on working in this area of the mind. Magic happens when someone helps you discover and clear your beliefs, exactly as happened to Carol. When we cleared her belief about not being good enough she finally broke through her income ceiling and went on to achieve phenomenal results in her business, smashing all previous records.
Your subconscious mind is the domain of your habits
Our brain runs habits to conserve energy. This is great as it frees us to create, invent and build amazing things, like planes, bridges and mega computers. However, it is also a double-edged sword because it remembers our less than optimal behaviours as well. Critically, this is exactly why bad habits such as overeating or procrastinating are often so hard to change. Furthermore, your eating behaviours have become ingrained habits, and habits, as mentioned above are run in your subconscious mind. What happens when you get tired, or ‘switch off,’ your subconscious mind takes over running patterns from its memory banks. The very reason you may find yourself aware of eating the chocolate bar only when it is almost gone!
Your unresolved emotions and limiting beliefs steer the course of your life
Ultimately, the perceptions you have about life, what you think, feel and believe are responsible for shaping the results in your life. Because you are unaware of many of your hidden beliefs, and you have around 75,000 thoughts a day it is impossible to be aware of what is pulling you off course. Furthermore, as we fall into habit, auto-pilot anything from 45 to 90% of our day, is it any wonder we are susceptible to our past experiences? Moreover, falling back into the past means we are creating our future from the past. This is not a very helpful starting block! Creating good habits and having a habit plan to achieve what you want is a key part of your success.
Awareness is the first step to change and to understand your subconscious mind
When you take time to slow down, become aware of what you are doing, thinking, and saying, you are on the road to change. Awareness is a vital skill as it’s the key ingredient before any effective change can occur. To start, spend a few minutes every day observing what you say to yourself. Observe with no judgment and write down your findings. Is your language positive and pleasant or negative and nasty? Would you speak to your best friend in this manner? Are you focusing and talking about what you do want or what you don’t want?
If you don’t like what you hear, start to consciously change what you say. Let the old thoughts go and start feeding in new words. Words that are positive and focus on what you want. Your subconscious mind can now get to work on nurturing the new! Otherwise, you might spend much of your time arguing with yourself and never doing the things you know you should!
Are you focusing and talking about what you want or what you don’t want? Click To TweetBeware the power of your words
Eliminate words such as ‘can’t’ ‘should’ ‘ought to’ ‘don’t.’ Use words such as ‘can’ ‘will do’, ‘better’, ‘easier’, ‘more’, ‘it’s’ possible’. All these open you up to possibility. Importantly, your words have great power and just like everything in life, they are energy. Energy cannot be destroyed, so it no use fighting or arguing with your inner voices. You can only transform or transfer it. Furthermore, energy only does one of two things. Energy expands or contracts. Specifically, choose words which ensure you are expanding your focus out towards possibilities. Importantly, you must program your mind, your focus to pay attention to what you do want.
What you resist persist
When you argue with yourself, that nasty voice in the head, you give it more power. What this means is you are unintentionally focusing on what you don’t want. And what you focus on grows. The more you argue and fight the enemy the bigger you make the mental monster. Resistance is futile in this instance. A better way to tackle the voice is to listen with no judgment and ignore it.
Replace it with words that champion you. Therefore, always remember your words have immense power. Look at yourself through the lens of kindness, compassion and curiosity and become your own best friend. Similarly, if you mess up, review what happened and decide how you can improve next time. In the sporting world and performance psychology, we use a term called ‘Focus, Feedback, Fix.’ This is a far better strategy for improving results and achieving greater levels of success. Finally, it takes consistency and persistence.
Awareness empowers you to instruct your subconscious mind better
These simple steps will help you start to shift your focus. When you shift your focus towards what you want rather than what you don’t want, you will see the evidence in your results.
As you begin to think and focus on what you want you change. Furthermore, you create new programs for your subconscious mind to follow. Programs that are in alignment with your goal so you can surely and steadily move closer to our vision, and your goals. For more information about how to reprogram your mind, and create good habits, grab a copy of my book Creating Healthy Life Habits.
In conclusion, when you listen carefully, learn how to give yourself clear instruct and create key habits of thought and behaviour, you are on the right path. The path to creating a better Mindset for Success and ultimately programming your subconscious mind to come with you on the road to success.
If you are ready to reach the next level in your life and breakthrough your limitations, I invite you to take that next step and book a call on my calendar.
About the Author
Mandy Napier is a Global High Performance Mindset Coach who is dedicated to supporting high achievers fulfil their potential and achieve extraordinary results professionally and personally. Transformations are the norm, and results guaranteed.
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