Understanding the Subconscious Mind: A Crucial Step

Everyday, people from all over the world read or listen to what the Law of Attraction gurus have to say.  They then proceed to get all pumped up and excited about all the wonderful changes they’re about to make in their lives, and then, after a few days or weeks, perhaps even months, they ultimately resort back to their old ways of thinking and doing.  They don’t see any immediate changes in their lives, so they slowly start to lose focus and/or faith in what they’ve learned and fall right back into their old habits.    Does this sound familiar?  It’s not that what they’ve learned is wrong.  It’s just that it is not complete.  In order to be successful at making major changes in our lives, it is critical that we first understand how our minds work.

Think of the conscious mind as a laptop computer, with limited memory and processing power.  Through your laptop (conscious mind), you can install programs or issue commands to control most of your bodily functions based on data that you observe or experience at any given moment.

 The subconscious mind, on the other hand, is like a supercomputer or server, with all of your human instinctual behaviours pre-programmed at birth and everything you’ve ever experienced through any of your five senses stored away in it’s massive memory banks for safe-keeping.  On it, is but one program (or operating system), and for every piece of data (or experience) it processes, a corresponding set of commands (reactions) is issued to the body based upon all of its stored data.  It is this supercomputer that maintains control over all of your bodily functions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, over the course of your entire lifetime.  That is, unless, it receives an overriding command issued through your laptop computer (conscious mind).  Also, it is only through your supercomputer (subconscious) that you are able to access the Internet (or Universal Mind) through which all other supercomputers are connected and accessible to each other.

Scientific studies have demonstrated that once a fact is known by at least one person, it can then be accessed by the subconscious minds of others, thus supporting this Universal Mind theory.  Understanding how the human mind works and how to gain access to it, enables us to then acquire this knowledge from the subconscious minds of others by way of our sixth sense, intuition. 

For hundreds of years, everyone believed that it was impossible for a human being to run a four-minute mile, until, of course, Roger Bannister figured out a way to do so.  Within the next few years, 24 other runners were able to accomplish this same, previously unfathomable feat.  Could this be considered further evidence supporting a Universal Mind theory?

Anyway, back to our computer analogy; even though our conscious minds (laptops) do have some control over our bodies, it is still our subconscious (supercomputer) that maintains control whenever our conscious mind is overwhelmed with data (sensory experiences) or shuts down completely (sleeps).  So, what little control our conscious minds have, will always be handed back over to our subconscious when we become distracted (new input), overwhelmed (too much input) or go to sleep (power down).  Hence, in order to make lasting changes in your life, you must:

1. Never lose focus or become distracted (highly unlikely),
2. Never be overwhelmed (impossible), or
3. Find a way to modify your supercomputer’s operating system (ie. make changes to your subconscious mind)

This is what so few people appear to be able to do successfully.  In order to reprogram your subconscious mind, you have to find a way to override years and years of learned behaviours and somehow impress a powerful enough message that it will take precedence over all of these automated behaviours and responses.  In essence, you will have to find a way to program new lines of instruction or code into the subconscious’ operating system that will have the ability to override potentially thousands of lines of existing code in order to achieve your desired outcome (response).  Can it be done?  Absolutely, but the process is definitely more complex than simply reading a few books or repeating a set of positive affirmations.

There are actually several ways of getting through to our subconscious, and now that we have a basic understanding of how our mind(s) work, we can proceed to exploring the various methods available for incorporating meaningful and lasting changes for the better.  This is the key to designing a better life.  We must find a way to modify our deepest beliefs about ourselves.  More on this subject will be made available in a future post.

My Secrets to You,

Ron

The Law of Attraction Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

Ask a self-proclaimed expert how to apply positive thinking or the Law of Attraction in order to improve your life and he will probably suggest any number of available tools like positive affirmations, subliminal messaging, vision boards, mind movies, self-hypnosis CDs, and so on and so forth.  What he may not tell you, however, is that using these tools may actually do more harm than good!  It’s not that he’s purposely trying to harm or even mislead you.  He may just simply not be aware of the possible dangers in using such tools without sufficient background knowledge.

In a study conducted by Canadian psychologists, Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick, it was found that positive self-statements or affirmations actually make people who are already down on themselves feel worse rather than better.  The reason for this is that a person already low on self-esteem is more likely to view a positive affirmation as a contradictory thought.  So, instead of making them feel better about themselves, the affirmation must do battle with a lifetime full of contradictory experiences, ultimately losing out and giving way to the exact opposite effect of what was intended.  Anyone understanding the true power of the Law of Attraction should immediately recognize the negative scope of such a finding. 

The Law of Attraction is constantly at work in everyone’s day-to-day life, bringing about events and experiences that are in line with each person’s thoughts and own self-image.  Attempting to change a subconsciously rooted image, constructed through years of personal experience, with one positive, yet contradictory affirmation, is sheer lunacy.  Instead, it simply intensifies feelings of low self-worth, causing a person to focus even more on negative thoughts, leading to more and more negative experiences. So, what then can a person with low self-esteem do to escape this downward spiral?

Fortunately, there are ways to get around this problem, but it becomes much more complicated when the positive image or affirmation you’re trying to adopt conflicts with your subconscious blueprint.  Simply repeating the image or affirmation a number of times in this case will not allow you to achieve your intended result.  Instead you have to get to the root of the problem by closely examining the origins of your limiting belief and then eliminating, or at least neutralizing that belief until it no longer conflicts with the message you are attempting to convey to your subconscious mind.  How we do that, I will have to cover in a future post.

My Secrets to You,

Ron