THE SUBCONSCIOUS/UNCONSCIOUS MIND
I thought it be best that I start off with the subconscious mind or (unconscious mind) which is also known as your emotional mind. From what I have discovered this thing we call the subconscious is what determines what happens to us in life whether its good or bad... let me explain... All actions we perform with our body stem from the mind. We think a thing first and then we do it. The question is why do we do it? What makes us do it, even if we don’t want to? And more importantly how do we change it if we don’t like it? This subconscious mind accepts any information you give it and will produce what you present to it.
The Hard- - - Drive
I want you to think of your computer, let’s say for example you type up an essay and save it and then switch off the computer. Now switch it back on, you can easily load up the essay and see what you had written before. The essay was saved on your hard- - - drive. Our subconscious mind is no different than the hard- - - drive of your computer... in fact it is better than your computer. From the moment we were born our minds have been constantly active recording information from the outside and stored in our subconscious. There is no limit to how much information we hold. We our unlimited; we are not like hard- - - drives where you have 2GB, 8GB etc. It’s like a huge library holding everything you’ve experienced in your life. The ironic thing is, most of us would not even attend a library unless we needed to find a certain book for studying, not knowing that we are a walking library of experiences...
We think in pictures as we have already discovered when I asked you to not think of the McDonalds logo. It’s impossible to not think of it because the word is attached to a picture, and depending on what the word or picture is there could also be an emotion and experience attached to it as well. I am going to make you visit your own human library... I do not know you reader, but I am guessing you’ve had a bad experience with a certain someone in your life, maybe there are numerous people... did that person/people just pop up in your head? How would you feel if I asked you to keep that image in your head for about two minutes? Depending on the severity of the experience you had with that person, an emotion would emerge and you would probably get angry or start to get upset and cry. Emotions are controlled by the thoughts you entertain.
Who was your first kiss with?
. 1) One of two things has just happened... either the person just popped up in your head automatically OR you had to think for a moment, search through all the pictures of people you’ve kissed to locate the image of that very first person.
. 2) Now you are thinking of the actual experience you had, or if you’re not, now you are. You remember where it happened, when it happened and probably what else happened that day prior to you doing the act.
. 3) Depending on the experience, you will either smile or not want to think about it as it was not so nice
What kind of music do you like? If you like rap/rnb, what artists pop up in your head? Can you hear a certain song playing in your head now? We can remember songs so easily, even if we have not heard them for years! We will remember the beat and the lyrics and then we will probably start singing that song. We would probably even picture the music video in our heads. Let me take you a bit further back... When we were babies we were taught to identify pictures and attach words to them for e.g. cat, dog, spoon, bird, chair... do you get the idea? Those of you that are mothers or fathers who are reading this can understand where I am coming from as you have probably taught your own kids. Do you understand what I mean by you are a walking library of experiences?
We think in pictures! If you are having difficulty studying a subject it is because you do not have a picture that corresponds to what is written in the text book. That is why certain subjects baffle you in school because you don’t understand what the teacher is saying or not understanding what you are reading because there is no picture to attach it to. If there is no picture we experience what we call confusion. Anything anybody says to us, we automatically picture what they are saying because as they speak words, we are automatically attaching pictures to their dialogue. Believe me when I say, whenever you are confused, it’s because you do not have an image or chain of images that link to the information being presented to you by someone. I will not go further into this but the whole point was to show you that you “remember”, and that pictures and experiences are saved in that wonderful hard- - - drive called your subconscious and don’t worry... it can never be erased unlike these material computers that break or accidentally erase and you can never find the information and you need to start again. Did you just picture a time where your work got deleted? Nothing compares to your subconscious. I will explain more about this in the chapter “Moving forward with NLP”.
Beliefs/ Habits/ Paradigms
I’m going to move onto beliefs, but I shall get more into detail regarding this when I move to the chapter of law of attraction. I just want to note that when I say the word belief I am not talking about religion. I am talking about the word itself. People tend to hear the word belief and immediately think religion (remember what I said regarding pictures, words are attached to an image?). Belief is the psychological state in which you hold a proposition or premise to be true. Do you understand this? Let me explain it a bit more in detail.
If you are a female reading this and you’ve had bad relationships, you might believe that “all men are the same” or “men only want one thing”. How many times have you said that or heard someone else say that? Probably quite a lot, this is an example of a belief. Let me give you some more examples: “I can’t afford it”, “we don’t have enough money”, “I am so broke”, “money doesn’t grow on trees”, etc. A belief does not just represent money but it could be about anything. Beliefs are so powerful that any action or decision you make will be based around that belief or point of view. Your beliefs are the foundation of your thoughts just like a blueprint is the starting point for a builder to build a house. Your action is the building, your thoughts is the blueprint. Do you understand?
All your thoughts stem from what you believe. The problem is, a lot of us are unaware of what our beliefs are. They are so deep down in our subconscious mind that we automatically act according to it. When we experience anything, it leaves an impression on our brain that in turn will be recorded in our subconscious as “experience”. We will remember the sensation around that experience whether it’s good or bad, which will determine whether or not we do it again. Let me ask you this... Why do you listen to a certain song over and over again? It’s because you like it right? Why do you like it? Was it the lyrics? Was it the beat? To your knowledge you would say “yes”. The more we repeat something over and over again it will become a habit and the more we keep up the habit, the deeper the roots will grow deep in the subconscious. I’ll speak more about this later when I show you another diagram.
Paradigms. This is the beast that will keep you where you are, the decisions you make and what makes you make excuses for not doing or doing certain things. A paradigm is a multitude of habits and ideas. A paradigm was created in you right at the point of conception when you were formed in the womb of your mother. Your parent’s beliefs were genetically transferred to you to a certain extent. This is why you may speak and act like your mum or dad. This is why you may have a similar personality to your mum or dad. Your mum’s way of thinking or your dad’s way of thinking could subconsciously be your way of thinking which you may be aware or unaware of.
Paradigms control what you’re thinking. You are a product of someone else’s habitual way of thinking. School has you programmed to believe, if you can repeat something then you’ve got it, that isn’t so because you can repeat stuff but the paradigm controls the behavior. Yes you may remember times- - - tables and 1+1=2 but I’m not talking about that. School didn’t teach you how to alter a paradigm to change behavior; they would just punish you and expect you to change... I.e. you say you will stop smoking, you stop for a while, you’re alright for two weeks then you go back to smoking. Is this familiar with some of you?
You may have had a moment in your life where you so badly wanted to start doing something different. You start it for a short period of time and then you quit, for e.g. you may have wanted to take up karate lessons, you got started and then you switched off after about a couple of weeks. You then made up excuses to why you weren’t doing it anymore. This is your paradigm! It is controlling you and keeping you to where it was comfortable for you. I’ll give you an example of myself: Ages ago I wanted to bulk up in the gym, I was so excited and told myself numerous times that I was going to keep it up. I was in the gym, I was eating and I noticed great improvements within weeks. Around the eighth week, the amount of work in the gym was starting to slack and I came up with excuses to why I wasn’t doing much. I did fewer exercises, fewer weights and then I stopped going to the gym. I convinced myself that I would be alright doing press ups at home, so I did these every day, then it dropped to every two days and then eventual y it stopped.
My eating went back to how it was usually and now I’m back to square one. This was my paradigm! It held me where I was “used to”. It wanted to keep me in my comfort zone. Do not be fooled by this statement as it separates the winners from losers, the motivated from the demotivated. Strong will power is what is needed to work through these paradigms to get them to shift, or by the easier quicker use of NLP (more will be discussed in the chapter “Moving Forward with NLP”). The whole idea is to create new habits using repetition that will form a new paradigm and then you have reversed the situation. The key word here is “repetition”. Scientists have gone on to say that it takes 30 days to create a new habit. Our brains receive an impression from the first act, then repeated acts develops new neuronal connections and every time that act is repeated the connection and wiring of these connections get stronger, and thus creates a synaptic connection/ habit. This is actually a lot of hard work if you think about because it is on you to persevere with your will to be disciplined, that does no way mean that this is bad I’m not saying that. With the use of working with NLP techniques you are able to change habits within minutes, I shall discuss that later, I’m sure you will be pleasantly surprised.