The Small Wins Technique
Another very powerful tool is to fill your life with small achievements . If you want to lose X kg of weight, start each day by looking at the graph of your progress so far. Hopefully, it is going down in general, even if there are small bumps. Put a picture on your desk of someone who has the perfect weight and look at it every day.
How The Preconscious Works
While these memories are not part of your immediate awareness, they can be quickly brought into awareness through conscious effort. For example, if you were asked what television show you watched last night or what you had for breakfast this morning, you would be pulling that information out of your preconscious.
A helpful way to think of the preconscious is that it acts as a sort of gatekeeper between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind. It allows only certain pieces of information to pass through and enter conscious awareness.
Phone numbers and social security numbers are also examples of information stored in your preconscious mind. While you do not walk around consciously thinking about this information all the time, you can quickly draw it out of your subconscious when you are asked to relate these numbers.
In Freuds iceberg metaphor, the preconscious exists just below the surface of the water. You can see the murky shape and outline of the submerged ice if you focus and make an effort to see it.
Like the unconscious mind, Freud believed that the preconscious could have an influence on conscious awareness. Sometimes information from the preconscious surfaces in unexpected ways, like in dreams or in accidental slips of the tongue . While we might not be actively thinking about these things, Freud believed they still served to influence conscious actions and behaviors.
Do We Really Understand Normal Work The Power Of The Unconscious Mind
Nippin Anand
At the start of this year, I interviewed a young seafarer for a podcast who fell eight meters deep into a steel tank on a ship and suffered multiple fractures on his leg. I started by asked him, John, would you like to tell me about yourself? And from his opening sentence, I observed a glimpse into his personal life. John said he never wanted to be a seafarer his career ambition was to become a lawyer. But then he felt cornered at the age of 17 and was forced into a profession that he never wanted to be a part of. Cornered, that is a very strong word I said, can you tell me more. Johns father, also a seafarer, was in affair with another woman which he learned when he accidentally looked at his phone messages. The father then decided to leave the family which meant John had to give up on his ambitions to become the breadwinner and seafaring was his only choice.
Some years ago, during a safety audit another seafarer told me that he was annoyed by the companys tax scheme which had led to a 30% deduction in his wages. But this was supposed to be a safety audit and I was more interested in understanding the safety management system. Why is he telling me that I wondered? But I listened to him patiently and once he got his concerns off his chest, we began to speak about the items on my checks. See link to the article.
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What Is The Subconscious Mind
Have you ever read that humans only use a portion of their brains? Well, this is most of all, because of the subconscious mind. Scientists have never really studied it in depth and we still do not know enough about it. But we do know that it could run and control almost everything we do.
For example, when you meditate and you start controlling your breath, you get the control from the subconscious mind and give it to your conscious mind. You start breading deep and with your stomach. Then you stop to control it and your subconscious starts doing it. You do not have to think about it any more. Your breathing will continue to be relaxed until another stimulus changes it . Everything is controlled in the back of your head.
Another example of the tasks of the subconscious mind is the information coming from the senses. Your brain is bombarded with hundreds of MB per second of information. It would explode if it had to review and process everything. This is why you have a barrier in between the subconscious mind. It processes everything and it would only pass this information which is relevant for you in this very moment.
Practice Getting In Touch With Your Mind
Meditation has long been renowned for being a great way to get in touch with your subconscious mind to see how its really working. Even just practicing for ten minutes a day can have huge benefits on the way your mind works and the health of your wellbeing.
Jennifer Olson, a lifestyle writer, shares, Exercise is also so important, not only for your physical body but the state of your mind. I normally start my day with a 20-minute yoga session, followed by a 10-minute meditation session as soon as I get out of bed, just to get the day off to the best start.
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Receiving Communication From Your Subconscious Mind
As we already established, the communication between the conscious and the subconscious mind is two-way. You give your subconscious mind tasks, desires and goals. And it gives you back information, opportunities and ideas.
Have you ever wondered why there are certain people who easily spot new opportunities? This happens because their subconscious mind feeds them more information on a specific subject, than what the other people usually get.
Have you ever noticed that as soon as you really decide to do something, there soon comes an opportunity that allows you to do it? This is because when you make the decision, you form a thought and imbue it with desire and faith. And you suddenly start receiving the information that you need to achieve it.
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Preferences And Feelings As Unconscious Guides To The Present
Evolution influences our preferences and, through them, our tendencies to approach or avoid aspects of our environment. We are predisposed to prefer certain objects and aspects of our environment over others. We are often guided by our feelings, intuitions, and gut reactions, which prioritize the things that are important to do or attend to .
These guides do not arise out of thin air, however. Our present preferences are derived from those that served adaptive ends in the past. A tenet of evolutionary theory is that evolution builds gradually on what it has to work with at that moment changes are slow and incremental . Knowledge gained at a lower level of blind selectionthe short-cuts and other good tricks that consistently worked over our long-term evolutionary pastare fed upwards as a starting point and appear as a priori knowledge, the source of which we are unaware. Campbell called these shortcut processes because they save us from having to figure out from scratch which processes are helpful and which are dangerous.
The Role Of The Conscious Mind
Why your conscious mind is just the tip of the iceberg
The conscious mind is one element of Sigmund Freud’s topographic model of the mind. Freud was not the first theorist to describe consciousness or unconsciousness, but these elements played a fundamental part in his theories of human psychology.
This article discusses the conscious mind, including how it is defined, how it works, and why it is important in Freudian theory. It also covers how the conscious mind differs from the preconscious.
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Lesson : Wish Others Well For Envy Will Only Prevent You From Getting What You Want
While your subconscious can be very useful if steered in the right direction, it can also make you get in your own way.
Murphy shares the story of a salesman, who never seemed to receive any recognition at work. Despite outperforming all of his colleagues, he didnt rise in the ranks. As it turned out, he suspected his boss to not like him. Therefore, he subconsciously behaved in somewhat hostile ways himself. Once he changed his own attitude, wishing genuine success for his boss, he soon received a promotion.
Many rich people share the belief at the root of this story: if you secretly despise others for having something you want, youll make it less likely for yourself to attain that thing. Take wealth, for example. If you think money is the root of all evil and that all millionaires are crooks, how do you think thatll affect the management of your own finances?
So dont fall into a victim mindset. The pie isnt limited. Theres enough to go around for everyone. Stay positive and root for others, so that the universe may root for you.
How I Learned About The Power Of The Subconscious Mind
For centuries, most people didnt know the Law of Attraction existed until, in 2006, a documentary movie and book called The Secret were released, which I was featured in along with many other teachers of this powerful law.
Ive consciously used the Law of Attraction in my own life to create amazing personal achievements and business success far beyond what most people ever experience. And the good news is, you can too!
Let me give you one example out of my own life:
In the 1970s I was fortunate to be able to meet and work with one of the great pioneers in the teaching of the Law of AttractionW. Clement Stone. He was a self-made millionaire worth more than $600 million.
I was hired to work in his foundation and teach his principles of success to schoolteachers to incorporate into their classrooms.
After a year of working there, he challenged me to set what I call a Breakthrough goala goal that would quantum leap my success and would require me to stretch and grow in order to achieve it.
At the time I was only receiving an $8,000 a year salary
That seems like a small amount of money, but in todays dollars, that was a $51,000 a year salary. For example, a gallon of gas was only 36 cents in 1970.
I set the goal to make $100,000 a year . I used everything Mr. Stone had taught me including daily affirmations and visualization techniques.
And it worked! That year I made $100,000 dollars.
Heres a video that explains the power of the subconscious mind a little further:
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Never Forget The Subconscious
While the conscious mind gives out orders to the subconscious, this doesnt mean that it is less powerful, on the contrary. The subconscious mind does act out orders and performs jobs derived from the conscious mind, and even carries out some petty operations, spilling out of the chatterbox area of thinking.
But its the substance of the higher thinking areas of the brain that really drive the subconscious to display its real power, and boy does it leave a mark on life.
Recognizing your power can help you train and coerce the conscious mind to listen to more positive information instead of the clamor of everyday life. After all, its wisdom, utilized by the power of subconscious mind that will change the world.
Reprogramming The Subconscious Mind
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Storyshot #: Fears Are Just False Thoughts
You grow old when you lose interest in life, when you cease to dream, to hunger after new truths, and to search for new worlds to conquer. When your mind is open to new ideas, new interests, and when you raise the curtain and let in the sunshine and inspiration of new truths of life and the universe, you will be young and vital. Joseph Murphy
Fear is an emotion that troubles us throughout our lives. When we were young, we were fearful of monsters under our beds. As we grow up, we continue to have fears in the shape of money worries. False thoughts are the cause of both these fears. We challenge these fears by challenging our thoughts.
If You Dont Believe In The Power Of The Unconscious Mind You Also Dont Make Use Of Your Full Potential
If you dont believe that the power of the subconscious and the unconscious is greater than what you know in your conscious mind, you miss out on the vast potential within you. As mentioned in my other articles, 95% of what you do, think and choose comes from outside your conscious mind.
If you want to learn to truly steer yourself towards in a better direction in life, dont run on just 5% of your capacity. You may be familiar with the classic 80/20 prioritisation rule. In this situation, the ratio of effort and outcomes is even more dramatic: 95/5. What are you going to focus on in your self-development in the future?
If you think that unconscious mind is just a repository of pleasant or unpleasant memories and discount the thought and action schemas they have shaped you are deliberately turning a blind eye to the root causes of many of your problems.
Its OK to be scared to see what lurks beneath the surface
As a child, like me, you probably learnt to be afraid of the bogeyman under the bed. My sister made sure I was terrified. But I grew up and I learnt to let go on the bogeymen under my bed as well as the monsters of my subconscious.
Nowadays, if my unconscious and subconscious mind want to serve me some odd-looking ogres, I greet them with a smile: Hi there, whats up! Is there something you are trying to tell me about me today? Why now and not earlier, why today? What do I need you for or can I just let you go?
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How The Conscious Preconscious And Unconscious Interact
Closely allied with the conscious mind is the preconscious . The preconscious includes the things we are not thinking of at the moment but can easily draw into conscious awareness.
Things that the conscious mind wants to keep hidden from awareness are repressed into the unconscious mind. While we are unaware of these feelings, thoughts, urges, and emotions, Freud believed that the unconscious mind could still influence our behavior.
Things that are in the unconscious are only available to the conscious mind in disguised form. For example, the contents of the unconscious might spill into awareness in the form of dreams. Freud believed that by analyzing the content of dreams, people could discover the unconscious influences on their conscious actions.
One Brain Three Minds
Let us do a simple exercise. Lift your hand, fold your thumb inside your palm and close your fingers on your thumb. Thats human brain in your fist. Think of the connection between the wrist and the folded fist as the brainstem. The thumb placed inside the fingers is the limbic brain and the front folded fingers represents the prefrontal cortex.
The brainstem is the reptile brain responsible for basic housekeeping i.e., fight, flight, breathing, sleep/awake function, and arousal. The limbic brain is the place for emotions and perception. The prefrontal cortex is the sensing and thinking part of our brain responsible for planning, anticipation, questioning inappropriate actions and empathetic understanding.
To simplify it further, the brainstem and limbic brain are the unconscious mind, and the prefrontal cortex is part of the conscious mind. This of course is an oversimplified model of human mind but sufficient to make the points relevant to this paper. To understand how humans make decisions, we must be successful at accessing the deeper regions of human mind i.e., the limbic brain and the brainstem.
The limbic brain is the heart mind the brainstem is the gut mind and the prefrontal cortex forms part of the brain mind . In social psychology of risk, we refer to this as One Brain Three Minds. See figure 1 below.
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