Conscious vs. Subconscious mind: Do you really know the difference?
The subconscious mind is what guides our automatic movements every day. Remember the first time trying to ride a bike? Mine definitely didn’t go well. But 10 years after that, I found myself cycling to my work and back in Amsterdam everyday. The difference that my subconscious mind stored all the information I need to ride a bike and let my conscious mind pay attention to the other things like traffic lights and my surroundings.
Most of us can agree that our behaviors are less rational than we believe to be. Our subconscious minds play huge roles in each one of our lives. But, what is subconscious mind exactly?
1. Conscious and subconscious mind are separate but they can work and collaborate together.
That means, if you change your conscious mind you won’t be changing the subconscious program automatically. Conscious mind learns differently than the subconscious.
Your conscious mind, right behind your forehead, somewhere in the pre-frontal cortex, represents you as a unique individual. I think it’s safe to say that it’s mostly your thoughts.
2. Your conscious mind is creative.
This is what makes us different from the rest of the animals. Our conscious mind is so important in the evolution of humans. While the other forms of life are just reactive in the content of input/output stimulus response, we can get a stimulus and change the response each time. When an animal gets a stimulus, they tend to repeat the same behavior.
3. Your aspirations in life come from your conscious mind.
Since the conscious mind is the creative one, it creates all of your personal desires, wishes, what you really want to do with your life and more. Your conscious mind can learn easily from seeing people doing things, watching a movie, reading a book, cooking or walking.
One day you can watch some random guy replacing the keyboard of a tiny laptop and think to yourself “You know what, I can do this too”, then find yourself buying the tools, rolling up your sleeves and changing the broken palmrest and keyboard of your laptop and decide to open a repair store for phones and laptops. The next day, you might want to be a yoga instructor.
Sound familiar? Well, you probably know me personally.
In truth, everyone’s conscious mind works similarly to this.
4. Your subconscious mind is the habit mind.
When you receive a stimulus and there is a habit in the subconscious mind related to that stimulus, it will automatically engage into its related behavior. That’s what an habit is, all it takes is a stimulus and the behavior will play itself out.
5. When your conscious mind is lost in thinking, your subconscious mind automatically determines your behavior.
This is why you don’t need to stop cycling when you start thinking what to cook when you arrive home. You can even go ahead and try to remember the recipe, figure out if you need to stop at the supermarket to get a missing ingredient while subconscious mind does the crucial work for you: to get you home.
6. Conscious mind changes easily, whereas the subconscious mind is more stubborn.
Thoughts come and go in your conscious mind. It constantly changes. Your subconscious mind takes a little bit more than that to be convinced about the change you’ve been proposing lately. No, it won’t change until you keep repeating it forever.
Imagine a world your subconscious mind changes as quickly as your conscious mind does. God forbid, you’d end up having to learn how to walk every day.
Your subconscious mind is designed to keep the learnt program.
7. Want to change your subconscious responses? Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
It took me a really long time when I realized that my problems will simply not go away because I’m aware of them.
I remember getting out my therapist’s office, it was raining and we had some good discoveries about my thought patterns. I got on a tram back home, confidently took the closest available seat, leaned my forehead against the window thinking how my life would be different from now on. The next day started off just as usual and I felt the urge to ask my money back.
The funny part aside, no matter how much you pay for the psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor, whatever; no one will do the work for you. It’s your subconscious, you need to work it out.
You need to be patient and repeat whatever you want to change.
Reprogramming the subconscious mind is a long process because remember, the conscious and the subconscious mind is a separate entity. You complete the first part when you realize what you do wrong and change, second part is to repeat it. New awareness or understanding won’t automatically change the programs in your subconscious mind. You have to repeat the new behavior all the time as an exercise, and then it will ultimately work.
8. Here it comes the mindfulness…
Being mindful is a way of life where you keep your conscious mind in the present moment and don’t let it wander. If your conscious mind in the present then it runs your behavior. Naturally, it leaves less and less space for your subconscious to take the wheel. If you manage to stay mindful some time every day and enforce your new “changed” or “modified” behaviors then you eventually but slowly change your subconscious programs.
You can get closer to your subconscious mind through a regular practice of meditation.
9. Your subconscious mind is that friend who whispers in your ear: “You survived before, you will survive again”
It is our subconscious mind that comes through to tell us we can do it, when faced with a challenging situation. As we live our lives, our subconscious mind is accumulating memories of times when we have succeeded and storing them for use later. Even if you are in a hard situation you’ve never been before, your subconscious can push you on because it remembers times when you have conquered a new obstacle.
Therefore we can say that it is important to place yourself out of your safe zone that requires you to call on your self-belief. Each time you rise to the occasion that subconscious confidence grows even further.
10. Your subconscious mind does not think or reason independently. It obeys the commands it receives from your conscious mind.
Your subconscious mind mostly listens to the big guy, your conscious mind.
Your conscious mind plants the seeds and your subconscious mind lets them germinate and grow freely. The next time when you attempt to speak badly of yourself, remember this.
You might fail a test but if you turn that into a huge drama in your head,criticize yourself harshly and beat yourself up: Congratulations, you convinced your subconscious that you’re a huge loser. Is it worth it? I don’t know, you do the math. Once you’re doing it, do it for everything you say to yourself in your head.
Remember, your conscious mind commands and your subconscious mind obeys.
