Putting The Power of Subconscious Mind in Use
“As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment” Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind.
More than often questions come to our mind — Why some people are so successful and others are not? Why few are happy and others are not? Why few are rich and others are not? …
Is there any pattern that can explain such questions? How to understand the process? How to conserve energy to increase productivity? Can we rewire our brains for success?
Conscious and Subconscious Mind
Our brain needs huge energy to operate, especially when it operates from the conscious level. So it seeks ways to conserve the energy and that is effectively done by conscious and subconscious processing.
To get better clarity on this conscious and subconscious process, let’s take an example of “How we learn to drive.”
For a moment, imagine the time you went to learn driving. Remember, how conscious you were when you first sat on the wheels to learn driving. You had to consciously remember all the functions like starting the engine, braking, accelerating, steering, and how to synchronize all the functions. Just feel the pressure, anxiety, fear you felt because you were operating from your conscious level.
As you learned to drive it became simpler. You were under lesser pressure. Still, in the beginning, when you were out to drive on your own, you were quite conscious (Adopting to what learned) to committing some mistake.
With time, as you become seasoned to drive, it starts happening naturally. Now as a seasoned driver, your all anxieties have disappeared because now you operate from the subconscious level to drive.
This clearly proves that whatever is operated from the subconscious level, needs much lower energy as compared to Conscious level operation. Thus you conserve energy to increase productivity.
Stages of forming a habit
In our example of learning to drive, we saw that we went through three phases.
In the first phase, we had anxiety, fear, and didn't have clarity. In the second phase, as we started the process of learning, we got clarity and our anxiety and fear reduced. And in the final stage, it formed as our second habit, and driving became an effortless activity.
To learn something to make it your second nature/habit, you go through three stages —
- Learning Stage
- Adoption Stage
- Internalization Stage
And the important fact is, our all basic functions like heart function, breathing, all our learnings like speaking, writing, driving, etc. are controlled by our subconscious mind.
Almost 95% of all mental functions happens on the subconscious level.
Some of the functions are natural biological processes like heart beating, breathing, digestion, circulation of blood, etc., and some are learned processes like speaking, writing, driving, and our behaviors like time management, focus, reactions to incidents, and so on. Take a while and imagine more of learned and behavioral functions.
All these functions happen almost on autopilot and are controlled by the Subconscious mind.
This concept shows the Power of our Subconscious mind and helps us to understand how we learn, adapt, and internalize to form habits to operate at an optimum level.
Realization of the power of the Subconscious mind
You can now imagine and realize the power of the subconscious mind
We can effectively bring positive changes in our behavior by rewiring our subconscious mind by applying the three-stage process of — Learning, Adopting, and Internalizing.
When it comes to learning, there are two types of learning -
- Learning new skills
- Relearning or restructuring the existing learning
The example we used earlier of learning to drive, falls under the first category i.e. learning new skills. Anything that you learn new, falls under this category.
When we upgrade our learning, that too falls under the first category.
Let’s go back to the example of the learning to drive. Having learned to drive, if someone wants to get into Cross Country rally or Formula racing, then he needs to upgrade his skills of driving to meet the requirements of such rallies/racings. This upgrading of skill falls under, learning new skills.
Now, let’s analyze the second category.
Over the period of time in our journey of life until now, we have learned many things based on the inputs from our surroundings and learnings which form our present habits. We perform according to these habits.
Everyone has some positive and negative habits and we know that negative habits are the stumbling blocks in our growth. Reconstructing these negative habits are a challenge for most of us.
By understanding the three-stages of habit formation, it becomes much simpler to overcome the challenge since we have the clarity of the process to follow. This understanding is of great value and can change our life.
This gives you a realization of the power of the subconscious mind.
Putting the power of the subconscious mind to best use
The first step is to recognize one area, where you know you need to change but have been failing to bring the change. It may be procrastination, waking up early, quit smoking, time management, focus, overcoming stress, anger control, forgetfulness, or anything else for which you are the best judge.
Once you have worked out the areas that need change, select only one out of them and preferably the easy one. Easy one, because once you achieve success, your confidence and motivation will be boosted to take up the next.
The second step is to apply the three-stage formula.
First, find out what changes are required. If required, take someone's help. Write them down. Then start applying the required changes identified by you. This is the first stage i.e. learning.
Next, practice them on a daily basis. This is the most crucial and challenging stage. Here, more energy will be required since you will be operating from the conscious level. The more you practice, the better will be the result. This is the adoption stage.
With regular practice, over a period of time, it will become your habit. When you realize that you don't have to put effort to practice the new learning, then it has properly got into your subconscious mind. This is the final stage, internalization.
Always remember, repetition with persistence is the key to rewire our subconscious mind. Here, we need to be aware of one fact while working on the reconstruction of existing learning, initially the old learnings will try to resurface and you have to be vigilant to get over it.
With due practice and understanding, we can put our subconscious mind to work in the best way, towards our growth and prosperous life.
In reality, it’s much simpler to operate from our subconscious mind than we think, with proper inputs and practice. All you need is to have an open mind and willingness to change.
Promise yourself just one thing, that you will sow positivity to your subconscious mind to reap your dream life. Make it your way of life.
