Are We In Control Of Our Minds? Or Do They Control Us?
Do you sometimes feel as though you are not in control of how you think, feel and act?
Do you have behaviours, reactions and emotions you’d rather not have?
Do you sometimes feel like you are trying to overcome yourself to be who you know you can be?
When are looking to make a change in an area of our life that we feel we have very little control over (and let’s face it, we’ve all got at least one or two!) we can often feel disempowered and that we are ‘fighting against ourselves’ or so to speak.
This in itself is a paradox, for if you are in conflict with yourself, that would imply there are two of you, wouldn’t it?
And in actual fact, there is two of you, from a neuroscience perspective anyway.
Your CONSCIOUS mind is your thinking mind. It is what gives you the illusion you are in control, but scientific studies have revealed it only operates 1-5% of your brain’s processing capacity.
Your SUBCONSCIOUS mind controls all your bodily functions as well as your deep seated beliefs about yourself and the world you live in. It drives your automatic thoughts, your automatic feelings and your automatic behaviours and uses 95-99% of your brain’s processing capacity.
There is a major gap in the ability of these different parts of the mind to make change in our lives. Most mainstream methods still continue to only focus on the CONSCIOUS part of the mind when trying to make change. Affirmations, willpower, visualisation techniques and behavioural therapies seek to understand why we are the way we are and focus on creating a brighter future.
However, they are only engaging the conscious part of the mind, which has such little potential to make change if it is up against the great power of the subconscious mind.
To give an example: There is a New Age movement towards the concept of Self-Love. People are becoming more aware that in order to love others truly, one must love themselves first. Life tends to reflect back at us what we are putting out, so a lack of self love contributes to low self-esteem (which many of us cleverly hide!) and continual love issues.
If you become aware of this, and make a conscious decision to love yourself unconditionally, then why is it that you’ll still think the same things, react the same way and do the same behaviours the MAJORITY of the time?
This is because you will only try to make change when you are CONSCIOUSLY AWARE of what you are doing. But what of all the times you are not consciously aware? Then you will act as you are SUBCONSCIOUSLY PROGRAMMED to be.
Therefore, when looking to make change in one’s life, we must ALWAYS look to reprogram the subconscious parts of our mind because THAT’S WHAT IS DRIVING the Behaviour/Thought/Feeling before we become conscious of it.
Whatever technique you use to try and change a behaviour, a thought or a feeling whether it’s smoking, dysfunctional relationships, sweet tooth, lack of money, alcoholism etc – always always ALWAYS find a technique or practitioner who can help you reprogram your SUBCONSCIOUS mind – and preferably in a way that you can prove its been changed.
Otherwise, if you just change the conscious mind, that’s like you swimming flat out toward a destination UPSTREAM in a river with a very fast current.
You MIGHT get there. Eventually. Stressed out, hurting and with very little attention to spend on anything else. But if you pause for a break, if you stop your momentum, if something else distracts you, then you will float right back to where you started, and it will appear as though nothing has changed. This can be very disheartening, and I am sure there are many people out there who can relate to trying to make this type of change.
My question to you is why would you do that if you knew how to change the direction of the current? Wouldn’t it make your desired change far easier and less stressful? Wouldn’t it be better to float instead of swimming like mad, and be able to relax and enjoy the experience, knowing you will make it?
About the Author: Dale Ingram is the Business Development Manager of Revival and General Manager of Papilio System. He is trained in various Mind/Body/Spirit and subconscious reprogramming modalities such as Hypnotherapy, PSYCH-K, NLP, Reiki, Light Dynamics and others. He speaks publicly and is passionate about raising awareness of the power we have within ourselves to make lasting change in our lives.