If you want to achieve a breakthrough, you have to rediscover your subconscious mind. Everybody has a subconscious mind. It is one of the things that unite all humanity. The problem is most of us are unaware of it, and those who are aware of it, often go out of the way to deny it. They’re scared of it. They don’t want to take responsibility over it, and they struggle.
What is the subconscious mind?
It is very to understand the conscious mind, because we are aware of its operations. When we make judgment calls, when we make decisions, when we think about somebody, or we’re thinking about what to say while we are dealing with other people, our subconscious mind is at work. By the same toke, when we are reading something and we try to analyze what we just read, we can see our conscious mind at work. But the subconscious mind is harder to pin down. Here are some of its qualities.
Your subconscious mind involves your collective non-conscious memory
Remember earlier I said that every single second, the outside world is bombarding you with thousands of stimuli? Remember that I said that you choose to perceive only a tiny fraction of that, and of that fraction you choose to remember only a smaller fraction. That is willful remembrance, or willful memory. But there is a flip side to this; your subconscious is also picking up stuff, and it’s not bound by your conscious mind. It’s not bound by its biases, rules, or habits. It’s more random. It’s like a screenshot. There may be fuzzy details, but it’s still a screenshot. This can come in handy. It is no surprise that some people, when they find themselves in a certain situation, they remember certain details of what happened in the past, and this can lead them to a decision that is different from what they would’ve normally arrived at if they were to have relied only on their conscious mind.
Your subconscious mind ties you to the rest of humanity
There is such a thing as a lizard brain. This is the part of your brain that first evolved. Please understand that the newest part of your brain is your cerebral cortex, the front part. This is the reasoning part. This is what people get all excited a bout because this is the seat of logic, reason, and judgment. This is where wisdom comes from. But for that part to evolve and mature, it has to be supported by another part of your brain.
This is the older part – the lizard brain
It’s very easy to dismiss the lizard brain as backwards, antiquated, even barbaric and brutish, but believe me, if it didn’t do its job, we wouldn’t be thinking the way we do at a high level. Somebody’s gotta do the dirty work, right? The lizard brain has memories as well. It is instinctive, raw, unapologetic, basic. It might even be offensive to some people or too crude, but it does the job. It is up to you whether you’re going to apologize for the things that you pick up with your lizard brain. People can talk a good game about the fine points of life, but the lizard brain would always want to sum everything up by going straight to the point. Does it involve money, food, sex, power, or what? Didn’t I tell you that it’s going to be perceived as crude? But it’s vital. Your subconscious mind gets to the point. It doesn’t beat around the bush.
Your subconscious mind overrides your emotions
Your subconscious mind can enable you to override your emotions, because it understands where your emotions are coming from. It revels in irrationality because it is above and beyond your conscious mind’s attempt at rationality. Despite all the chaos, all the confusion and unnecessary drama, it establishes an order. But unfortunately, a lot of people don’t want to see this. They’d rather fear it. They’d rather fear that there’s a part of them that actually welcomes drama, chaos, tragedy. A few people would cop to feeling good when something bad happens to their friend.
Remember, it’s probably acceptable if something bad happens to your enemy, and you felt good about it, but what about your friend, or your family member? There’s that deep-rooted sentiment there, and that’s your subconscious mind. This is called Schadenfreude. It’s actually rooted in evolution. Think of it this way: If you were transported tens of thousands of years back in the age of the cavemen, and there was a bear chasing you and a buddy, your number one goal is to basically outrun your buddy. It’s not to look out for your friend, because if you did that, your genes would die with you. What genes made it in that scenario? The guy who ran really fast and never turned back to see what happened to his buddy. I know it’s harsh, but this is the subconscious mind we’re talking about. It is filled with all sorts of unpleasant realities, sentiments, and tendencies we are embarrassed about, or would rather deny. Still, they are real.
Your subconscious mind is the source of your intuition
Even if you haven’t been somewhere before, or you haven’t been exposed to a situation before, has it ever happened to you that you know what to do at the right time, with the right people, to produce the right outcome? This is not just a simple case of being lucky.
This is not just a simple case of recovering the memory of things that you have done right in the past that’s somehow, some way related to what you were doing at that point in time. No, a lot of the times, that is a hunch. A lot of the times, that’s intuition. And guess where that comes from? That’s your subconscious mind. It’s able to connect the dots at the right time to produce a result.
Does it always work? Absolutely not. It works enough times for you to take notice. You should sit up and pay attention to it.