7 Things You Need To Know About the Subconscious Mind (Why Didn’t They Teach Us This in School?!)
“Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.” - Henry Ford.
Sometimes you don’t get what you want. And it’s not because you don’t deserve it; it’s because your subconscious doesn’t believe you deserve it.
But I want you to know your subconscious is not trying to harm you because it’s not. Your subconscious is just helping you live life through your beliefs.
So, what’s the difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind?
The conscious mind is constantly changing and thinks in terms of the past and present. It can think about abstract concepts like wealth, beauty, and success, which are subjective and constantly shifting. Your goals and aspirations come from your conscious mind, and it’s the one that makes decisions and feels. The subconscious mind is the reason you make those decisions and feel those feelings.
The subconscious mind handles your habitual bodily functions like breathing, digestion, movement, and healing. The subconscious mind operates in the present and can’t see a past or future. It only focuses on keeping you alive and functioning right now. And lastly, it’s designed to keep the programming you learned. If it didn’t, you’d probably have to learn to walk every day.
Why is the subconscious mind important?
The subconscious mind is like a sponge and picks up on everything happening in your environment. It stops developing around the age of 7 - so that basically means we are all thinking from the perspective of a second-grader.
Everything that was said to you is stored in the subconscious, and it becomes your beliefs, and ultimately your truth. If you heard your parents fighting about money a lot growing up, you might believe that money causes problems and that it’s a bad thing. So now that you’re older, you are subconsciously rejecting money because of your money beliefs from childhood.
It’s crazy, I know. How could one part of your brain control that much of your life?!
But the crazier thing is that no one teaches us about how our mind actually works!
So here are 7 things that you didn’t know (but definitely should know) about the subconscious mind:
The subconscious mind controls 95% of your life.
Your mind is like an iceberg. The tiny part that you can see is the conscious mind, and the rest of the iceberg that’s underwater is the subconscious mind.
Most of your thoughts, feelings, and actions are subconscious. This means that you are doing them out of habit. Unless you are very self-aware, you aren’t thinking about these things or why they’re happening.
The majority of your life is made up of automatic behaviors and habits.
The subconscious mind is always awake.
The subconscious is always alert. It never sleeps!
When your conscious mind is asleep, your subconscious is picking up on everything around you. It always knows what is happening.
When you fell asleep in the car as a kid, and your parents were arguing about money or issues in their marriage, all of it went to your subconscious. Your mind was picking up on all of the beliefs about money and relationships.
Your subconscious mind also picks up on subtle messages that the conscious mind doesn’t. This is why subliminal messages are a great way to reprogram the subconscious.
The subconscious mind is like a filing cabinet for every memory you’ve ever had.
The subconscious stores all of your memories from childhood. Everything from joy to trauma, it’s there. And the crazier part is that it stores memories that you might not even remember!
This is why you react a certain way to certain situations. This is why you have triggers. You know when you feel angry or pissed off about something, but you just can’t put your finger on why?
When you were younger, you might have had an experience that bothered you to the point where you felt angry, but you suppressed it because you felt like you “shouldn’t” be upset about it. When something happens that makes you feel like you were a kid, you react the same way because you never healed it because you forgot about the moment altogether.
The subconscious mind takes everything literally.
The subconscious mind doesn’t understand jokes or sarcasm. So…
There is no filter, so everything you hear or say goes straight to the subconscious, AND
It takes everything literally
Do you know what this means?! It means you have to watch how you talk to yourself!
If you are constantly joking about how you’ll be single for the rest of your life, you just might be. If you always tell yourself you can’t do something or buy something because you’re too broke, you’ll be broke.
I’m serious about this.
The subconscious mind will find evidence of your beliefs.
This goes along with #4 because when you believe something (or your subconscious believes something), it will find evidence of these beliefs.
So let’s use the money example. If you always tell yourself that you’re broke and can’t afford things, your mind will say “roger that” and make sure that you don’t have the funds to afford it.
The subconscious mind obeys everything you tell it, and it WILL prove everything you believe. Sometimes it’ll even prove it to you in ways you don’t understand.
If you feel unworthy of being loved, you’ll subconsciously sabotage your relationships. You don’t want to sabotage them, but your subconscious knows that you believe that you’re unworthy of love, so it’ll make sure you feel that way.
It’s sneaky, and it sucks.
You can reach your subconscious mind when you slow down your brainwave states.
Different brainwaves move fast and slow. You can reach the subconscious mind better when you’re in a slower brainwave state. The brainwave states are beta, alpha, and theta.
Beta brainwave is when you are conscious and awake and concentrate on making analytical thinking and problem-solving skills. You are most likely in beta brainwave state right now reading this, and I am too writing this! It’s difficult to reach the subconscious at this state because you are very alert and thinking about multiple things, so your mind is clouded by your five senses.
Alpha brainwave is when you’re in a very relaxed state, kinda like how you feel right before you sleep and right after you wake up. You also enter alpha brainwave state when you’re listening to music and in a creative, flow state. It’s much easier to get to the subconscious because you are relaxed and aren’t overthinking.
Theta brainwave is when you are in deep meditation and asleep. This is where you can really enter the subconscious mind. When you enter the subconscious, you can rewire it, meaning you can teach it to believe new things. You can reprogram your mind to think whatever you want, and it’s easier to do it when your mind is in the theta brainwave state.
The best way to reprogram the subconscious is repetition.
Repeating something over and over again is the best way to reprogram your subconscious.
If there is something you want to change - say your finances - instead of constantly saying “I’m broke” or “I can’t afford it” (because we’ve all been there), repeat better feeling affirmations instead “I attract an abundance of money everywhere I go” and “my bank account is open to receive all the money I desire.”
Repetition is how anything is memorized. When you constantly tell yourself these positive affirmations, you are training your subconscious to think better thoughts.
Soon you’ll find evidence of you being abundant with money because you’ll always find proof of what you believe!
So here they are, 7 things you didn’t know about your subconscious mind! I still can’t believe no one taught us about this!!
Your subconscious mind is powerful, and the more you know about it, the more you can use it to help you.
The subconscious mind is there to keep you safe and alive. But at times, it can seem like it’s holding you back because of how it was programmed.
But the amazing thing is that you can always change your beliefs. Your beliefs are not the truth. Your truth can be whatever you want it to be.
So let’s heal and grow together.
Love,
Sangeetha
If you have any questions or suggestions for what you want to hear from me next, leave them in the comments below or send me an email at hello@sangeetharamachandran.com
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