The stories we need to reprogram.
Our subconscious mind is our habitual mind and it governs tasks that we do daily without thinking. For example, we don’t have to relearn how to walk or talk as these functions were programmed into our subconscious mind when we were toddlers. In the first seven years of life we are programmed and we learn these programs from our family and people close to us- this includes both positive and negative behaviour.
Our beliefs about the world are formed in these important years and we learn what kind of behaviour will be rewarded and what will be punished. We hear phrases such as ‘good girls do….boys don’t cry…..be polite and keep quiet…..don’t react like that…..’ etc.
Our subconscious mind is in control most of the time. In fact, we use our subconscious mind 95 percent of the time – meaning that we employ our programmed, habitual mind most of the time. It’s hard to believe that we only engage our conscious mind 5 percent of the time -but it’s true. And it is unfortunate because most of our subconscious thoughts are not our own (they were programmed in), and they are predominately negative.
Have you ever been driving somewhere and deep in thought, and then you arrive and think, ‘How did I get here? I don’t remember most of that drive!’ That is the subconscious taking over when the conscious mind is busy doing what it does best: thinking. In the 21st century most of us have racing thoughts with so much to remember and take in.
And, in respect to the conscious mind it is important to understand that this aspect of our mind is where we create our hopes and dreams. It’s our thinking brain, our identity and helps drive us towards our goals and desires.
While we can change our conscious mind easily through logic and learning, our subconscious is resistant to change: can you imagine having to relearn basic functions such as walking, or talking? Therefore our subconscious mind holds onto the things it has learnt with a steel grip. We have all this programming from childhood that is really quite difficult to change.
So the whole problem is we use our conscious mind to dream about where we want to be, and to be creative, but this conscious part of our brain also ‘thinks’. And when it thinks, it is preoccupied and so the subconscious takes over and steers. The subconscious has all of the childhood programming and false stories embedded deep in its core, so perhaps not the best tool to guide us through life.
Bruce Lipton – cell biologist and author and expert in conscious versus subconscious thinking – describes how the two parts of the brain work together (or don’t work together, to be more accurate).
We’ll use a sailboat analogy for illustration. You are in a beautiful, big white sailboat, and you are steering the boat using your conscious mind towards your hopes, dreams, and goals. You are on course, focused and feeling good. Then you get a phone call. It is your mum asking if you can come over for dinner next week. You don’t have a calendar with you (as you are out sailing for crying out loud), and so you think, ‘Next week what’s on?’ … While your conscious mind tries to work out what day you can visit your mum, your subconscious – the autopilot – takes over and you steer off-course towards whatever negative, habitual things contained in the deep recesses of your mind. And you don’t even see this happening. You’re on the inside … thinking.
This scenario happens to us often. We subconsciously sabotage ourselves, because we aren’t consciously aware, and we don’t recognise what has occurred because we’re too busy thinking. This is one reason why positive thinking rarely works.
Lipton also proclaims that everyone can walk over hot coals if we program our conscious mind to do so. Of course it can be argued the paranormal aspect attributed to fire walking is a myth, as both hot coals and feet are poor conductors of heat. But, while most make it across unscathed, some get burned. If we get half way over hot coals and we start thinking ‘not sure I can do this’ our feet are likely to burn. This can be extrapolated to life. Whether or not we can walk through a world that is in trouble and come out unscathed, is up to how well we can train our consciousness; our thoughts are the driver.
We may not be able to change circumstances surrounding us… but we can change how we walk through them, and to do this we need to re-write the negative subconscious programming that occurred during our childhood. This involves recognising the stories we hold onto and replacing them with new stories.