What is the Subconscious Mind?

Isn’t’ it nice to know, that you have not one, but two minds? Your conscious mind, and your unconscious mind!

What is the conscious and unconscious mind?

Simple answer: the conscious is everything you are aware of, in the moment, and the unconscious is everything else, outside of your awareness.

The tasks performed by your unconscious mind are astounding. Whenever the situation calls for a memory or a skill, it appears magically out of nowhere. You reach out and catch a tossed object without giving it a second thought. You straighten your hair without consciously knowing it. Names, dates, and insights pop into awareness (all this from the unconscious mind)

You rely on your unconscious mind for complex activities everyday; walking, talking, driving a car, suddenly remembering something important, breathing, digestion.

Your unconscious stores tons of information and memories; it knows where you were yesterday, who you saw, what you did last year, and what your plans are for tomorrow, and next week.

Your unconscious mind is also in charge of many thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are out of your conscious awareness. Emotional reactions bubble up from nowhere.

It is an interesting fact, that from the time you were born until the age of 5 your brain was in a hypnogogic trance (basically, you were in hypnosis!) This is no accident. Nature intended this trance state so your brain could ‘download’ programs for learning and begin to make sense of the world. You learned the difference between dog and cat, up and down, and not to run in front of a car. Your unconscious was getting you ready for life!

Unfortunately, some of the programming that got downloaded those first few years may not have been useful. Ideas such as: not being good enough, not being worthy, life being hard, and the world as a dark and dangerous place. And all of this programming happened ‘outside’ of your conscious awareness.

So today, no matter how old you are, be it 20, 40, 60 years old, that old programming is still in there, running your life! That is, until you do something to change it.

Ironically, people walk around thinking they are ‘consciously’ making decisions, running their life, and living by choice. The fact is, your unconscious mind runs 95% of the show! And this is the programming of a five-year-old child!

How do you know what is in there, in that unconscious mind? One simple way is to take a look at your life. Look at your career, relationships, health, finances, and family. See what is working, and what is not working. Any part of your life that is not working may be due to unconscious beliefs and programs in the subconscious mind.

How do we change this? You simply change the program.

Imagine you have a recording device, like an ipod, on which you can store and record voices and songs. Your unconscious mind is like device full of recordings that play all day long. And this happens outside of your awareness.

Now imagine you finally begin to notice one of them, perhaps a behavior you would like to change. So you decide to change it. You ‘decide’ consciously that you will not act that way anymore!

But there is an unconscious program attached to that behavior. When you say to yourself: “I won’t do that anymore” that would be like walking over to your Ipod and yelling at it to stop playing that song. “Come on change, no really, stop doing that. Stop playing that song!!”

The Ipod is just a machine. You put in a program and it runs that recording perfectly well.

Now imagine walking over and pushing the record button!! NOW you can record a new program! And it works. And the next time the recorder plays, it plays a different tune.

Hypnosis is like pushing the record button. Hypnosis allows us to record a new program, and then it will simply run all day, perfectly.

This is so exciting!!
Imagine! All you have to do is install a new program, and then let it run! How much easier life would be. It’s as if you don’t have to do anything; you can let your unconscious mind do the work for you.

You can perform new behaviors naturally, without effort, because the programming is in your unconscious mind, which runs 95% of the show!!

Hypnosis and NLP allow you to install new programs, and erase those old programs that do not empower you.

Imagine an iceberg…

As you approach this mountain of ice in the sea, it appears rather impressive. But you know what is really impressive? The fact that the tip above the water, which appears rather huge, it is only 10% of the total mass. Below the surface, under the water, that iceberg spreads out in all directions. In fact, 90% of the mass is hidden beneath the surface!

Your unconscious mind works the same way. Your conscious mind is only the ‘tip of the iceberg’. The mass of your power lies hidden beneath the surface.

When you get close enough to see below the surface, you can access that power and allow it to work for you. Imagine the possibility!

The fact is, your unconscious is your friend. Do you have any idea how much this ‘second mind’ of yours is doing on your behalf, for your benefit, every single day?

Your unconscious takes care of breathing, digestion, stores memories and learnings, and harnesses our inner power. It’s all in there.

There are times when you are deeply involved in a task in which you truly excel.

You can FEEL your POWER

You are in the flow, everything is happening smoothly. Perhaps time seems to stand still, or move in slow motion.

People experience this in sports, athletic events, dance, creative arts, business interactions, and all types of settings. Some call it ‘being in the zone’ or ‘in the flow’. This is the power of your unconscious mind, pulling together your inner resources, and moving you smoothly and easily towards your goal.

It would be wise to get in touch with your unconscious mind, to access your inner power. But you have to ‘bypass’ the conscious mind.

Your conscious mind is not aware of your unconscious. There is a critical factor that stands in the way. The critical factor is like a guard at the gate of the castle to your unconscious mind. With hypnosis, we are able to distract the guard and deliver truckloads of useful suggestions and learnings.

Imagine the programming inside of you is like a collection of records in a jukebox. Each program is another record.

A record pops up and plays, and runs that program and then another and another. You may begin to notice, and find you do not like some of these records.

Records such as “you are a failure” or “you can’t do that” or “you’re no good”.

You may decide you don’t like that record and you want to change it. You could walk over to the jukebox, and yell at it, or kick it, and shake it, but that would do no good. But what you CAN do is to take a NEW record, and install it in the jukebox. A new recording that you like better.

And now this new recording plays without you having to do anything, because a new record has been installed.

This is how hypnosis works.