Influence of subconscious mind when we make choices

PART A

This Blog will explain what “mapping of choices” and “butterfly effect of choices” have been referring to as unconscious choices, which are the choices we make subconsciously in a manner that sometimes look like random choices generated from our pre-established form of thinking, belief, knowledge, logic, and tradition. If you have not read those two blogs you may read them on this website.

Now let’s put on our thinking hats:

Consider your conscious choices as water rising from the fountain nozzles and rest of the pool water fountain as the choices you make subconsciously; they are all water of the same fountain__ same way you may realize only the conscious stream of choices which you may build on your predictions but there is a big pool generator of choices again which are derived from your childhood, educational background, and the environment you live in.

This big pool generator of choices is called the subconscious mind. It contributes much to our everyday life and if you learn how to use it well, it will create a fine alignment between your choices and the real life you want to live.

The subconscious mind is a data bank for everything, it helps us to learn, to recall things, it is the one that keeps all the names and faces of your colleagues, neighbors, friends. It is the one that takes over the control of your body when you are sleeping. It is a very powerful part of the mind.

It amazes us when we try to figure out the patterns in our daily life, in everything we feel, see, do, think, and wish. If you can try to understand the circle of your life, you can find out that you act based on some sort of thinking or established long-term choices you made that turned out to be some values, standards, limits, tolerance, habits, a way of perceiving things and etc. This indicates something like customization in ourselves and it differs from one person to another, it has something to do with the inherited genes and the environment we grow up in. Let us call these customizations a system or a set of programs.

Consider this example: when you buy a computer, it comes with the default settings or default programs, with many features so that you can customize and personalize it the way you want. It may have different ports, and something interesting is that even if it can have ports for USB, Ethernet, projectors, etc. Some ports may not work because the computer does not have the drivers for those ports. The point is, ports are there and the computer can use them anytime as long as there are specifics programs (drivers) to help the computer access and use the ports.

The way computers work can give us a big picture of how our subconscious mind work, we also have those basic early sets of programs, that define the way you are, think, friends you have, your interests, values, standards, limits, and tolerances. Computers are one of the best tech products, they are very smart and powerful, but a computer cannot help itself to do any task at its excellency unless you guide and help it. This is how our subconscious mind is, very powerful and smart but it always needs your guidance to work in its best conditions. It’s your choices, either good or bad, which keep activating or confusing this powerful part of the mind.

95% of the life you live is governed by your subconscious mind (Bruce H. Lipton, 2005) or the automated way of thinking, the remaining 5% of your life is governed by your conscious mind. You may have heard this saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, the saying is based on the power of the subconscious mind which keeps everything you know and how it interprets the information. This again explains how you may have long dreams in a short period of time, how you turn during the night when you are asleep, how the hands and legs function in harmony, how the digestion happens at night when you are not conscious (aware) and so on. The subconscious mind is responsible for many things in daily life but in this Part 1 blog post, we are focusing on its influence on the choices we make.

Now, the problem is: how do those early sets of programs relate to the subconscious mind? It will as well explain how we respond differently to everything around us based on our pre-programmed mind. You will see how hard and easy it may be to change and how you can rewrite some programs you do not want. You will see that the person you are now is a result of choices you made based on your personal customizations, and the best important thing is how you can unfold differently by changing the way you make choices if you use better that remaining 5% of your conscious mind.

Life can be defined in different ways, it may depend on the aspects you are considering; let us consider that life is made up of two parts, the first part to be the first 7 years of your life and the second part to be the rest of your life (Bruce Lipton, 2017).

The first 7 years of your life was a very interesting time, you could ride a broom and you were sure in your little mind that you are riding a bike or driving a car. We used to play “Mom and Dad”, in mimicry you can behave accordingly with full of responsibilities like mom and dad. We used to build houses from mud or from bedsheets and that was almost a house in our little interesting brain. You may ask yourself a question like this “why did it feel so real?” Well, the answer is this, at that time your brain was working at a lower vibration frequency than the conscious mind, and that low vibration frequency is called theta, theta is imagination. Theta is our gateway to learning, memory, and intuition. In theta, our senses are withdrawn from the external world and focused on signals originating from within.

I would say that nature contributes a lot in the first 7 years of our life what kind of programs are required to live in the community with others, because those programs are written when we grow up, in order to adapt to the environment, and we keep unfolding based on what we see, hear, do, and so on. Some programs are written subconsciously because of the influence of the family you grew up in, or the environment. When we write subconsciously those programs, we are as well making indirect choices that later affect our life in both ways, either good or bad.

This is how we write some of our programs: we watch our parents or others in charge of our care the way they talk and live; we try to adapt ourselves in their habits, we like what they like, we hate what they hate, we unfold based on their programs they have and, in the meantime, we are copying and writing ours. You can watch your siblings, the neighbors’ kids, you go to school, or at family/friends ‘parties, and so on. And as we were watching them our subconscious mind was at work, it is like downloading the programs is seeing, and then afterward you start to imitate or do the same. Don’t blame yourself if you have acquired bad programs in your childhood, you were unconscious of the indirect choices you were making, however, if you don’t change them as your awareness increases it will be your fault.

During the first 7 years of your life, you had to learn thousands of rules so that you can be a functional member of the family, a functional member of the community, you learn how to chew food properly, how to wear clothes gently, how to behave in the presence of the visitors, how to properly brush your teeth, how to talk, what to tolerate, what to prioritize, so many rules that the subconscious mind had to adopt. Those rules turn out to be the other fountain pool of programs that make up 95% which is governed by the subconscious mind. As Pythagoras puts it “Educate the children and it will not be necessary to punish the men.”

By that you can see how the subconscious mind learns naturally in two ways, the first is hypnosis, and the second is by repetition. That’s why you no longer have to recall all the alphabets in order to make a simple sentence or to recall the multiplication table to do a simple multiplication like how it used to be very hard back then. You had to repeat and repeat in order to know well the alphabets and numbers. But thanks to the subconscious mind we do not have to do that anymore. During the hypnosis we watched, taught, guided and then the subconscious mind took over. And this is a very small example of how we live our everyday life, you can choose anything from your habits, attitudes, or characters and see how it started and how you ended up doing it. Below we are going to see how the subconscious mind and choices relate.

A funny thing about the subconscious mind is that it does not know how to differentiate positive from negative, as long as you make a choice like saying to yourself that “You are weak”, “how tired you are”, “how you cannot take it anymore”, “how strong you are”, “a reason why you should dropout”, “a why you should end your relationships”, “a why life sucks at the moment”, so many things you can choose to think. It is like you are projecting that choice or thought to the subconscious mind.

Now, since the subconscious mind cannot tell whether a thought is negative or positive, it will immediately get busy to show/prove to you that what you are thinking is real and start to attract relevant situations. If you are sad the subconscious mind does not know what sadness is, but it will attract more sadness for you. If you give it a happy thought, it will get busy showing your more happy things. In whatever you do, you should pay attention to what you choose (choice) to give to your courageous good servant (subconscious mind), make sure it feeds on positive, courageous, inspiring things. At this point, consider the subconscious mind as a 5 years old child who needs guidance, explanations, and willing to do anything you tell him/her.

Another important thing is that the subconscious mind understands the language of repetition, yeah you heard me! If you keep telling/teaching yourself different things, you will end up being them, with those repetitions you are subconsciously writing the programs of those things, by which it would be easy for you to respond to them. As Aristotle said that “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” If you keep telling yourself you are strong, eventually, you will feel strong. Avoid the negative self-talking, instead of saying I cannot do it, say “you can do it”. If you choose you cannot do it, you are putting limits on your subconscious mind, but if you say you can do it, the subconscious mind starts looking for the ways you can do that by attracting relevant situations and memories.

The point is that when you talk to yourself, you are actually talking to your subconscious mind and it does listen well. Talk sense to yourself and keep in mind that it does not have a sense of humor, you get what you give it.

End of Part A,

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written by Fred Mugisha.