The Power Behind Thought is the Subconscious Mind
(This article was written by Richard Schultz of WisdomWays. Richard is a Genuine Contact™
trainer, a life coach, and a Certified Basic PSYCH-K® Instructor. Richard Schultz resides in Calgary,
Canada. PSYCH-K® is a registered trademark of The Myrrdin Corporation)
Henry Ford said, "if you think you can, or if you think you can’t, you’re right!"
For years now, we have been hearing about the power of positive thinking. A question we
might ask of those who make this statement is where does this power come from and how do we
practically harness this power and knowledge to bring greater health and balance into
our own lives?
In 1963, Dr. Joseph Murphy wrote a book called "The Power of Your Subconscious Mind".
This classic Self Help title explains that the power behind the thought is the subconscious mind.
Although we really have only one mind, students of the mind typically separate the mind into two
functional aspects (conscious and subconscious), each with its own attributes and powers. It turns
out that it’s the thoughts and beliefs held in subconscious mind that creates the bulk of the reality
we experience and it is the subconscious that we need to pay attention to if we want to make rapid
and lasting change in our lives and reality.
The conscious mind averages only 2,000 bits of information per second!
The conscious mind is volitional. It is the part of the mind that sets goals and
judges the results. It is able to think abstractly. For example, “wealth or happiness” are
abstract thoughts/words that could mean very different things to different people. The conscious
mind thinks in terms of past and future, rather than the present. The processing capacity of the
conscious mind is limited to short term memories (about 20 seconds), multi-tasking of about 1-3 events
at a time and averages about 2,000 bits of information per second. Coaching, self help books and other
change processes mostly focus on the conscious mind. These processes can be highly effective for
some change, or a waist of energy when the subconscious mind is not aligned with the change.
The subconscious mind processes at 4 Billion bits per second on average!
The subconscious mind has quite different characteristics. It is the part of the
mind that handles all the habitual stuff… the body functions like heart rate, breathing,
digestion, our learned body movements, and all other habitual activities we do. Being
habitual, the subconscious mind is typically resistant to change through normal conscious
processes. Whereas the conscious mind is abstract in its thinking, the subconscious mind is
very literal and requires us to be very specific in communicating with it. The subconscious
mind is in the eternal present. Everything in the subconscious is NOW with no such thing as
past or future. Compared to the conscious mind, the subconscious mind has vastly expanded
processing capacity, housing our long term memory, multi-tasking thousands of events at a
time and processing at 4 Billion bits per second on average!
The powerful subconscious mind is a wonderful tool that allows us to do manage much
of our life experience on automatic. We don’t have to be consciously aware of everything that is
happening around us or everything we are doing, it just gets handled. Without the subconscious
mind, the conscious mind would clearly be overwhelmed by the vast amounts of information processing
required to function in our complex reality.
When we consider the power of the subconscious aspect of our mind vs. the conscious
part of our mind, we definitely want the subconscious on our side. If the subconscious is not
aligned with our conscious goals, we usually go nowhere! So why would the subconscious mind
not be aligned with our conscious goals? The subconscious mind primarily develops between birth
and the age of 6 or 7. At this time, it is a sponge, accepting whatever programming it is
receiving from its environment in the form of experiences, attitudes, values and beliefs.
Based on these experiences and what might be told to us by our mentors and parents, we
may take on such beliefs as “I will never be good enough”, “I have to work hard to live” or “No one
will ever love me” or “I am always sick”. These belief programs will continue to run throughout
our lives giving us the conscious thoughts and experience of “never good enough”, “hard work for
every dime”, rejection, and “ill health”. If we have an experience as a child of falling out of
a tree, we may “install” a phobia program that generalizes to “all heights are dangerous”.
When we are “triggered” by our parents or partners and immediately react in anger, sadness, self
condemnation, anxiety etc, the “trigger” input is just like clicking an icon on our computer to
start a reactive program learned earlier in our life. Because of these limiting belief programs
running in our subconscious mind, we may sabotage our relationships, our health, our prosperity
or our spiritual growth. These belief programs just continue to run, feeding our thoughts and
creating a “printout” in our life experience congruent with the underlying programs.
Can you imagine if we could actually make a
conscious choice of what programs we will run?
Can you imagine being able to erase all the programs for ill health or poverty and
automatically run new programs that bring us abundance in every area of our lives? Can you
imagine being able to see the world through belief programming that sees love and peace, instead
of belief programming that creates fear and stress? In the past, making these kinds of
changes has proved difficult.
We have had tools like affirmations but most people give up the discipline of
saying an affirmation long before it gets “installed” in the subconscious mind. It is said that
we need to say an affirmation hundreds of time a day for at least a month before it integrates
into the subconscious. We could also consciously watch every thought we have, stop the negative
thought and shift it to a new empowering one. It is a great exercise to watch our thoughts
because it reveals to us what our beliefs are about ourselves and our environment, but just
noticing them in a conscious process doesn’t make the change.
It turns out that having these insights consciously have virtually no impact
on the underlying subconscious beliefs. We go to workshops, read self help books, see psychologists
and get great insights as to why we are as we are, but few of us actually see a real shift in
our lives as a result of this “hard and painful” and often expensive work.
Fortunately there are new tools that are highly
effective in aligning
our subconscious beliefs and programming with our conscious goals.
One such tool is called PSYCH-K®.
Developed in 1988 by Rob Williams, PSYCH-K® was inspired
by numerous fields of study including kinesiology, Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), acupressure,
Ericksonian hypnotherapy, and various other psycho-spiritual healing systems. It is a safe,
non-evasive, and effective way to dissolve resistance to change at the
subconscious level. PSYCH-K® techniques are fun to learn and easy to use.
Through a very simple process, a subconscious belief change through
PSYCH-K® usually only takes a few minutes and the change is
validated consciously at the end of the process. PSYCH-K® is a
co-creative process between the facilitator and the person receiving the change. In honors that
the wisdom for the change process resides with the person making the change and through
conscious intent, and subconscious and “super”-conscious permission protocols, no change
is made unless full permission is received.
This makes PSYCH-K® a
“work-with” process rather than a “do to” process. We have all heard the phrase “be careful
what you ask for”. Through the permission protocols of PSYCH-K®
we not only ensure that the procedure is safe for the individual, but that it is also an
appropriate change to make at this time on their life path.
Finally, PSYCH-K® always comes from a positive
perspective. Rather than getting rid of old programs, PSYCH-K® installs
new empowering beliefs to create the experience you want to have. When we get alignment between
our subconscious beliefs and our conscious goals through PSYCH-K®, we
have tremendous capacity to create the life we want.
In this day and age, it is imperative that each of us takes personal responsibility for
the reality we are creating, whether it is about our health, our relationships, our prosperity or
our spirituality. Change begins with us. Peace begins within us. As we shift ou rown limiting beliefs
into positive, empowering, and loving ones, the reality around us shifts accordingly to affect not
only ourselves, but also the people around us …often in “miraculous” ways. Through new understandings
of the way our minds work and new tools such as PSYCH-K®, lasting
change is now only a few minutes away. In summary . . .
. . . Mahatma Gandhi said . . .
"Keep Your Beliefs Positive because
Your Beliefs become your Thoughts
Your Thoughts become your Words
Your Words become your Actions
Your Actions become your Habits
Your Habits become your Values
Your Values become your Destiny!"
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