What Is The Subconscious Mind

Recently I met a friend who I hadn’t seen for a number of years. They asked me what I was doing and I explained that I help people improve their emotional and physiological wellbeing. They asked what that involved and during the conversation I mentioned the unconscious mind. They asked me ‘What is the sub-conscious mind?’ I gave them the same explanation that I provide for all my clients.

‘The best way I can describe what our sub-conscious mind is, is if you can imagine you have a computer programme running in the back of your mind. This computer programme is continually doing a million and one things at a time behind the scenes. For example, it is controlling how you breathe, it is controlling your heart rate, your body temperature, your lung function, your liver function, and it controls how you digest your food. It manages around a hundred billion blood cells which are bringing oxygen and nutrients to all the organs which is keeping you alive.’

‘It stimulates the brain to tell you when you are hungry or thirsty. It reminds you when to use the toilet or when you are tired and need to sleep. It warns us if there is danger around by sending thoughts feelings and emotions. It’s always reminding us, guiding us to pleasurable things but at the same time keeping us safe and free from any dangers that we may experience.’ 

Our sub-conscious is an incredible machine that controls our whole inner being. It does everything we don’t think about, even down to controlling our body’s movements. It is like a hard drive on a computer, it records everything that we have experienced since the moment we were born.

How many times have you decided to get up and walk to your car, and how many times have you actually thought of doing the action of getting up and walking to your car? Our muscles and ligaments aren’t given individual instructions to move, we just decide to do something and off we go. Everything else is left to our sub-conscious mind to sort out. This is of course unless there was a problem, then and only them we would have to take over and consciously think about what we were doing.

Some experts say we are only consciously aware of what is happening around us 10% of the time. The rest of the time we are on auto-pilot and it is not until we stop doing something that we become consciously aware again when we next decide to do something else and off we go again. It is almost like we are on a rollercoaster ride. Yes, we chose to get on the ride and then the rest of the time we are just enjoying the ride.

This is what our lives are like and it is all being done with the help of our sub-conscious mind. This computer programme running in the back of our mind helping us experience the joys of life.

‘What is wrong with that?’ my friend asked.

‘Nothing’ I replied, and I proceeded to explain that my sub-conscious mind is much more superior than I am, and in fact, it is probably a thousand times more intelligent that I am.

My sub-conscious mind keeps me safe; it keeps me alive; it helps me find all the pleasurable things in life. What could possibly be wrong with this amazing machine? Here lies the problem. It is a machine. It is not human! It is a machine with a job to do. What is this machine set for?

Its purpose is to seek out pleasure and avoid pain. It is not programmed for anything else and it doesn’t have any common sense either to deal with modern life, as we know it. That is left to us to sort out.

To explain this better we need to back to the first humans or cave men if you like, before we could talk or communicate properly our lives would have been run by our emotions and feelings guiding us to find food and water, prompting us to look out for danger and stay safe. These emotions and feelings would help us to find a cave or somewhere safe to live.

We would be given energy if we had to fight off any wild animals or dinosaurs. We would be guided when to sleep and when to rest and we would know whether something was pleasurable or not by the sensation in the brain.

We would know when something tasted good or bad by our body’s reaction. Walking climbing, holding on to something would all come naturally and we would simply do what our emotions and feelings were guiding us to do.

Now, 200,000 years on, with communication, language, intelligence, life has become a little more complex. We obviously still have the basic needs of seeking out pleasure and avoiding pain but we now have jobs, families and children, school and exams. We have television, radio, computers, computer games, sports, interests, clubs. We drink, we eat, we exercise, we smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. We suffer with anxiety, stress and depression worrying about our homes, our finances, our economy and our family.

We worry about having the newest car or that latest gadget; we worry about wearing the right clothes for the right occasion and the latest fashions. Life has certainly changed. With all this change in mind – do you know the one thing that has not changed in 200,000 years? That’s right, our sub-conscious mind. Do you know why it has not changed? Well, because it is a computer programme set for one thing:

TO SEEK OUT PLEASURE AND AVOID PAIN.

I know it does all of these incredible things inside of us keeping us alive but it is this basic instinct, which causes us the most problems in our lives. What I mean by this is that it stops us achieving what we really want in life.

Our sub-conscious mind is so primitive it does not want us to take risks, it does not want us to be successful, it is still living in the dark ages. It wants to keep us firmly inside our comfort zone where everything is safe and real.

Things we dream of achieving are all outside of our comfort zone and our sub-conscious mind will send us thoughts, feelings and emotions trying to discourage us from doing anything different in our lives.

This is where the propaganda comes from, and where all the stories are started, and this is why it takes so much courage and ambition to achieve things in life.

We need to stop listening to all the stories our sub-conscious mind keeps throwing at us. Just like I don’t watch the news, when these thoughts, feelings and emotions come through trying to stop me doing something or urging me to do something I don’t want to, I simply accept them for what they are and then make up my own mind what I want to do. Then, by making a positive decision, my sub-conscious mind stops the propaganda and allows me to do what I want.

Of course, unless you know about this relationship with your sub-conscious mind it is very difficult to make change. Most people are being driven by the sub-conscious mind and the propaganda they are being told, and they don’t even know about it. This is why we are all being controlled by not only the state, but by our own sub-conscious mind.

Most advertising is aimed directly at our sub-conscious mind and these advertising companies know exactly what they are doing.

My friend asked me ‘If this is the case, why is the sub-conscious mind not being taught in schools or by the Government?’

This is a really good question!

Hypnosis can be useful in treating a number of physiological or emotional issues you may be experiencing. If you are experiencing things in your life which are keeping you stuck please feel free to contact me on 1 869 665 2526 or book a FREE 30 Discovery Call by clicking on:

www.calendly.com/teeliburd/30min

Terence Liburd

Senior Practitioner in Hypnotherapy Practice ISCH Dip. Hyp.