The Power of your mind

What does it mean to be conscious?

The term ‘conscious’ refers to the sensations and experiences that we are aware of at any given moment in time. Freud thought that our conscious was a limiting aspect of our personalities because it only included a small portion of our thoughts, sensations and memories: the tip of the iceberg.

The ‘preconscious’ lies between the conscious and the unconscious. It includes our thoughts, memories and the perceptions that we may be able to recall by bringing them into the state of consciousness.

The ‘unconscious’ contains memories, emotions and instincts that are so threatening to the conscious mind that they remain buried in the unconscious mind. Instincts such as sex or aggression operate from the unconscious.

This is important, as it greatly influences the effectiveness of both conventional and holistic treatments. For example, where thoughts feeling and memories are in our conscious mind or that can be easily retrieved from our preconscious then simply ‘talking about it’ may be enough to bring in to our awareness so we can do something differently in the future, this is where a modality such as Counselling or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy could be useful.

Often however, we have learnt behaviours, thoughts and patterns buried deep in our unconscious mind that we cannot recall unless we are in a relaxed state and actively use techniques that work at this level. This is where a deeper level of work is required, Utilising perhaps in depth Energy Healing, Neuro Linguistic Programming or Psychological Kinesiology.

Part of the way in which these work is by rewriting neural pathways. A neural pathway is a connection that is created in the brain based on our behaviours and habits. As we repeat these they become engrained and together form a part of our values.

All of this starts with thoughts and words, these thoughts and words are however often not our own. What I mean by this is that it is commonly held theory that our mind is like a sponge until around the age of 7, where we ‘believe’ what we see and hear from those around us.

So therefore if as a young child you grow up in an environment of anger and abuse, perhaps being repeatedly shouted at or told you ‘will never amount to anything’, your subconscious believes it and creates neural pathways (perhaps then stored in your unconscious mind), it thinks are protective and helpful, however this then in later life could then prevent you from trying to achieve anything as your subconscious already ‘knows’ it will fail.

Your subconscious may well be then be using these unconscious patterns and beliefs, bringing into the preconscious (subconscious mind) and you then are influenced by these without being aware of it, this is particularly true of ‘locked away’ trauma.

So your start in life is key, the environment you were in, what you saw, heard and sensed around you and how you were treated. Sometimes we can catch ourselves acting how our parents did when we were younger, we have taken on their engrained beliefs and patterns and they have became our own.

Deeply ingrained habits are extremely hard to just consciously override and it has been theorised that we live on ‘autopilot’ to our subconscious beliefs, thoughts and patterns 98% of the day.

Just think about that for a moment, 98% of the day, that leaves around 30 minutes a day where we are truly conscious of our actions and truly exerting free will choices without influence from our past.

So given that information how often to we actually think, I don’t like part of my life, I’ll check and see if I need to change my subconscious beliefs?

I would imagine for many people this doesn’t even come to mind.

You have the power to change your life within you, your subconscious and unconscious mind holds the key, you just need to utilise the tools and techniques that can unlock them for you.