Have you been trying to change your life and always seem caught up in old ways of thinking and reacting to life?

A new understanding of neuroscience revolutionizes your power to create the changes you want.

This change in basic assumptions unlocks new ways to access and impact distinct parts of your brain.

You must be willing to let go of previously conceived notions about the conscious mind as the only part of you that can create new realities in your life.

Your conscious mind does not know the difference between real and imagined. Those without self-awareness often struggle to understand their behaviors, particularly when trying to make changes in life.

Feeling stuck and unable to change is not a simple matter of grit, goals, and desires. Instead, it is a matter of quieting the mind to truly get in touch with who you are.

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What is the Subconscious Mind?

The subconscious mind is often referred to as a video camera that has recorded every experience you have had. It should be added that it imprints the emotions, memories, and thoughts of each experience.

Cognitive psychology views the subconscious mind as not so bright. The linkage between the subconscious mind and hypnosis highlights its susceptibility to subliminal messaging, making the subconscious seem less than competent.

The subconscious mind holds your automatic reactions below conscious awareness. Breathing or driving are good examples and can happen with little conscious awareness. If you have ever driven somewhere and arrived without any memory of how you got there, you understand this. Dozens more studies prove the subconscious is a part of our mind that we are not always consciously aware of.

Much research has been done on positive or negative priming, meaning we can pair emotions or experiences to circumstances and behavior. Shawn Anchor, author of The Happiness Advantage, shows that humans have a strong associative memory that links emotions and memories to events. These events are then stored in the subconscious mind to be rapidly available.

Subconscious Negativity Bias

In times of stress, grief, or when trying to make changes in your life, your subconscious mind rapidly pulls up all the memories from other times you tried to make changes. It has a negativity bias that looks for memories and emotions that serve as a warning sign that you should stick with what you know or rock the boat.

Expectations from others and beliefs you picked up from childhood or later fill your subconscious mind with these memories and emotions. These stay stuck in your subconscious and rapidly appear when you try to move forward.

This is going on all the time. You consciously decide to do something. You plan it out. You find no motivation or are suddenly filled with self-doubt, fear, confusion, and uncertainty. You choose to stick with what you know.

Then, over time, you can create full-blown imposter syndrome when you create a pattern of self-doubt and people-pleasing and making decisions based on your subconscious memories. It is because you have overridden your desires by giving in to the negative patterns of your past.

Over time, this makes you feel like you don’t know what you want or how you got into the job or relationships you are currently in.

This is your subconscious mind unchecked and disconnected from your current reality.

The Ego Mind Identity and the Conscious Mind

Psychology views the ego-driven mind identity as all-powerful. I am sure you can agree that your ego mind can sometimes get the better of you.

The ego mind is developed in response to the external world, our need to fit in, to be seen, heard, and loved. It can lead you to act out of an external need for approval. It may cause you to take actions that may not be aligned with your authentic self.

New research shows that your conscious mind cannot differentiate between real or patterned stored information. It can’t tell whether you are accessing negative memories from your subconscious cloud storage bank or an actual situation.

Here is an example of how this played out with one of my subconscious healing clients.

This young woman is the youngest of five brothers and recalls always having to be on alert as the youngest sibling to be included in activities and fun.

This set a subconscious pattern of a need to fit in that needed to be on high alert and included.

Cut to her adult life now, and this woman feels very compelled to behave in ways that her friends will more readily accept her.

Enter people-pleasing behaviors.

The problem is she does not always like how she feels when she does this. It feels as though she is going along to get along. Indeed, she is.

Realizing that this pattern has been with her from childhood is the first step to neutralizing its power over her relationships in adult life.

“Several theorists have postulated that the conscious mind is not the source or origin of our behavior; instead, they theorize that impulses to act are unconsciously activated, and that the role of consciousness is as gatekeeper and sense maker after the fact. The Unconscious Mind, 2008

Integration

When you consider that the subconscious mind controls 95% of your life because its primary function is to store and retrieve data, you can see that your actions in life could be from another data file in your subconscious cloud storage bank.

These impulses are parts of you that are active in your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind influences your feelings, thoughts, and behaviors without you consciously choosing or allowing it.

It sends you these repeated emotions and memories to protect you when your subconscious mind interprets similar circumstances to the memories it has stored. Research shows that the subconscious mind generates the impulse, and then the conscious mind claims it as real.

In this model, conscious processes kick in after a behavioral impulse has occurred in the brain — that is, the impulse is first generated unconsciously, and then consciousness claims (and experiences) it as its own. Yet, to date, there has been little said about where, exactly, those impulses come from. The Unconscious Mind, 2008

It is amazing that we get anything done with these different parts of us operating in opposition to each other.

The impulse activates the amygdala part of your subconscious brain, which is your negativity-biased, reptilian brain, always ready to protect you from harm. It uses the stored data to validate its protective and reactive responses.

The problem is these keep you getting stuck in your past patterns.

It is like you have two “parts” of your mind trying to work together but seemingly working against each other. In Family Systems Therapy, IFS, these are parts of your subconscious mind; therefore, “parts” of you that interfere with your desire to create change in your life.

Some of these parts were formed when you were younger, in a protective mode. Parts of you may have been developed from being with a highly critical partner or friend. Parts of you may have been created in a job that did not fit you well.

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These parts can interfere with you making a viable choice for the best action for you in the present moment.

The goal of doing this inner work is to create more alignment with all the parts of you. Conscious, subconscious, young parts, older parts, and making space for the inner work that puts all the pieces together.

The goal of subconscious healing is to create alignment between these parts of you so you can be more fully present in life. This allows your thoughts, emotions, and actions to be aligned with your authentic self. This is the path toward inner peace and happiness.

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To learn more about subconscious healing, check out my articles, Unlock Your Intuition: Discover Your Path to Inner Guidance, Effective Change Comes from Alignment Rather Than Problem-Solving, Negative Emotions as a Catalyst for Change, or Humans Function Better When All Their Parts Operate in Alignment.

If this article resonates with you and you would like to learn more. Click here to access my free video training on subconscious healing to learn how to find more happiness by finding your soul’s purpose.