Our minds are like the internet, and the internet contains
billions of bits of information. It
stores anything from how to grow a square foot garden, to the best way to trim your nose
hairs. And it doesn’t care which page
you look at or what you search. The
internet doesn’t have feelings. It’s
just information. The question is how do we access the information, and what do we do with the information once we have it.
Google or Bing or any other search engine is like
consciously bringing our attention to a specific topic. If I search “how to lose weight”, even though
I consciously choose what to search for, Google can only pull from what already
exists (the subconscious). That means that what it pulls from isn’t
necessarily information that’s always true and healthy. It can only give me feedback on what I search
for by what is stored on the internet. It's going to give me everything from Weight Watchers to the newest and greatest supplement that will likely get pulled off the shelf down the road due to harmful side effects. And the more I continue to search for a similar topic, the more that those same
pages of information are going to come up, even connecting me to the ads of the most frequented topics.
Like Google and the internet, our minds work the same
way. When we are faced with choosing to do
something different, or facing something stressful, our subconscious is going
to give us feedback by making millions of connections based on what we’ve seen,
heard, felt, or experienced. That can
mean past, present, or what we’ve projected out into the future of what we
believe could happen. So just because
our minds pull up all our information doesn’t mean it’s true. It’s just information. (Our feelings are what reinforce what is stored within our minds and how much we hold to a specific belief.) Whenever we want to change anything
in our lives, our minds are only going to go to what’s stored inside unless we start to think differently. So to truly make a conscious change, we must
look at our beliefs and start to question them.
For example, whenever I was faced with a stressful situation
in the past, I would always comfort myself with some kind of treat.
So when I currently face anything stressful, my mind naturally goes to
what it’s done before and I’m reaching for the sugar fix before I realize what I’m
doing. Every time I choose to comfort
myself with a treat, it’s similar to liking that page, which only makes it easier to come up
more often in my mind. It then
becomes difficult to think of anything else to replace the pattern. (Not to mention how I am also creating floods
of hormones and endorphins that love the sugar rush and in turn are reinforcing this
unhealthy pattern on a physiological level.
That, however, is a topic for another day.)
From that example, one of my beliefs was that stress is a negative thing and I needed treats to “fix” the problem. Even
though it rationally makes no sense, on a subconscious level, it makes perfect
sense. And even though I temporarily
feel comforted, the truth is that sweets will never truly help me cope well
with stress, let alone help fix the true cause of the stress or how I manage it. So how do we create change when our subconscious
mind is filtering everything through the lens of our experience? We begin by recognizing the reason the
subconscious does this.
Now on one level, it makes sense that we can only search for
files that already exist. And yet
there’s a whole other reason our subconscious behaves this way. One of the main jobs of the subconscious is
to protect us. And the best way to
protect someone is to know the dangers and threats. What better way to do that then use what information is already considered as a danger and threat? And because
we already have the resources, we can act quickly and easily to eliminate the threat.
When we want to make a change in our lives, the
reason we face so much resistance is because we are entering into the
unknown. Or, we have tried to travel
the new path before and we met with all kinds of challenges. Our subconscious is easily able to filter
what we want to do through our experiences, and it will try to stop us from experiencing
anything that it doesn’t know it can protect us from. And it doesn’t know it can protect us from
something we’ve never done. It literally
views something new as a possibility for death (Remember, it doesn't have feelings, just information based on experiences that it views as facts.)
As silly as it may sound, when we choose to introduce a new
habit, our subconscious views that as a potential death threat and will do everything
it can to protect us. That means giving
us all kinds of thoughts/images/resistance to whatever it is that we want to
change. The subconscious is so quick to
remind us (from our previous experience) what we may experience by continuing a
new habit.
An example of this is when I was really feeling un-grounded and I wanted to get back out in Nature. I also wanted to get more fit by
hiking. Because of it's job, and because of how the subconscious works, my mind brought up all the times when I had run across a snake (even
little garner snakes), when I had asthma so bad I couldn’t breathe, how exercising too much triggered several autoimmune responses and put me flat in bed, as well as bringing up the projected stories I’d heard from others of being lost all alone
without food or water. My mind was extremely good at flooding me with resources from my experience database. Those thoughts
and images almost made me stay home (I really don’t like snakes). They almost kept me “safe” from some
perceived harm. So to work through this,
I recognized my subconscious mind’s job to protect me. I also realized that it was only information
based on my previous experiences. I
simply thanked my subconscious, packed a backpack to deal rationally with the thoughts and fears, which included packing some first aid bandages (in case I fell), herbs (in case of a
snake bite), some essential oils (to help open my air pathways so I could
breathe easily), food and water (in case I got stranded), and I was happily on my way.
Once my mom and I were actually on the path, I faced brief moments of panicked thoughts of "I can't do this", to which I reminded my mind of the reality that I was actually doing it, and I was prepared for whatever could possibly come up. We made it farther than we had anticipated for our first time back in the mountains in several years and we went back the following several days.
And while it was much easier to get out the door and our feet on the
trail the second day (due to having a new experience for my mind to draw upon),
as we neared the previous stopping point on our first day, I started to have all kinds of
resistance in my thoughts again. My subconscious couldn’t know if it could protect me beyond the point where we’d already been. So I got to go through the same experience of
recognizing the job of my subconscious. I reminded it that I was not in any previous experience anymore and that I was
choosing to move forward and that I would be safe to do so. And so I did. And so is the path to truly changing anything
in life.
I would invite you to look at an area of life you are
wanting to change. Perhaps it’s an area you haven’t felt successful
before. Hopefully, having a better
understanding of how the mind works, I would ask that you first recognize the
role of the subconscious mind. Second,
when facing any resistance or stress, simply thank your subconscious. Thank it for trying to protect you and for
doing it’s job. And then consciously
choose to move forward, giving the mind new information to draw upon, realizing that most of us live life from a place of reacting rather than acting
