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Chapter 3: The 88% Power – Your Subconscious Mind

Your Subconscious Mind

The circle in the diagram on the next page represents the mind. The shaded area shows the 12% which is the conscious mind – the remaining 88% is the subconscious mind. Between the conscious and the subconscious mind there is a “filter” (dotted line) which is the Reticular Activating System.

This filter is very useful, in fact it keeps us sane by protecting our minds from superfluous, unnecessary information. We can certainly use it to our advantage. We do use it naturally, but we can use it more, and you'll learn exactly what its function is and how you can use it.

The deeper mind, the subconscious mind, deals with our memory, all our habits, all our personality, and our self-image. What a fabulous mind! As I said, we use it automatically, or naturally, for memory and habits. What we must learn to do is to use it deliberately, so that we use more of our power.

Some people say we have a mind that has a conscious part and a subconscious part. That's OK too. It's just semantics. I choose to call it conscious mind and subconscious mind.

Programming the Subconscious

When I was eight years old classrooms consisted of desks and chairs that were bolted to the floor. The teacher generally spoke from a desk at the front of the room near a huge blackboard. One day I was called on to draw an elephant on the blackboard (it must have been nature study or perhaps geography). I heard quite a bit of muffled laughter behind me and I don't blame them now for laughing, because it was probably the funniest elephant anyone had ever seen. I was really embarrassed when the teacher smiled. “Even the teacher laughing at me as well” I thought. Thank goodness it was break time, but the kids in the playground didn't let up. “You can't draw, you can't draw” with an accusing finger levelled at me. At that time I told myself “I can't draw”, and “I hate drawing” and “I'll never draw again!”.

Does it sound at all familiar? Have you ever had a humiliating, embarrassing situation like that? It's a classic case of self esteem being damaged (by my classmates and the teacher laughing at my drawing) followed by my damaging self talk (I can't draw – I hate drawing – I'll never draw again). All this, done in an atmosphere of great embarrassment and emotion so that my self image (I can't draw) was indelibly

imprinted on my subconscious mind. So strong was this, and done with such emotion that when I was 15 years old doing a social studies project, my subconscious mind overruled my conscious mind by saying “What are you trying to do? – you know you can't draw! Put that pen down!” I remember it vividly even to the extent of going to find a picture of a seal that I could trace.

True for some of you I am sure – that some time in the past you had something similar happen, whereby your self esteem was punctured and this was reinforced by your own self talk. It's the way things can happen, but the good news is that you can reprogram something like that. Remember, self image is caused by self esteem, and self esteem commences with self-talk, firstly by telling yourself (for example) “Hey I can't draw”. Self talk either boosts or lowers your self esteem. It's how you think about yourself that goes into your sub-conscious mind and then bounces it back to you: “Hey you can't draw”. That then becomes your self-image. Your subconscious mind takes over from that moment onwards and it lets you know that you can't draw. Every time you take up a pen that's exactly what comes from your subconscious mind up into your conscious mind. However, as I said before, that can be reprogrammed by using Alpha techniques. Alpha is the scientific name given to the level of energy in your brain when you are in a state of light relaxation.

The conscious mind is the “doing”, “action state”, where we spend most of the time. Those of you who have never before done conscious relaxation and “gone into Alpha” when reading are probably now in the Beta state – the state where you are only using your conscious mind. It is a state in which we can think of many things and do many things at once. However, to work with the subconscious mind you think of only one thing at a time – this is the Alpha state.

Real learning takes place when the conscious mind directs the subconscious mind to receive information and store it in a part of the brain from which it can be easily recalled. We will learn how to activate the subconscious mind and have it directed by the conscious mind.

Limbic System

We have another part of the brain system that is very important and it's called the Limbic System. The Limbic System is a little “mini brain”, just above the top of the spine, at the base of the skull. This “mini brain” has been found to control at least three things.

Firstly it controls emotions, secondly it controls sexuality and the third thing it controls is pleasure centres. Recent research has linked emotions and memory together. In 1971 Rappaport wrote in his book “not only is emotion involved in memory but it is the basis on which memory is organised”. It is generally accepted that people achieve greater success if they have fun doing whatever it is they're doing (that's using positive emotion). Today the whole of the accelerated learning movement uses emotion as a key aspect for accelerated learning. This aspect of how emotion can really have an effect will be emphasised and worked with in this book. Remember my personal experience of releasing weight? (remember, not “lose weight” otherwise we will only go and “find” it again) – it took me seven weeks before I released 2 pounds. This was because I didn't use emotion – I didn't know of its importance at that time. Now people who use these techniques are releasing 2 pounds in the second week, when they have that as their specific goal or aim.

REVIEW OF CHAPTER 3

The job of the

subconscious mind is

to keep you where

you are now – with

all the habits that

you’ve got now –

whether they

support you or not.

The job of the

conscious mind is

to put into the

subconscious what

you want.