How We Operate

Until about 10 years ago I was unaware that our thoughts could create our reality or that we could change our reality by changing our belief systems (programming). My fascination is with personal power by this I mean the power that you can harness that allows you to achieve truly amazing things. For example the power that Nelson Mandela used to peacefully guide a divided country (South Africa) that had so much hatred in it to unity. The same power Gandhi used to defeat the British Empire without ever using violence. I have dedicated my life towards the study of this power and to share it in a way that others can use it should they wish.

In the first few blogs that I write we will be focused on exploring how we operate as human beings. I feel that it is important to first create awareness in this so that you are then more able to utilise the solutions I will give later. Would you agree that to become a master at something you need to first understand how it works? Let us take computer operating for example. Some of us are better at operating computers than others (Yes or no?) and some are so exceptional that they can programme computers to do whatever they require. The same is true of our minds. The majority of you know how to operate your mind (I bet that is a relief). Then there are those that have mastered their minds and can program their mind to achieve whatever they want in their lives. This is the art of awareness/consciousness how conscious a person is, comes down to how well they are able to operate their hardware (mind). Let us explore these three states of mind further.

How our mind works

For the most part of your life you are being used by your biological survival system which means that you are not actually directing your life. Below I will explain how this all works and create awareness of how you can start to move past these programs to truly empowering your life.

You have 3 layers to your mind:

1. Your unconscious mind – (you are unaware of this part of your mind except occasionally when a smell, sight or feeling triggers it or under hypnosis) It stores all the information that you have absorbed throughout your life from the time of your birth and even beyond, old memories, experiences, and things you saw, sensations, emotions. The unconscious mind then uses this information in conjunction with pain and pleasure sensations to develop programs which form your beliefs, values, and influences your emotions and feelings. Once these programs are formed your subconscious mind slots new information into these programs.

1. Your subconscious mind – (you are not aware of this all of the time however you can access it at will) it is your short term memory; it stores things that you need to retrieve quickly and regularly, like your pin code for your debit card and your schedule for your day. It also runs the current programs that you use daily, such as habits, feelings, thought patterns and habitual behaviour. The subconscious mind receives so much information that it is impossible to retain all of it so it filters and sorts all this information using the methods of deleting, distorting and generalizing it to fit the programs uploaded by the unconscious mind.

1. Your conscious mind – (what you are aware of in the now) responsible for logic, reasoning and the actions that you intentionally take like choosing to eat or drive. You use your conscious mind to make choices; it might seem like a small thing however your ability to make choices is what can set you free. Unfortunately you are not taught about these different aspects of your mind and so you are often unaware that the choices you are making are not based on reality but on your programming. This is one of the reasons I am writing this as the more aware you are of how you work the more able you will be to choose to act outside of your programs.

Your unconscious mind works to ensure your physical survival, it does this by creating programs for the experiences that you have, so that the next time you have a similar experience it will have hardwired a method of responding to ensure you survive. For instance as a child you might have put your hand on something hot and burnt it. Your unconscious mind registers that heat equal’s pain (threat to survival) and develops a program so that next time you feel excess heat you pull away very quickly. If you didn’t create these programs the human race would have died out before it even started.

The subconscious then uses these programs to sort the information that comes in (from your senses) if something worked in the past it is hardwired into your emotions, behaviour and reactions as a way to ensure your survival.

Our conscious mind then uses this information (feelings, emotions etc.) to base decisions on. Can you see that we can only decide what to do from the programming that we have acquired?

The problem is that these programs are created unconsciously in response to pain (or pleasure) and we don’t consciously design the reactions so many of these programs actually work against where you want your life to be going.

For instance let us imagine that as a child you were incredibly clever and as a result you were teased and bullied. You felt unacceptable, like there was something wrong with you, misunderstood and that standing out equalled great pain (threat to survival). To protect yourself from further pain your unconscious mind develops a program using the information relating to this incident and it links it to your fight flight and freeze mechanisms, which get triggered at any time you sense you are standing out from the crowd. The next time you do stand out information comes in through your subconscious mind and the program is triggered. Your fight flight and freeze mechanisms are activated. You start to feel anxious, you feel short of breath, your heart starts to race and your higher thinking mind gets shut down (you don’t need this to make a quick escape). You will have a number of ways to react and once you choose one this will become your escape of choice. It might be by keeping quiet, not sharing your ideas, leaving the room or saying something stupid just to fit in. Whilst these actions do keep you physically safe they will not be supporting you to achieve success in life as you will have hidden your intelligence so well that no one will be able to see it! You might even start to believe that you are stupid! Reasons like this are why so many people want success in some area or another and yet never seem to get there.

And here is the good news! The more conscious you become the more able you are to notice these limiting programs and the more choices you have to rewrite them, which I will come to later. There is one more thing that it is important for you to be aware of.

Fear of Change

Your programming is also one of the reasons that change is so scary for most people. If you base all of your actions on programs that are already built into your system what do you think will happen when you set off to do something that there is no program for? You have got it, huge red flags will be raised and your fight flight and freeze mechanisms will be activated.  If there is no information and programming for your unconscious and subconscious minds to access relating to what you are about to do it does not know if you are going to be “safe” this is why feelings of anxiety, fear, doubt and panic can be felt at any point you choose to create a big change in your life, and why people who are clearly not in a situation that is good for them stay rather than moving on. Now that you are aware of this you will recognise these feelings in yourself when do decide to make changes in your life and you can then choose to act despite what you are feeling.

The key to overcoming your programming is your conscious mind and your ability to make choices. The more conscious you become the more you will be able to recognise a program that is not supporting you, you can then choose to act in a different manor and change your destiny. And yes this is easier said than done as quite often you are not supported in these changes by your thoughts or feelings. In the next blog I will be looking at these and showing you how you can act in spite of them.