Learning Points: Your problems are all in the mind, deep in the subconscious, so just reset it

The beliefs we have about ourselves were  formed in our subconscious before the age of seven.

The subconscious mind runs much of your life and yet you probably don’t know much about it. It is a data bank for all that is not in your conscious mind; it is where rituals and beliefs are stored. 

Until the age of seven, the subconscious is incredibly busy, taking in everything it is seeing, hearing, and feeling. Like a sponge, it is soaking up and storing every message it is receiving. 

It is in these years that the script of how you will operate in the future is being formed. So mastering the subconcious is vital, if you are to have a happy life, free from negative impulses.

The analogy I often think of in my clinic, when I am speaking to a client who is describing feeling like a prisoner to a certain type of negative behaviour or impulse, is that of a computer. 

The client will describe feeling trapped or powerless to a certain way of thinking or behaving. 

But think about the computer analogy: When you buy a computer, you are purchasing a powerful operating system, but without the programs, it is useless. 

When you buy the programs, or download them, you are giving that powerful system the rules it will operate under until you upgrade or remove them.

The human brain is the same. So, the messages you receive up until the age of seven are vitally important to how you will operate in the future, because you will always default to those early beliefs or ideas that your brain downloaded into your subconscious. 

That is why people can be perplexed about their behaviour or thoughts. Obviously, they can’t remember receiving the messages or beliefs that govern their life, and so they have difficulty comprehending how they have got themselves into a bind, when their conscious mind knows what they should do, and yet, time after time, they do the opposite.

The good news is that you can reprogram your brain. You are only a prisoner of the subconscious until you become aware of your beliefs. I have so many interesting conversations about this in my clinic. 

I often hear the same thing: The client wants to launch out in a new direction in their life, or try something different in their career, and I hear them say the same thing: “They’ll probably say, ‘Oh, he’s too old to do that now’,” and when I ask them, ‘Who exactly are ‘they’?’, the client is brought to a moment of epiphany: “Oh, it’s me!”

The Subconscious Speaks

Well, it’s the subconscious, and the beliefs that it holds, speaking. Your mind is a busy place; it takes a lot of energy to run, so it is always looking for the easiest way to maintain itself. 

Therefore, your mind is constantly filtering and bringing to your attention information and stimuli that affirm your hidden, pre-existing beliefs. It presents you with repeated thoughts and impulses that mimic and mirror what you’ve done in the past. This is why we can feel like prisoners to our behaviour. Why is it we replicate behaviour that we know is not good for us or is damaging to our happiness? 

The answer lies in the subconscious. If your subconscious is filled with negative beliefs regarding who you are, you will automatically operate from those beliefs in conscious reality. Therefore, the beliefs you hold will be brought to life. We call it confirmation bias.

I often compliment a client in the therapeutic setting to let them see this. I compliment them and then move on and, later in the session, I ask them if they heard anything remarkable in our conversation. 

Often, they didn’t hear it, or, if they did, it jarred with them so much that they wonder why I would say such a positive thing about them. Their brain has become hardwired to hear and see negativity, so when it receives a positive message, it does not fit with what it holds as truth.

Think about it yourself: Can you take a compliment? If not, why not? There was a fascinating study in US schools: It was called ‘Pygmalion in the Classroom’ and it explored the notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy. The research team told the teachers that students who were considered average had scored incredibly highly in the ‘Harvard test of inflected acquisitions’. 

Obviously, this was a bogus test, but what they found was that in every case it changed how the teacher spoke and interacted with the student, which, in turn, changed how the students thought about themselves and what they could achieve. And their grades improved. Now, think about this in relation to your own life: If you changed how you spoke to yourself, anything would be possible.

We must override the old paradigms in the subconscious that hinder our progress. They were given to us, so we have the power to silence them and write new, more positive, constructive paradigms, which allow us to truly become who we want to be. 

When you do that, you will be living free from the traps that were set for you many years ago.