How Smart is Your Subconcious?
Most people I know don’t utilize subconscious programming tools like affirmations and visualization. I’m convinced that the primary reason for this is not due to a lack of time or being forgetful, but rather because people don’t actually believe that the subconscious mind has very much to do with their lives.
People believe that it is their conscious mind, their thinking mind, that controls what they do in life, how they think, how they behave, what action steps they take etc. They also believe that “external factors” are one of the major contributing factors to the success level of their life.
This “Success Model” chart on the left is an approximation of how most people believe the world works. They see this giant external world out there which “controls” 90% of their life.
Their belief in this model puts them in a position of extreme weakness. I mean, if 90% of the success or failure, happiness or sadness, joy or sorrow in life is controlled by “external factors”, what’s the point of trying? We might as well pop some anti-depressants to make the world bearable and just go along for the ride until it’s for us to check out.
As I said above, this is a very irresponsible and weak position to live your life from. It’s fine to live this way when you’re a child, but at some point we have to stand up and take responsibility for our lives and start to steer them in the direction we want them to go in.
The big challenge most people have when trying to take responsibility in their life and to make some changes is that they completely underestimate the power of their subconscious mind. So what they try to do is to flip the graph above upside down and they try to make it so that the blue 90% is “Conscious Control” and the green 9% is “External Factors”. Essentially this is the “will power” model, where you get pissed off enough that you basically decide that you’re going to “take over the world” no matter how hard it is. Your goal becomes to dominate and control every aspect of your life consciously.
Of course this never works, because we are not built that way as human beings. Our subconscious minds are much more powerful than we ever imagined, and they effectively dominate 90% of our lives. The graph below shows a much more realistic model of reality.
You’ll notice that the subconscious slice makes up the majority of the pie, followed by the conscious slice and finally the “external factors” only make up about 1% of the pie graph.
Not realizing that this is how we’re built is one of the primary reasons most people underutilize or completely ignore things like affirmations, visualization etc.
I mean, if you believed that you were built like this, and you wanted to make a change in your life in any area, wouldn’t it make logical sense to exert the most effort towards the biggest piece of the pie?
If you took care of that, the other 10% would be insignificant, right?
This little graph, and what it represents, is what most people completely miss with personal development. They believe that the thing they are “developing” is the green slice, or they’re looking for “techniques” for manipulating the blue (external world) slice. In reality, the biggest part of personal development is all subconscious. Your subconscious thoughs and beliefs (habits of thought) are what’s important.
Let me put it this way. Let’s say that you want to make money doing what you love. Lets say that you consciously and logically convince yourself that not only are you able and capable of becoming an Inspired Money Maker, but that you also deserve it. However, your subconscious mind doesn’t believe any of that. Your subconscious mind is filled with beliefs like “It’s hard to make money” and “No pain, no gain” and “Making money without working hard is immoral and unsustainable” etc. What do you think your chances of success are if the above chart is true? Probably slim to none, right? I mean you’ve got 90% of the whole working against you.
Scroll back up and take a look at the two different pie charts. Think about some of the ways you make your decisions. Which graph more closely represents your world view? If you were to write down 10 reasons why you’re not making money doing what you love right now, how many of the reasons would fall into the “external factors” category (lack of money, lack of time, lack of education, lack of knowing the right people, born the wrong color, race, sex, etc.), and how many would fall into “conscious decisions” and “subconscious decisions”?
When I talk to people about their success (or the lack of it), most of the time 90% of the factors they mention fall into “external factors”. This clearly demonstrates to me the type of world view they have.
I can’t convince you that your world is controlled +90% based on your sunconscious thoughts and beliefs, but you can convince yourself of this just by doing some simple experimentation. The start of this process is to start asking yourself questions.
Here are a some examples of things to think about:
What makes your heart beat? How important to your life is the process of your heart beating?
How much conscious thought did you put into healing the cut on your finger the last time you cut yourself?
If you take a glass of water and fill it close to full and then pay attention to it while you walk down the stairs, what is it that’s controlling the angle of your arm and hand in order to prevent the water from spilling? Have you ever walked down the stairs with a glass of water in your hand, not consicously thinking about not spilling the water? Who’s really in control?
Do you notice opportunities right in front of people that they don’t seem to see at all? Why are people blind to things that are right in front of their eyes? Are you doing the same thing?
I think you can see where I’m going with this line of questioning. If you really spend some time and think about it and do some personal experimentation, you’ll realize that a world view where 90% of your success depends on your subconscious conditioning is actually a lot more accurate than the first model where the subcoinscious only contributes 1% towards your success or failure in life.
Having said that… Affirmations Anyone?
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Assuming you’re correct about the subconscious representing 90% of the mind, the question then becomes, do affirmations and visualizations in fact reach the subconscious? They are delivered consciously, with conscious intent, so how do you know they have influence beyond that – of if they do, that the influence is what we expect it to be? It seems to me your conception of the subconscious could well be based on a lot of speculation and very little actual science. I see the same concept repeated by many people in the Law of Attraction movement, but I rarely see citations of valid scientific studies to back up assertions about how the mind works.
@John: The best way to prove anything to yourself is to just experiment with it for a while. Meaning, take a period of time and adopt the belief system that the subconscious in fact IS in control 90% of the time, and then utilize things like visualization and affirmations to influence it. Measure your results while doing this.
In my experiments, I have found that affirmations and visualizations DO in fact reach my subconscious mind. The marketing and advertising industry has been utilizing subconscious programming to influence people’s buying decisions for years.
Rolaids spells _____________________.
Did “relief” just pop into your head? When AT&T wanted to soften their image during the early eighties they hired one of the oldest advertising agencies “NW Ayer” to come up with the now famous “Reach out and touch someone” slogan. That single line, repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over (getting annoyed yet?) and over and over again was purposely conditioned into our way of thinking and had a measurable and dramatic impact on consumers.
If you want proof that subconscious conditioning works, the most sophisticated “subconscious conditioners” will be found in the advertising/marketing industries. Advertisers don’t really care much if the commercial makes sense to your conscious mind. They are simply interested in repeating a simple concept so often that it gets stuck in your subconscious mind. It doesn’t matter if it’s true, or logical, it just needs to be repeated enough to work.
Got milk?
I have been following your blog for quite sometime now and it has really helped me.
I have a question for you though. I have 300+ subscribers to my blog, it ranks around 260,000 in http://www.alexa.com and it is all thanks to affirmations, law of attraction, subconscious programing, and the support of the people that were attracted to my website through these methods. I can start seeing the results of an abundance of income starting to flow in, and I can feel it too but that is only through donations and some adsense ads.
Yet, I am no good at advertising, marketing, using affiliate programs, etc. and I feel I am missing out on providing more value to my readers and getting a commission for it.
I would like to provide value through affiliate, text links, etc.. but I do not have the money to buy every program I see and test it out to see if it provides value and then offer it to my readers. So where do you start?
Also what marketing, advertising, and spreading the word methods, do you use to build traffic? What is your most highest traffic bringer?
I am trying to look at things from a more logical level now, since I feel the spiritual level has done all that it can do at this point and I need to bring something else in to progress and evolve my site onto bringing in more income.
I know you are busy and answering these questions will take a lot of your time, but I feel many people who read your blog are in this same situation, so perhaps you could post a blog about it? I am sure you will generate much results from the article post alone, describing what you do behind the scenes of your website.
@Interconnectedness: Work on your beliefs. For example, you say “I am no good at advertising, marketing, using affiliate programs etc.”
Those are not “facts”, they are simply beliefs. Since you identified those in the comment, I would be willing to bet that you believe that if you had those things figured out, you could be even more successful than you already are.
Work on becoming a better marketer. If you don’t a lot of money, go to the library and borrow some books on marketing, or subscribe to a bunch of marketing Blogs for example. Take your weakness and turn it into a strength.
That would be a good place to start.
This is such a powerful reminder. Thank you for posting it.
I am firm believer in the power of the subconscious and have manifested many wonderful things in my life as a result.
People who don’t believe in the power of their own subconscious or who are waiting for scientific evidence are the very ones most influenced by what advertisers know and practice.
The first thing most of us need to change are the things we say to ourselves. Instead of focusing on what we can’t do or don’t know, it’s far better to focus on what we can do or want to know. It’s definitely what we believe about ourselves that is determines the course our lives take.
Hi Paul,
I think I know what you are trying to say but maybe “subconscious” is a piece of terminology that gets in the way. If I become conscious of the subconscious is it then still the subconscious, and so on; it can become an awful tangle.
I prefer to speak about our preference, attitudes, habits and so on.
I don’t know about the proportion (90%, 20% I don’t know). But I do know that I can take conscious action to refine my perceptions, examine my attitudes and so on. And this can have big and worthwhile results.
I like this post so much . it is encouragement .
This is great information, and certainly affirms many of my own opinions. Is there any chance you could provide some sources on the data presented here? Especially the graphs… Thanks~
The examples you gave are very good, I could add more to the list, but it’s obvious.