Earlier this year I wrote a post on beliefs.  Today I want to dive specifically more into the concept of subconscious beliefs and how they affect our lives.

If you haven’t yet read my post on beliefs I recommend you do so as a primer on beliefs.

Lately I have been doing a lot of work with beliefs, especially since taking my PSYCH-K® Advanced training.

I have now come to realize that in a lot of ways, our subconscious beliefs are the only real beliefs that really matter in our lives.

What we believe consciously has very little with how we perceive and interpret our reality.

Often times I’ll hear a New Age enthusiast say a statement like “Our beliefs create our reality” or even “We create our own reality”, but I think a more accurate statement would be to say that “Our subconscious beliefs create our reality” and “We subconsciously create our own reality”.

Understanding that the process is subconscious is the key.

Why Subconscious?

If our beliefs create our reality, why does our mind hand over that type of power & responsibility to our subconscious mind?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to have our conscious, logical, rational mind in charge of our lives?

Well, not exactly.

You see, the subconscious mind is a parallel processor capable of computing anywhere from 10 million to 40 billion bits of information per second.  The exact number depends on which Harvard or Yale study you look at.  Whatever the actual number is, it’s a lot.

The conscious mind, however, is limited to about 7-15 bits of information per second.

Because of this, there is absolutely no way that our conscious mind could ever be in charge of all of our beliefs and belief structures.  There simply isn’t enough processing power in our conscious mind to do that.

How Fast Can You Count?

Some of you may have already seen this video, but for those of you who haven’t seen it yet – see if you can accurately count the number of times that the white team passes the ball in this video.

Pay very careful attention and see if your conscious mind can keep up with the counting.

If you’ve already seen this video, show it to someone else you know who hasn’t seen it yet and see if they see what they were supposed to see the first time.

What this video demonstrates is one of the functions of our subconscious mind – which is to filter out and delete the “unimportant” things that our senses report to us as there is absolutely no way that our conscious mind can ever keep up with our senses.

The bandwidth of information that is being sent to our mind from all of our senses at any given moment is way too high for our conscious mind.

Our subconscious has to first filter the information coming through and only show the conscious mind what IT (the subconscious) believes is important enough to warrant conscious attention.

The way I look at it is that our conscious mind is kind of like the CEO of a large corporation with 40,000 employees.

Now imagine if each one of those 40,000 employees gets 100 phone calls per day and 100 emails per day from customers, vendors, suppliers, etc.

There is absolutely no way that the CEO could be made aware of and asked to make a decision on every single phone call or email, right?

What happens is that through the systems and processes setup in the business, there is a flow of filtered information to and form the CEO’s desk, and only the most important decisions are brought to the attention of the CEO.

That is kind of how our conscious / subconscious mind relationship works.

Becoming Aware of Your Subconscious Beliefs

I have had many conversations with people who feel stuck in a certain area of their life, and they can’t seem to figure out why.

When I bring up the concept of beliefs, they assure me that it is not their beliefs that are the problem.

For example, someone might have a problem with making more money in their life.  I might suggest to them that perhaps they don’t believe that they deserve to make more money, or perhaps they don’t want to make more money.

In response to that they will say that of course they want to make more money, and they might also say that they totally believe they deserve to make more money.

However, those are just their conscious thoughts.

What we believe consciously and what we really believe subconsciously are two totally different – and often times opposite – things.

A person may believe consciously that they deserve to make twice or ten times as much money as they are making now, but their subconscious mind might say otherwise.  According to their subconscious mind they might only (subconsciously) believe that they deserve to make exactly what they are making right now.

I personally had this happen to me ten years ago.  It was one of the most frustrating times in my life.  No matter what I did, and how hard I worked, and even how much money my business made, I could not get past a $3,000/m income.  For two years I struggled trying everything I possibly could to make more money.

Then, one day I found one of my old journals from 1998/1999 where I wrote out an affirmation stating “I make $3,000/m” something like 490 times as an experiment I was doing with affirmations at that time.

I wrote out and said that affirmation over and over again and then I totally forgot about it.  Several years later, I was unable to make any more money than that even though I had no conscious recollection of that affirmation.

It was only after I found my old journal and saw the affirmation that I put two-and-two together and realized just how powerful affirmations and the subconscious mind can really be.

But what if I had never found that journal?  Or what if I just said that affirmation without writing it down?  How would I ever know what it was that which was holding me back from earning more income?

In those days I really don’t know what I would have done, but today I would simply use PSYCH-K® to identify the limiting belief(s) that may be holding me back from achieving such a goal.

PSYCH-K® works by establishing direct communication with the subconscious mind and then essentially just asking the subconscious mind what it believes.

I do PSYCH-K® with myself at least several times per week, and sometimes even multiple times in a single day.  If I feel stuck on something I always now first check to see if maybe it’s some sort of limiting belief buried in my subconscious mind that’s slowing me down.

Prior to having some PSYCH-K® sessions done for me, I didn’t even know there was a way to identify your subconscious beliefs.  I mostly just focused on trying to re-program what I thought might be the problem.

So for example if I felt stuck financially, unable to make more than X amount of dollars, I just assumed that I must have a belief related to that and I would create a new belief and try to program it into my subconscious using affirmations.

Although that strategy can be somewhat effective, it’s very hit-and-miss.  The reason for that is because our subconscious belief structure is not as simple to figure out as we think.

For example, just because you’re stuck financially doesn’t mean that it is a financially related belief that is holding you back.  It could be a limiting belief such as “It is not polite to outshine others” or something related to an area of your life that has nothing to do with finances.

I had a few people ask me recently how they would identify their limiting beliefs and I told them that the only real accurate way I know how is by doing a PSYCH-K® session.  When I tell people that, they sometimes get annoyed with me because they don’t want to pay for a PSYCH-K® session to help them with their challenges.

They ask me about other methods that they can somehow instantly learn for free and apply with the same effectiveness as PSYCH-K®.

I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t know any.

It’s like if you call me over to your house and show me a screw in the wall which requires a Phillips screwdriver to unscrew and ask me “How do I get that screw out?”, I’ll tell you to use a Phillips screwdriver.

If you don’t have one, then I’ll tell you to go buy one.  If you’re too cheap to buy a Phillips screwdriver then I suppose you could try monkeying around with a fork or a knife or something, but you’ll probably just end up stabbing yourself in the hand or making a real mess of the situation.

When I find a tool that works, I use it.  Before I got my PSYCH-K® training and certification, when I had challenges that I felt were related to limiting beliefs I hired a PSYCH-K® practitioner to help me.  And I paid her for her services.  Gladly.

If you’re feeling stuck in any area of your life, and if you really want to know what subconscious beliefs are slowing you down – either have a PSYCH-K® session with a practitioner or become a PSYCH-K® practitioner yourself so you can have the tool in your toolbox forever.

The only other method I have tried experimenting with in the past is to use my intuition to tune into limiting beliefs, and that works for me as well, except that I can’t do it on myself.  Meaning, I can’t identify my own limiting beliefs with my own intuition with enough accuracy to trust it.  That is why I always use PSYCH-K® on myself in such a situation.  For other people, I can usually tune in with my intuition and get very accurate impressions but even then I always double check with a PSYCH-K® test.

Reprogramming Your Subconscious Beliefs

When it comes to reprogramming subconscious beliefs, there a few methods that I recommend.

Firstly, I always recommend PSYCH-K® as the best tool for the job.  PSYCH-K® has a nice set of balances which have been specifically created to address different types of beliefs.

Personally, I now almost always use PSYCH-K® for belief reprogramming.

Two other methods that I have also recently begun using for belief reprogramming is Matrix Energetics and even Reiki healing.

Lastly, the only other method that I have found to work for me is good, old fashioned affirmations.

In fact, for about 8 years prior to learn about PSYCH-K®, affirmation is all I used.

However, during that 8 year period of time I found that affirmations didn’t always work for me.  Sometimes they would work perfectly, while other times they wouldn’t work at all – which can be very frustrating.

That is why I recommend PSYCH-K®, Matrix Energetics, Reiki and then Affirmations – in that order when people ask me about how to reprogram their subconscious beliefs.

The beauty with affirmations is that anyone can do them for free, so try them out if you want, but just be aware that they might not always work.

I Saw the Gorilla!

If you saw the gorilla in the previous video, here’s another video just for fun.