Lot of Motivational gurus give importance to the Power of the Subconscious Mind and undermine the power of the Conscious Mind. They compare the sub conscious mind is 10 times more powerful than Conscious Mind which is also fact. Let us learn more about the Conscious Mind and the Sub Conscious Mind. The Conscious Mind is like a captain of the ship which analysis the current situation in Logical & Rational way and shows us the direction to take action. Whereas the Sub Conscious Mind, Is the store house of Habits. Beliefs Past Conditioning are strong force by nature. Let us see how practically the sub conscious mind rules our behavior and action.
I am a member of group in the face book. I give below the details of another member opinion about the power of the Conscious and Sub Conscious mind and I give below my comment for the readers benefit.
Member comments : Radhakrishnan I appreciate your reply. And I agree with almost all of your comment. But again, your conscious mind has nothing with who you are as a person. It has nothing to do with shaping a person's life. All of that comes from the Subconscious Mind. Take serial killers. for example. They consciously know what they're doing is wrong. That's why they try not to get caught? But it's their Subconscious programming that causes them to do what they do.
My take on this : I beg to differ your view about the role of Conscious mind in developing one's character. For example a person who wants (consciously) to get up early in the morning every day for walking and set an alarm at 6 AM. Next day morning when alarm start ringing he stop the alarm and continue sleeping by old habit. In Previous night, the Conscious Mind decided to get up at 6AM and in the next day morning, the sub conscious habit pattern made that person to continue his sleep. The habits and believes are stored in the one's sub conscious mind and you are rightly pointed out the sub conscious mind is certainly more powerful than Conscious Mind. In order to tame the Sub Conscious mind you are using your WILLPOWER. WILL POWER is nothing but you are Empowering Your Conscious Thought To Overcome Subconscious Belief And Habit. You might have noticed that a chain smoker given up his smoking habit all of sudden. It could be strong CONSCIOUS URGE (WILLPOWER) to give up the bad habit or to avoid the worst health condition like Lung Cancer which can threaten his life survival if he continue his smoking habit. Famous Motivational Speaker Jim Rohn quote "For a thing to change (in life), You have to change" . In simple word if you continue to behave according to your sub conscious habits, behavior and belief which is not supporting your growth then you need to change those Habits / Belief or Behavior through Awareness (conscious) accompanied with action. Albert Einstein Famous Quote " Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different Result"
Simple example to make my point clear to you all. A Person who currently having body weight of 100 Kgs and he strongly desired (SPECIFIC GOAL) to bring down is body weight to 70 Kgs within an year, by 31st Aug 2025 . But the person's childhood conditioning (BELIEF) is that "OBSEITY RUNS IN OUR FAMILY". Unless and until he change his Sub Conscious belief system he cannot achieve his Conscious Goal. Now the person can take conscious decision using his WILL POWER to Eat Nutritional Healthy Food and Practice regular & Consistent Exercise regime. But it is arduous task as he is taking action against his current Belief and he has to exercise his will power to over ride the Sub conscious Belief. Otherwise the life has got its own way to teach a lesson through ailment like Heart Attack.
So AWARE of your Bad Habits / Belief which prevents you in reaching your Goals, and take CONSCIOUS decision to over come them through small achievable action Consistently for considerable period. Currently, If you are in the habit of getting up at 7 AM in the morning and you would like to get up at 6 AM every day, do not set your goal to get up at 6AM. Instead you set goal to get up at 6.50AM for one week only and conquer this. If you could do this this will boost your SELF CONFIDENCE resulting increase in your SELF ESTEEM & SELF IMAGE. For the next week you set goal to get up at 6.40AM and conquer this. Such SMALL INCREMENTAL GOAL which is achievable will IMPROVE your personality gradually. ATOMIC HABITS BY JAMES CLEAR is a book that talks about the power of SMALL HABITS IN CREATING LASTING CHANGES IN YOUR LIFE. Unlike generic motivational books, this book tells you that real change comes from COUNTLESS SMALL DECISIONS, not just motivation. The most critical takeaway from "Atomic Habits" is the idea that any kind of long-term transformation is the product of identity (SELF IMAGE) change. Key Note : SELF-BELIEF is one of the Main ingredient of SELF-IMAGE
What makes the difference between ANIMAL & HUMAN BEING. Animals are mostly driven by Sub Conscious Behavior. They got hard wired sub conscious program which is difficult to change. Whereas Human Beings are having Sub Conscious Program as well as Awareness (Conscious) about Sub Conscious Program. Gautam Buddha who was a prince, all of a sudden Consciously gave up princely life to become Buddha an enlightened being and we are all revered him. Human Being can aware of their emotion, habit and beliefs. If we are aware of our bad Sub Conscious Programs and through our conscious persistent effort we can make changes in habit in small way, by taking corrective action. Sometime we can take action by ourself to overcome negative beliefs / habits or otherwise we need to consult therapist for medical help. Even the serial killer aware of what he is doing is not correct. But he is acting on his impulsive (Subconscious Program). If he truly wanted to come out of this and take appropriate action he can get over this by seeking necessary medical help.
Nature made Animals similar to Bus. Bus require terrain or ground to move. similarly animals require Sub Conscious programs to survive. The same Nature made Human Beings as Aero plane. Aero plane use the runway initially to take off and then finally move to sky. Human Beings till our Adulthood (16 - 18 years) we can use the runway (Sub Conscious programs) to lead our early life and then we are all expected to take off and fly in the sky using our conscious mind to build our own dreamed life. But pathetically most of us navigate only in the ground leading mediocre unfulfilled life, the life designed by parents, society or culture till last breath and not taking off to the sky, to shape up their dreamed fulfilled life.
See you in the next post.
