For the better part of the last year, I’ve been traveling on a bit of a different path, personally and professionally, but mostly personally with significant life changes. The experiences have had me centered around exploring the subconscious and why things are hard, why I can’t seem to be as “in control of emotions,” for instance, as I want to be.
This has also had a significant impact on my work with clients for the better. I’m integrating it into my work with 911 agencies, and it features in a recent presentation I gave to Head Start.
I have always been fascinated by the subconscious — the things that control us that we’re unaware of. But of late, this has been a big focal point for me.
There are countless resources out there to help teach us about the subconscious and explore its role in our own lives. Here’s the bottom line: the subconscious is an enormously hard thing to overcome.
And it starts with the problem of volume.
The subconscious brain is a miraculous supercomputer that can process a whopping 11 million bits of information per second which, consciously, is inconceivable.
Think about it. The temperature and view of the environment you find yourself in right now could remain perfectly unchanged, and yet your brain is still taking in a mind-boggling amount of data in just 60 seconds.
How is that even possible? How is even half a million possible? Even if you could take in 100,000 pieces of information in a minute, that number is still inconceivable.
Comparatively, the conscious brian can only manage 40 to 50 pieces of information per second.
There’s no contest. The ratio of subconscious-to-conscious processing is bonkers. It’s totally imbalanced.
No wonder we find it so hard to change and reshape our thinking and ways of being.
Our subconscious minds have an outsized role in influencing how we act and react, and this affects everything from how you stick to your health and fitness goals (or don’t) to that “gut feeling” you get when danger is present — and even unconscious bias.
In fact, according to NPR, “our brains sometimes take cognitive shortcuts that can lead to unconscious or implicit bias, with serious consequences for how we perceive and act toward other people.”
We are completely and totally unaware, and it can leave us vulnerable. For a mindblowing but totally entertaining example, watch these six minutes from Magic for Humans. Justin Willman will blow your mind.
Needless to say, understanding more about the subconscious is a game-changer.
In my next post, we’ll talk about the language of the subconscious — and how it impacts everything from our family relationships to our teams at work.
