Do you know that feeling, when you’re looking for a new car, say a red one, and wherever you look, you keep seeing red cars? Or, you’ve got to get up at 5am, you’re terrified you’re going to sleep in – and so you set two alarm clocks, placing them strategically next to your head – only to wake up before your alarm at 4.58am?
It’s weird, right?
This weirdness is your subconscious mind at work.
I’ve been reading a lot about the subconscious mind recently and just how powerful it really is, and no, I’m not talking about Freud’s Psychoanalytical theory and all the sex stuff and being scared of horses because they really represent your father, but more about the notion that our subconscious is a powerful inner GPS system for our thoughts.
Let me explain: Your subconscious listens to your conscious (your thoughts). It cannot make value judgements, i.e. it does not know right from wrong, good or bad, reality or unreality, and is goal-orientated. It waits, for instructions – a command – from your conscious thoughts and, just like a faithful servant, locks in on that command to get you there.
Put simply: That thing you’re thinking about the most? Your unconscious is working quietly in the background to get you there.
When I first discovered this, I freaked the hell out. I mean, WOAH! I started to realise just how often I found myself ruminating on things that weren’t helpful to me, such as, “Meh, meh, meh, I don’t want to go to the running track tonight, I hate sprints and my legs always hurt so much afterwards”, or, “I don’t want to work here anymore, I can’t take another one of these boring meetings and arghhhh, I hate wearing a suit to work.”
And here’s the thing: This way of thinking (conscious thought) resulted in me fucking hating every minute of that track session and guess what? I stayed in that job for years and sat in hundreds more boring meetings while wearing a shitty, uncomfortable suit to work.
Remember the red car example from above? The more you think about wanting a red car, the more you’ll start to see them everywhere. The more you think about your shitty job and how much you hate it, the more you’ll stay in your shitty job.
Why? Because your unconscious locks in on that dominant thought and pursues it, just like the shark in the movie, Jaws. You see the lady swimming and you’re already thinking, “GET OUT OF THE WATER, LADY’ (conscious thought), and then, oh god, there’s a giant fin and the duh duh, duh duh music starts and then, well……
There’s a lot of screaming and a lot of blood.
(And nobody wants that).
Got it?
ps: Each week, I send an email to my mailing list, letting them know I’ve written a new blog post like this one, or about an upcoming workshop, as well as other stuff – like cool videos I’ve recently watched that I think they might like etc. If you want to be one of those people, head on over here and whack your email address in the box (oo-er).