Your Unconscious Mind Is Controlling Your Life – Does That Scare You?

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#TuesdayTips

“90% of your life is controlled by your unconscious mind, And only 10% of your life is lived consciously!”

When you think about it, that’s a scary statistic!

You may think that you are in control of your life, but the reality is that the way you process information and respond to situations is mostly done on autopilot.  If you’ve ever been in a situation and responded instinctively – or had someone respond to you and thought, “Where on earth did that come from?” you’ve seen the unconscious mind in action. 

It might be a strong reaction to some sound or smell that is totally out of proportion to the cause – like the feeling of sadness that wells up when you hear a song that your memory links to time of sadness or stress.  On the surface it seems like a totally irrational response, but the reality is that it is a deeply-rooted and natural outcome of a habit, belief, or experience that may be so deeply buried in your unconscious mind that you don’t even remember it.

In fact, while many people are aware that they have an unconscious mind they are usually unaware that the unconscious mind controls 90% of their lives.  That means that we are only consciously controlling 10% of our lives, the rest is directed by our unconscious mind – by the habits we form, and the attitudes we learn either deliberately or by chance.

How Learning Happens

When a baby learns to walk, a child learns to read, an adolescent learns to drive, or you learn a new skill, at first it demands all your concentration and you need to work really hard at it.  As time goes by most of those actions sink into your unconscious mind and you do them almost on autopilot.  That is why it’s so important to start out with good habits, and why your first lessons in any new skill are the most important.

We see it in top tennis players like Roger Federer – despite his very successful record he realised that he needed to make some changes in his game to stay at the top, so he changed his tennis racquet, and his coach, and developed a more aggressive playing style.  That didn’t come easily, and under stress he was still reverting to his former style at this year’s Australian Open – but it illustrates the point I’m making.  We can change our deeply engrained habits!

We can change our deeply engrained habits … but it takes conscious planning and some effort.

On the other hand, if the unconscious behaviours and habits you have are no longer working for you (even our worst habits usually worked for us at some time) then isn’t it worth the effort to change? 

I don’t know about you, but I’m a firm believer in the saying that: “Doing the same things you’ve always done, and expecting different results is insanity.”  If I’m doing something that isn’t working I want to find an alternative that will work for me, and help me get the outcome I desire.  That’s why I studied Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and became a Master Trainer – because I wanted to change my life, and help other people change theirs.

Facilitating that change through group training, and individual and corporate coaching is what gets me out of bed each morning.  It’s just so exciting to watch people go from one level of achievement to another as they retrain their unconscious mind and get it working for them, rather than against them.

Meta Description: The idea that you are not really in control of your actions and thoughts is pretty scary.  Most of us like to think that we are in the driver’s seat when really we’re operating on instinct.  Can we change that?

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By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

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