“What kind of beast is your salamander?” asked the Prince. “It is hard to tell their kind, your Honor,” said Golg. “For they are too…
Did you know that we are actually only aware of about 10% of what’s going on inside our minds?!
In other words, we are completely unaware of approximately 90% of ourselves. That’s a really intense piece of information. Give it a moment to really sink in. It’s humbling—and kinda frightening, and this is exactly why many people keep finding themselves stuck in the same old patterns, no matter how hard they try to change.
In order for this to make sense, it’s important to understand the difference between the conscious and subconscious minds. When learning about the difference between these two minds, people are often shown an image of an iceberg (as this was how Sigmund Freud once described the differences between the minds). The visible tip of the iceberg represents the conscious mind, and the much larger part of the iceberg that is underwater and not easily visible, is represented by subconscious mind. Unless we are trained to, we aren’t really aware of the giant mass that is below the surface.
To keep it really simple, I like to explain it like this: the conscious mind is like a basic computer. It is perfectly adequate and does a great job of doing lots of thinking and problem solving for you. It has a processing speed of about 40 bits of information per second. Your subconscious mind, however, is like a mega-computer that’s running a million different programs (and belief systems) all at once. It is in charge of your entire body and is simultaneously making sure your heart is beating, your stomach is digesting, etc. It is a giant warehouse that has a record of every single memory, and every single healthy and unhealthy belief you’ve ever ingested in your entire lifetime. It averages 40 million bits of information per second.*
I’m sharing all of this technical info because it helps people understand one incredibly important thing—in order to make true, lasting change, you have to get your conscious and subconscious minds on the same page.
Have you ever had the experience of, say, doing a bunch of work to heal your relationship with money or self-worth? Maybe you’ve read a ton of books and attended some workshops and you’ve got it on your vision board… You know, you’re really putting in the work and doing all the things, but you unfortunately still keep finding yourself running the same old patterns. It’s hard to not feel frustrated or even feel like you’re stupid because “you know better” but you’re still running the same pattern! First of all, please know that you are not at all stupid. This is simply a case of your conscious and subconscious not being on the same page, yet. Your conscious mind intellectually knows that you are worthy, but the supercomputer of your subconscious mind may still be running a program that “no one loves you.” Unfortunately, because your subconscious rules your body, your entire body still believes that old program that got installed when you were five years old! Remember that it’s processing 40 million bits per second and it is way more powerful the conscious mind. This is not a cause for alarm or hopelessness. You can absolutely update whatever you’d like to update in your subconscious!!!
This is where the magic of subconscious reprogramming comes in. This process assists you in updating some of the old programs housed in the subconscious that are no longer in alignment with who you currently are, and who you are wanting to become. If you are feeling ready to make some changes, please feel free to reach out to myself or others who specialize in this type of work. You can make the changes you want to make. I promise.
*Information on the processing speed of the minds from the book The User Illusion – Tor Norretranders (Chapter 6, The Bandwidth of Consciousness)
Important side note: The terms subconscious and unconscious are frequently used interchangeably, and professionals in these fields have varying opinions about these states of the mind. To be frank—and funny—we still don’t know much about the unknown! So, to keep things as simple as possible for our purposes today, I am going to group all of these together by using the term subconscious to refer to this mysterious part of us that houses all of the things inside us that we are unaware of.
