the subconscious vs. the conscious mind.

This video is on the difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind, why the conscious mind is so important, and how do we tap into it. So the conscious mind, the conscious mind is active 5% of our day, which isn't that much. Essentially what it is, is our now moment, it's being aware of what's happening right here, right now. The subconscious mind, obviously if the conscious mind is operating at 5%, the subconscious mind is operating 95% of the time. That means that 95% of the time we are not being presently aware, and we are running on what I like to call autopilot. A great example of this that I'm sure a lot of you have either heard of or experienced is I'm walking home, I'm getting out of my car, I'm putting my keys in the door, I drove home, but I don't remember my drive home, who drove the car, my autopilot, my subconscious mind. I'm alive, so thankfully it's very good at driving, but I wasn't present, like I said, I didn't see the streets go by, I didn't see the cars on the road, I was somewhere else, probably lost in my thoughts. So the conscious mind is also responsible for our logic and our reasoning, it's what we typically think of when we think, when we are working through problems in a very logical way. The subconscious mind is dominated by emotion, so when we are not being logical, our thinking brain and our feeling brain are not matching. Our emotional brain is actually a separate older part of our brain, I'm going like this because it's actually down here in the back part of our heads, our brains. Some of you might have heard the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain, those are parts of our brain, the reptilian brain is very evolutionarily based, it's responsible for our fight, flight, flight, or freeze response. Our mammalian brain is responsible for our emotional centers, our limbic systems. So when that is running, and I'm sure we can all remember a time and a place where usually arguments are emblematic of this or are an indicator of us being in that emotional brain, we're becoming reactive, we're becoming emotional, and you know it's not online? Our logic or our reason. So that's that level of difference. Our conscious mind is where we can access conscious choice. That is so incredibly important, literally each moment that we live, we can make a choice. Doesn't always feel that way. Why? Because of our subconscious mind and our programming. I'm always calling it our narratives, this comes usually from childhood, really it comes from an accumulation of our life experiences. When we come to this planet, however you think it is that we get here, we literally don't know how to be a human. Our brain is just soaking in all of this information for how to work our bodies, for how to be in relationships, for what things mean in the world, we are learning all of this. Because it's so much information, our brain as an organ does a couple things. It categorizes it, it finds patterns in it, it makes meanings and narratives, that's how we can understand it. The problem is, like I said, this starts so early, it starts in our early caregiving environment, it happens across our life, but a lot of our messages are laid down at a time and a place where we don't have much control. The problem becomes when we grow older and our life physically looks different, maybe we are living in a different part of the world, we are having relationships with different people, yet we still find ourselves engaging in those old patterns. That's because we're really tapped into those programs that are so, so, so old. It's okay, because we have tools, and that's why accessing this conscious mind and choosing to be in that 5%, more than 5% of the time, gives us control, it gives us choice, it gives us choice around the thoughts we think, the feelings we have, and the behaviors we make. Ultimately, this is how change happens. We learn, and we can learn, we develop the ability to access that 5% more of the time. How do we do it? Through mindfulness and through meditation. So hugely important for two reasons. Again, being mindfully present in our given moment means that we're in that conscious brain. It means that I have choice, so let me access awareness, let me show up to my moment, let me not be in my thoughts, let me not be in yesterday, let me not be worrying about tomorrow. Right here, right now, gives me choice. So working on that awareness. Another huge skill that practicing meditation and mindfulness helps us to develop is what I like to call our attentional muscle. We have two forms of attention. A great way to understand it is literally like the lights in a room, so the overhead lights. That's a form of hovering attention. I do not have control over that. Meaning, if there were to be a crash outside my window right now, or an alarm were to go off, I would hear it, though I'm not even trying to be paying attention to that right now. I would hear it, it's again, it keeps me safe from threat. That's always there, hovering above. And then I have what I like to call my spotlight of attention, this is my spotlight. That is where I'm putting my attention. So right now, my spotlight of attention is on all of you. I have now been paying attention by choice, this is the one I have control over. So, when you develop a mindfulness and a meditation practice, not only are you more able to show up and be aware of your current moment, which allows you new choices from those old thoughts, those old feelings, and those old behaviors, which are usually getting you more of the same, but you can also start to tone this muscle, meaning I get to decide where I put my attention. This is again, the autopilot example, driving home, my spotlight was in my mind, not on the road, possibly a safety concern. Even more so, how many of us, I know myself, I read a book, right, I get to the bottom of that one page, I have no idea where I read, what I read, why? Because my spotlight was somewhere else. So practicing this skill allows us to tone that muscle, it is not something that is easy and it is not something that necessarily comes naturally, but the more we do it, the better we get. So how do we practice mindfulness? One of two ways, we do what most of us think of when we think of meditation, we go, we sit somewhere silently, you know, we tune our attention to our breath, we just focus on our breath, what happens, our thoughts come, here is where we get to flex that muscle. So instead of attaching to the thought, jumping down the rabbit hole of the thought that a lot of us do, myself included, we work on bringing our attention back to our breath again, and again, and again, because that's the thing, once we bring our attention back, our thoughts still come, but like I said, this is a practice, I know it can be frustrating at first, but we can get really good at this if we work at it. Another way that we use this mindfulness or meditation is daily in our lives, our senses, so what we're seeing, what we're hearing, what we're smelling are hugely helpful, why? Because they can only work in our given moment, right? So I usually give this suggestion, I use it myself, when I'm eating, that's very sensory based, I'm tasting my food, for me cooking is too, whenever I'm doing something that I can taste like eating, put the phone away, takes what, 5-10 minutes to eat, and feel and taste your food, that will help you ground yourself in the present moment, same thing with music, with sounds, right, you're listening, you are here, you are here now, being able to meditate in that closed room, hugely helpful, very important, it allows us to develop this muscle, being able to be mindfully present in the world, even more important, we have to learn how to do both, because when we are mindfully present and conscious and have choice in our given moments is where we get to choose a new behavior, we get to work on those old habits, those narratives, and we get to create who it is we want to be now, so empowering, so important. So for those of you out there who have meditated, who have practiced mindfulness, let me know in the comments how helpful it's been to you, and for those of you who might be trying it now for the first time, let me know how it goes. If you guys like this video, please hit subscribe, and if you'd like to be alerted when my next video comes out, please hit the bell, thank you so much.