Every time your conscious mind goes to work, your subconscious mind is secretly helping. It is a part of our mind that continues to remain more or less a mystery to us as we struggle to know what it’s doing on a daily basis.
In this case, it’s pretty simple. As you are reading this, your subconscious mind is taking bits and pieces of the information and are processing and storing it away. Where that information goes doesn’t matter, but the brain will use it whenever we try to recall information.
However, while gathering, processing, and recalling information with our subconscious is easy, learning how to use your subconscious mind for other tasks isn’t as simple.
If we want to use our subconscious mind to become more successful, we need to know more about it.
Table of Contents
What Is the Subconscious Mind?
First, let’s talk about what our subconscious mind is. It was Sigmund Freud who created this theory as part of the levels of the mind.
Freud theorized that we had three levels of the mind. They go as follows:[1]
- Conscious: Our everyday thoughts and feelings.
- Preconscious: The information that we use to recall; memories or information needed to perform specific tasks.
- Subconscious: The information that shapes our overall behaviour without us realizing it.
Even when we aren’t consciously using these parts of our mind, they are constantly developing. Our subconscious is still processing and gathering information even as you are reading this. In fact, it’s processing 500,000 times more information than our conscious mind!
Why Can’t We Use It All the Time?
If our subconscious mind is so powerful and will make us successful, why can’t we use it all the time?
Well, our subconscious mind is tricky in this way. It’s not as simple as calling up a friend or googling something. Our subconscious is best known for formulating our daydreams or those aha moments.
In other words, our subconscious is constantly working, but the thoughts that come from it are fairly random. This is also the part of our mind that causes us to react quickly, like jumping out of the way of a moving car.
Another way to look at your subconscious mind is to treat it like your “back-office.” This suggests two things:
First, while our subconscious mind is powerful, it’s not independent. We still need our conscious mind to work, and a good portion of our thought power goes to it — 10% of it, in fact.[2]
Second, because of that relationship, it makes sense that we can’t use it all the time, but it can also provide you with an avenue for how to use your subconscious mind to find success.
How to Use Your Subconscious Mind to Succeed
As mentioned above, learning how to use your subconscious mind to succeed is tricky. The subconscious mind itself is hard to tap into.[3]
Even telling ourselves that we’re using our subconscious mind isn’t enough because that is a conscious decision.
So is all hope lost? Not quite.
Remember that relationship I just mentioned? Well, we can still use our conscious mind to prime our subconscious mind. Priming is the act of using our conscious brain to focus on a specific task.
This is like putting all of the conscious information you have into your subconscious mind. This act signals to your brain that this is a problem or situation you want to deal with. Your brain understands, and your subconscious mind will add the issue into the queue.[4]
What really matters is how we prime the subconscious. Here are some things you can do to start that process.
1. Plan to Do Nothing
Our subconscious mind is like a hoarder of ideas and solutions (within reason). Often times, you won’t find your subconscious mind presenting ideas while you’re in the middle of working on something else.
That’s because it hoards the ideas while our conscious mind works away. With this in mind, if you are someone who is constantly doing something, you won’t be giving your mind enough rest for those ideas to surface.
This is an absolute must if you are in the creative field. One can’t grow if we’re not allowing time for new ideas to come forth. This may mean simply doing nothing.
2. Bring Capture Devices Everywhere You Go
A capture device is any device that will allow you to take notes: your phone, a notebook, a digital recorder, etc. The idea behind this is that whenever you have an idea, you can write it down and capture it before you forget. This can be anything from projects you want to work on or a solution to a problem you are dealing with.
3. Do Some Physical Activity
Exercise is another way to get our brains to work more. If we are always sedentary, then it’s going to be tough for us to come up with fres, new ideas for anything. Instead, get up and move around and let your subconscious mind go to work.
Remember, we can’t always quickly decide to come up with solutions to our problems. What we can do, though, is plant the seeds so that our subconscious mind will begin working on them. Also, make sure you have some paper or your phone nearby so you can jot these down when the subconscious finally decides to let them surface.
4. Drop Your Keys
This is a thought exercise that Salvador Dali and Thomas Edison used. The idea behind this is to have your phone or paper and pen nearby and rest in a chair.
Continue to rest in your chair until you get to the point of dozing off. At this stage, you’re entering the twilight phase. It’s a powerful stage where our subconscious mind is most powerful. As you are getting to the point of falling asleep, your hand will drop and your keys will hit the floor, waking you up.
Upon waking, you will likely be aware of where your mind went during that twilight phase. Write down anything you remember — this is your subconscious speaking to you.
5. Visualize Success
No matter how big or small you want your success to be, if you want to learn how to use your subconscious mind to succeed, visualize your success. For our subconscious mind to work, we need to put something in front of it.
With physical activity, we are letting our mind wander, and our subconscious mind begins to propose solutions.
All the same, if we have goals in the front of our minds, our subconscious will begin to provide incentives for us. If we want more effective incentives, it will help to visualize our goals and to make them precise. In terms of the incentives, these are ideas our subconscious will create and that our conscious mind will take and put into action.
Without a vision for what you want to do, it may be hard to come up with solutions to make you more successful.
6. Get More in Touch With Your Mind
One way to do this is meditation. To start, all you need to do is get into a comfortable position and start to empty your mind. In terms of positions, there is no right or wrong position when meditating. The idea is to find comfort and allow yourself to let your mind go.
7. Look After Your Body
From eating healthy to moving around, it’s important that you take care of your vitals. Drinking enough water every day, eating the proper meals, and exercising enough every day are imperative. You want to make sure the things you are doing are helping your body and mind.
Final Thoughts
Learning how to use your subconscious mind is something that will take time as you are building habits and applying them in your life. There are all kinds of obstacles, and creating this pathway is not an easy matter.
However, through these activities and understanding the relationship between our various levels of mind, we can better tap into it and find success in due time.
More Tips on Tapping Into the Subconscious
- How To Change Habits By Using Your Subconscious Mind
- How To Leverage The Subconscious Mind
- 3 Ways to Reprogram Your Subconscious Mind to Reach Your Goals
Featured photo credit: Mitchell Griest via unsplash.com
Reference
| [1] | ^ | Boundless Psychology: Introduction to Consciousness |
| [2] | ^ | The Hypnotist Man: The Subconscious Mind |
| [3] | ^ | Butler University: Subconscious Perception |
| [4] | ^ | Forbes: 13 Ways To Start Training Your Subconscious Mind To Get What You Want |
