What’s Up With the Unconscious Mind?
It’s always listening.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — C.G. Jung
A couple of days ago I got into an interesting conversation with a favorite coworker in our little office kitchenette.
(As a child of the 80s, I have a strange nostalgia for office coffee machine and water cooler chats).
We were discussing the subconscious mind and how weird it is. How and why does it know things we (consciously) don’t?
He described a talk he once gave to a big group. Since he’s never had trouble with public speaking, he arrived ready to go. But his body was sending signals that something was wrong. Sweats, hot flashes, a nauseated stomach. What was going on?
His unconscious mind knew something he didn’t about his confidence that day.
We both agreed that it’s incredibly strange our unconscious thoughts are able to exert this kind of influence on our bodies. (Remember, the seed of this project was my realization that thinking was affecting my body in extreme ways.)
The More You Know
Learning the cause of my pain was internal changed my thinking about the world around me. It made me want to understand as much as I can about the mind’s potential and use it to my (and others’) advantage.
Two people on the Slack channel were discussing British therapist and motivational speaker named Marisa Peer. (I know that the words “motivational speaker” will cause an immediate negative reaction — conscious and unconscious — in some of you, and I’m sorry for that friends, haha.)
Peer describes some of the same basic tenants that this Mayo Clinic video, “A Very Happy Brain,” does:
It all boils down to one simple fact: Our brains believe what we tell them to believe. Unlock beliefs that are causing you pain (Peer gives a bunch of examples of these types of beliefs, from as simple as “Mondays suck” to as profound as “I am not enough,”) and teach your brain to think differently.
Knowledge in Action
Back to my coworker. He didn’t believe he was nervous. What could he have done to change his unconscious mind?
Investigate the source of the fear (it can be deep). You know when you find it cause it’s the idea that buzzes more than the others in that quasi-painful way.
Stay with the fear through meditation or simply conscious awareness.
Create a sentence to unearth it and redirect it in more positive way. The example Peer gives is, “I am enough.”
Then see if the sweats/stomach pain/headaches are still around the way they were before.
Let me know if it worked!
Love, Meredith
This post first appeared in the Beautiful Voyager newsletter. Subscribe here.
