Mindset: Who’s sailing the ship?

This mindset looks at your conscious versus your subconscious.

Conscious and Subconscious

When it comes to our mind and our thinking our conscious makes up 10% of our brain or our mind. This is where our willpower, analytical and rational thinking reside. These defend and protect the processes we use consciously. This is where we know what we need to do and we understand the how and why.

Within our subconscious we have strategies, habits, impulses and physiological controls. Our subconscious makes up 90% of our mind. Our acting, doing and feeling; where we can run these programmes without thinking. Our subconscious is the ship we sail in and build.

When it comes to starting something new or changing old habits people will often work with willpower alone. Frequently if parameters and processes are not put in place, people may find they lose momentum and not get the results they seek. You may have heard people say ‘I have no willpower’, It’s not the willpower that’s lacking, it is understanding.

HALT our progress

To make significant change we have to dip into our subconscious to explore and understand what strategies, habits, impulses and physiological controls we have and how we can make conscious changes around them to achieve the results we desire. In doing this we also need to be aware of emotions that can attack us. These are emotions such as hunger, anger, loneliness and feeling tired. These are impulses that can halt our progress and steer the ship off course.

If we dip into our subconscious we are able to rewire and think of new strategies, new habits and new impulses that can support our analytical willpower and rational thinking. This is where we are able to analyse, justify and rationalise why we will or won’t do something. We need to be aware of who is sailing our ship and the defences we need to put in place when attack comes. We need to be aware of the destination we are heading and build this awareness so in turn we have the willpower to get the results, aligning our subconscious with the rational and analytical parts of our conscious. The quicker we can hit, stop and drop into our subconscious the quicker we are able to adjust and realise, and therefore we will be more in tune with our thoughts and our emotions and what actions we need to take to achieve the positive results.

So who is sailing your ship? Which course will you chart? How will you achieve the results you are looking to make?

This post is part of our mindset series. Take a look at our other posts here.