The Conscious Mind is our rational mind. It’s the judgmental mind –
▪ making conscious decisions
▪ setting goals
▪ analysing information
▪ making sense of our world
It has the job of filtering out the masses of input we encounter, on a continuing basis. It’s the dialogue that runs in our heads. It may be telling us that something is wrong, or there is a problem with whatever. The real problem is, the problem will not be in the Conscious Mind. If it was, we could just think differently, and that would be that. Thinking positively is fine, but it has little effect on underlying programmes.
This is where the Subconscious Mind comes in. It is NOT unconscious – it runs just below our consciousness, hence – Subconscious.
Our subconscious mind is our emotional mind – it doesn’t think; it merely reacts. It is part of the Limbic system – the reptillian mind – fight / flight / freeze. It is our simple mind. It does not respond to intellectual ideas, and it never sleeps.
The emotional part of the subconscious is essential in making decisions, although we are not often aware of its role in decision making. The fact is, every decision we make, regardless of how rational we think we’re being, is determined by our emotions.
Our subconscious mind runs all our programmes, a bit like a computer hard drive. It’s simply, stimulus / response. It cannot think: this programme is not really serving me. The stimulus gets the same response, time after time.