Are You Really In Control
Or...?
As a student of the mind, I understand, you like me are interested in how things work, more specifically how to be in control of ourselves and also what happens to us so that instead of struggling we can enjoy life, in other words how to be at cause, in control of our life. Like my Grampa Vetter said, "Speaking to you as a person with great curiosity, I know you're interested in more than simple things like, how do wisdom teeth get smarter than regular teeth."
Did you know that the word psychology, according to the dictionary is the study of how the mind works? Being curious about social beliefs and patterns, I've always been fascinated by people's thoughts and beliefs about how things work. What I've found, most of us are caught up in the trap of "why" things work the way they do. This is like a dog trying to catch his tail. We go round and round and simply wear ourselves out.
"Why did this happen?" "Why are you like this?" "Why did I do this?" "Why does this always happen to me?" "Why, Why, Why?" "Why do we normally ask the question "why"?"
That is a fair question but one of the reasons psychology is the study of "how" the mind works and not "why" the mind works is because of the way the human engine works.
Ok, what is the human engine and what does it have to do with me being in control or not? The human engine is the mind and unfortunately growing up they didn't tell us very much about how the mind works. Educators, parents, teachers and friends didn't tell us how the mind works. They never set us down and explained, "These are the parameters of your mind. Use them this way and you will get what you want. You will control your life and what happens to you."
WHY? I don't know why. We could speculate, they didn't know. They didn't know how important it is. They did know and wanted to control us. They may have never considered the consequences. Whatever the reason why, up until now this important key to understanding if and how to be in control has not been know by most people.
In fact, most people have such misconceptions about our minds and how it works that we have attached unrealistic beliefs and superstitions to our understanding of the mind. Because we have no real understanding of our mind and its parameters, we ignore and explain away what happens to us, and how we feel, as outside of our control.
To start with, let's look at a model of the brain. There may other models but for our purposes, we'll use this one for now. This useful model divides the mind into two parts. The conscious part, which is 12% and the unconscious or subconscious part that is 88%. Some people even divide the un/subconscious into different parts also, so that there are three parts to our mind.
However, for purposes of workability (having a model that gets results) we will use the 12/88% model (conscious plus unconscious/subconscious). Each part of the mind has distinct duties, roles, limitations or parameters. In other words, the limitations/parameters each has are responsibilities that allow the mind to be very useful in getting things accomplished.
The problem comes in when we confuse or misunderstand what each part of our mind is responsible for. The secret of having and keeping control of and for ourselves is in understanding the roles of each part of our mind.
First, let's start with that part of our mind we are most familiar with, the conscious mind. The parameters of the conscious mind are things like:
The Conscious Mind Parameters:
- It focuses
- It makes value judgments (understands right/wrong-good/evil)
- Creates it's own logic.
- Analytical
- Evaluates
- It is the captain
- Has little power to accomplish things
It is the main reason people settle for less than their best. Number 6) "It is the captain" is very important when we discover what the parameters of the unconscious are.
If we were to think of a captain of a ship, we understand the captain gives the directions but it is the engine that actually does the work of following out the orders of the captain. It is imperative that the captain and the engine room speak and understand the same language. Otherwise, there will be mis-communication and misunderstanding while the ship, try as it might, will not get to its intended destination, right?
Are you starting to get a sense of the power this information will give you? Obviously, as you begin to incorporate this into your thinking your success will be easier and faster. How good does it feel to realize, the more you apply what you're learning the more successful you will become?
What if we quickly made the discovery that, the action of our sub/unconscious determines the outcome of whether or not we get what we want? Wouldn't it be more than interesting to understand how the sub/unconscious works? I mean what are the parameters this part works within.
This part is where our emotions come from. It is where all of our memories are stored. Where everything we have ever seen, hear, felt, tasted, smelled or said to ourselves is stored. This part of us cannot understand right or wrong. However, it does understand pain or pleasure.
Think about it like this, our sub/unconscious is like an engine that only goes in one direction-forward. It is unable to go backwards, sideways or neutral, it only goes forward.
Before I list the parameters of the sub/unconscious, let's talk about its inability to understand right and wrong. Right and wrong are value judgments, determined by unconscious patterns established by a conscious decision of defeat. Feelings are different from emotions.
They are stimuli attached to a certain thought, word or action. Feelings and emotions are produced from our sub/unconscious and values judgments such as right and wrong are made from the conscious part of our mind.
When we understand that every thing we do is powered by the sub/unconscious and has a positive intention (receiving some form of pleasure) behind it we make a giant leap in how to work with this part of us and go a long way in understanding the sub/unconscious. This is why we do things that in the end may not be as useful or may even be considered wrong.
Then we go through the process of the conscious mind placing a value judgment of bad or wrong on the word, thought or deed just taken. Naturally, causing the sub/unconscious mind to change the feeling of pleasure to pain which the conscious calls a bad feeling, evil or wrong.
It's that feeling of doing what I don't want to do and not doing what I want to do. Like my Grampa Vetter would say, "I hate to repeat gossip, so I'm only going to say this once. I can resist anything but temptation."
The Sub/Unconscious mind Parameters:
- Goal seeking mechanism
- Takes everything literal
- Motivated by pain/pleasure
- Unable to comprehend right/wrong
- Processes language
- Looks for patterns
- Difficulty processing negation
- Likes to play and please
Naturally being a goal seeking mechanism, it only goes in one direction – FORWARD! The next parameter is it takes everything literal and being motivated by pain/pleasure because it is unable to comprehend right/wrong, the sub/unconscious looks for patterns.
In addition, since it is very, very difficult to process negations and it likes to play and please this part of our mind doesn't understand when the conscious mind gets upset because it easily produced sadness. Since, the conscious said, "I don't want to be sad", and minus the negation "don't", the sub/unconscious was instructed, "I want to be sad".
The reason the sub/unconscious has difficulty processing negations is because it is the part of us that makes sense out of language. If you did not understand Japanese and I spoke Japanese words, they would not make sense to you because you do not have that particular language pattern stored in your sub/unconscious.
To prove it to yourself, DON'T think of a pink elephant in your bed. Naturally, to make sense of the sentence you have to think of a pink elephant in your bed before you can put the red circle with the diagonal line through it, which means don't do it. That is also a part of the reason when Groucho Marx's said; "I shot an elephant in my pajamas. What an elephant was doing in my pajamas, I'll never know." It made me laugh.
Naturally, the sub/unconscious gets confused because of the mixed instructions from the conscious and as any good engine would, so it doesn't work as well as it should.
However, This One Secret uses the exact nature of the Conscious-Unconscious paradigm to do the one thing you have always wanted. It is the answer to every question and the solution to every problem.
Dr. Houston Vetter, aka DocResults, is an author, lecture and considered by clients as the best Mental Training Expert on the whole DARN planet. To get your FREE copy of “Train Your Thinking, The Power Portal for Long-Lasting Success To Contact Doc Houston
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