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Childhood perceptions are powerful enough to shape your entire life. Have you wondered what makes you “you?” Wondered why you like or dislike certain people, environment, foods, music, films, TV shows, or books? Why do you behave in a certain way in one situation and in an opposite way in another situation? Think the thoughts you think one day and other thoughts another day?
On a larger level, have you imagined why you are here and what you are doing with your life? What about the influence of other people in your life? Do you feel programmed as open-minded or fixed-minded for different types of circumstances in life? This all leads to a string connected to your subconscious mind.
Beginning of Our Existence
As a fetus, each of us came into existence without any conscious awareness. Not yet having a developed conscious mind, our subconscious mind immediately began absorbing, collecting inputs. Our subconscious starts downloading information from the moment of conception.
Then, at the moment of birth, we experienced two immediate fears: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. We were also born with physical needs: the need for warmth, food, hunger, stimulation, and nurturing. Along with our subconscious programming from the womb, life was either peaceful and pleasant, or stressful and anxious, or, more likely, some mixture of the two. If the mother is having peaceful & positive life during that period, then more such content will be there in our subconscious mind. But if she was having fear, stress, or negativity, maybe due unpleasant family environment, then stored input in the subconscious mind will altogether be the opposite.
Once we emerged from the birth experience, change began to happen rapidly. The first nine months of our life began with a unique, individual journey. Our mind started recognizing and retaining memories of our wide-ranging experiences. The ‘slate’ of our mind has filled with thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and memories, one day after another. More importantly, before the age of 7 when your mind is nearly always in the hypnotic state, input is much more powerful than input received after the conscious mind develops.
By now, we’ve accumulated tens of thousands of yesterdays and a wealth pool of knowledge to apply to our future. Those cumulative experiences are what makes each one of us a unique person.
Same Thing but Different Perceptions
The perceptions of one person are totally different from others even for the same thing. Three witnesses to an automobile accident might sound as if they were describing three totally different events. The reality of the accident remains the same, but it is perceived differently by these three witnesses.
The oft-told story of five blind men describing an elephant is an apt example. The first blind man held the elephant’s trunk and declared the animal to resemble a hose. The second blind man held its tail and insisted that an elephant was really like a rope. The third touched the leg and concluded that the animal was like a tree. The fourth touched an ear and believed that the creature amazingly resembled a huge leaf. The fifth, touching the massive side, concluded that his companions were all wrong: An elephant, obviously, was like a wall. None of them changed the reality that stood before them but each perceived the reality from a different perspective based on his own limited experience.
Because each person’s perception of reality is different, reality can be like a daydream, haze, fantasy, illusion, nightmare, etc. And similarly, many of the experiences and beliefs about who we are, who all those others are, and what we are doing here have been implanted in our mind. We may or may not be consciously aware of it. And in our seven-year-old mind, the reality was already formed—not by our own choice—but by parents, relatives caretakers, friends, teachers, neighbors, TV Cartoons, TV commercials, popular culture, religion, social consciousness, and all the other outside influences.
Working of the Subconscious Mind
Consequently, our perceptions of reality to a large extent have been set by others. It may or may not be aligned to our liking. If our life is not working the way we desire, it may be due to faulty ideas and beliefs formed as a child when we were literally in a half-conscious state 24/7. Therefore, the basis of change begins with examining how we became the “who” we are and that starts with understanding our subconscious mind.
Since each one of us is the product of our experiences, our past plays a strong part in determining how we perceive life. Our subconscious mind is a warehouse of memories and lessons that we automatically apply to the present and future.
The subconscious also controls our central nervous system, which controls the operation of our body’s involuntary functions. Often called the irrational or reactive mind, it is what keeps us alive. Without our subconscious at work behind the scenes, our heart, lungs, kidneys, and other vital organs would not function.
To produced physical reality creativity, intuition, and imagination play a vital role. These are functions of the subconscious mind. When we use our imagination, we are creating thoughts based on our knowledge of similar patterns. For example, even if we’ve never been to the Mount Everest, we still could develop a mental picture of what they may look like, based on our experience with other mountains. Whether our mental image really looks like the Mount Everest is not important here. Right or wrong, our imagination—in our subconscious—still creates a visual image.
“Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.”- Albert Einstein
The memory of Subconscious Mind
With 90 percent of your mind devoted to the subconscious, imagine how much information we can store in it! Some experts believe that the average human being has enough brainpower to master some 40 foreign languages, commit a complete set of encyclopedias to memory, and even complete full-course requirements from a dozen universities. This is because the average brain, which weighs just under four pounds, is able to house up to two quintillion bits of information. Numerically, that is 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 (2 followed by 18 zeros). To put that number in perspective, it would take McDonald’s at its current rate another 875 million years to sell that many hamburgers—give or take a few centuries, of course.
According to Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., the subconscious mind is one million times more powerful than our conscious mind as an informational processing machine. It can process and digest forty million bits of data per second—warp speed compared to the poor conscious mind turtle-like processing of forty bits of data per second. And you have the ability to tap into that power. (content is inspired from ‘The Secrets From Your Subconscious Mind’ by Ryan Elliott MSW).
Way-Ahead
Now if your family is fitness-focused, then there is a good chance that you will also follow this streak. If wealth is profound in your family, then you will also ensure the wealth source when you become an adult. And if mental stress is the key ingredient in your family culture, then you will not be spared from this also.
Whatever is the atmosphere of your home or society in your childhood, even before your birth, it affects you in a similar way in your adulthood. Assuming you have been born and brought up in a positive, encouraging environment, and if some intermittent difficulties arise, then your intuition will step in to take appropriate action. The same is true for another side as well. For example, if the stressful situation, which you are habitual, if suddenly become pleasant, it won’t last long. After a short period, something will kick in to make that environment stressful. Because your subconscious mind proves time and again your stored perceptions, be it right or wrong.
“Just because you are right, does not mean, I am wrong. You just haven’t seen life from my side.”- Anonymous
