The Power of Your Mind

Every one of your actions begins with a thought. This is what guides you and helps you deal with life on its own terms ...

When you have to make decisions you use your faculty of the brain to think and reason about what you are facing so you can come to some positive conclusion that is most beneficial to yourself and hopefully to those around you.

It doesn't matter what our station in life may be, we all use the same avenue that allows us to make decisions by what we experience, see or hear. If we think bad thoughts, bad things happen to us. If we think good thoughts, good things happen to us.

This way of thinking is said to come from our consciousness. It dictates the way we think and reason about what has happened in our life and has a direct influence on the outcome of whatever problem or issue we happen to face. This conscious level controls how we discern our surroundings at any given time.

But did you know that the conscious level of the mind is only involved in what we perceive?

That's right ...

The conscious level only takes in what the eyeballs and ears take in and initially deposit that information. However, the process does not end there, for another step is involved.

There is another level of the brain that has more control over our thoughts than the conscious level does. This is the subconscious. The subconscious is what really processes our thoughts that come into our conscious mind. The subconscious mind takes those thoughts and processes them for us to act on.

The final process is delivered to our conscious mind in the form of feedback that we interpret as our thoughts. These thoughts also direct our emotions. As you can see the thought process is very powerful.

When these thoughts come to our conscious mind, they may or may not be in harmony with our programming - programming that was ingrained into us when we were little ones.

This is programming we received starting at the day of our birth. And so we may reject some thoughts because of our limited beliefs.

You can think of the subconscious mind as something like a computer. When you first purchase a computer you have the hardware that allows it to function the way it was intended.

You have the box the CPU is stored in, the monitor, keyboard, mouse, CD or DVD drive, and hard drive.

Everything is there and in place ... There is one problem, though!

Without the operating system that computer is worthless. The operating system is a set of written code, or instructions if you will, that controls all the hardware on your system.

As soon as the operating system is installed on your computer, suddenly it works and you can now use it for whatever your purpose was when you turned it on. Plus, you can add more programming to it so it can perform all sorts of different functions besides the basics it came with. When you perform a task, you are doing it without thinking about what the computer is doing.

However, the computer is constantly sending electronic signals back and forth just so you can use that software. You are not conscious of it, but it works.

The mind works the same way ...

You have the conscious mind, which as stated before is our current state of awareness. This is where we receive images and hear sounds that are interpreted as thoughts in our consciousness.

If you compare the conscious to the computer, the conscious would be a text editor. You bring it up on your screen and start typing a document. As we type the words on the screen, we are constantly making decisions as to what to say, if the format is right, the spelling is correct, etc.

In our brain, our conscious is the decision maker to a degree. It takes in all our input and tells the subconscious when to go to work to process that input. After the subconscious mind does what it needs to do, the conscious mind reacts to the results the subconscious mind produces then decides what to do next and feeds that information to the subconscious for processing.

If you compare the subconscious mind to the computer, it is the operating system. It contains all our memory, habits, beliefs, personality, and more. The subconscious mind also controls the body. It will store information and act on it.

The subconscious acts on whatever it is given by using predefined instructions (just as an operating system does) that basically tells it what to do and how to do it. Of course, the body itself is the output of the computer, or the screen. It responds to the programming by doing or reacting to what was intended by the subconscious mind.

And what is awesome about this whole endeavor is that it does all this automatically.

Therefore, the mind has two areas or functions - the conscious and subconscious. Without these, we would be just like a computer without the operating system - a box of hardware that does absolutely nothing.

This is why conditioning or feeding the subconscious mind the correct input is vital to our existence.