MEET YOUR HIDDEN SUPERPOWER
THE SECRET DRIVER OF SUCCESS
3-Minute Read
Have you ever wondered why there are some things that you can accomplish with ease and other things that, even after years of effort, remain elusive and just beyond your grasp?
In today's issue of The Grip, you’ll get a glimpse into the mysterious vehicle primarily responsible for what you do and don’t accomplish in life--your subconscious brain.
We’ll guide you through six distinctions between your conscious and subconscious brain, showing you how to work with both to achieve more of what’s been just out of reach for you. Harnessing your mind’s full potential starts now.
Let’s dive in!
meet your hidden superpower
Six Important Distinctions of The Subconscious & Conscious Brain
Your subconscious brain is powerful. In fact, it’s roughly one million times more powerful than the conscious brain. In practical terms, that means for every one bit of information the conscious brain processes, the subconscious processes one million bits.
While the conscious brain, in general, focuses on one thing at a time, the subconscious brain is automatically multitasking 24/7 in the background, handling thousands of details that would overwhelm the conscious brain.
To help you better understand the distinct capabilities both parts of your brain possess, we’ve put together a brief, high-level summary of how they function.
Active Processes
Subconscious: Responsible for the regulation of bodily systems, functions, and movements. It also houses drives, instinct, and emotion.
Conscious: Responsible for executive functioning of logic, reason, intentionality, imagination, and abstraction. It is also responsible for regulating drives, instincts, and emotion through self-control.
Decisions
Subconscious: Influences decisions based on past experiences.
Conscious: Deliberately chooses; capable of choosing independently from the past.
Problem-Solving
Subconscious: Source of intuition and hunches. Responsible for sudden bursts of ideas, insights, and solutions that seem to appear from out of nowhere.
Conscious: Solves new, complex problems through logic, abstraction and imagination.
Sleep
Subconscious: In addition to all bodily control, responsible for dreaming, REM sleep, processing emotions and experiences, and memory consolidation which converts short-term into long-term.
Conscious: Mostly offline resting. So lazy!
Learning
Subconscious: Learns new information through repetition & practice, eventually taking over for the conscious brain through habit.
Conscious: Learns new information and skill deliberately and independently from the past. New learning converts to a habit through sufficient practice and gets handed over to the subconscious.
Vision
Subconscious: Envisions how to fulfill the instructions it has received and faithfully carries out the programs established within it.
Conscious: Envisions new possibilities and instructs the subconscious through focused attention.
The subconscious brain operates in the realm of the unseen. It has access to options and information that never make it onto the conscious brain’s radar. Between its processing capability, its 24/7 operation, and its access to mind-boggling amounts of information, the subconscious brain is your own AI companion. This is why mastering your subconscious brain makes such a difference in what you achieve in life—the more you move conscious desires into the domain of the subconscious, the more power gets behind fulfilling them.
The Collaboration of The Subconscious & Conscious Brain
The relationship between the subconscious and conscious brain functions like this: the conscious brain directs the subconscious brain through focus: visual cues, thoughts, words, emotions, and feelings. The subconscious brain, in turn, actively works day and night to guide the conscious brain on how best to fulfill these directives through hunches, insights, and inspiration: Call this person, take that opportunity, notice this connection, stay away from that offer, etc.
It’s the domain of the conscious brain to determine the what & where—the destination. It’s the domain of the subconscious brain to generate the how—the best route to get there. It’s much like the relationship between you and your GPS: you input the destination, and the GPS delivers back to you the optimal route.
Ironically, the routing produced by the subconscious brain often looks illogical to the conscious brain. Remember, the subconscious brain has access to MUCH more information (because of its processing power) than the conscious brain, so part of learning to harness the subconscious brain is trusting it when it doesn’t make sense logically.
“The more you move conscious desires into the domain of the subconscious, the more power gets behind fulfilling them.”
With enough repetition, conscious instructions become fixed programs in the subconscious brain that eventually run on autopilot—habits, muscle memory, etc.—freeing your conscious brain to learn something new and continue your ongoing growth and development. This is an INCREDIBLY powerful capability that allows you to greatly achieve in life.
But for most of us, it doesn’t work as smoothly or consistently as what I just described. There is a fundamental human dynamic that often gets in the way when we attempt to consciously instruct the subconscious brain with new direction.
What is it? We will reveal that answer and equip you to deal effectively with it in next week’s issue of The Grip.
Keep Creating!
May you prosper in every way!
Becky & TPL Team
52 Maxims of Conscious Choosing To Create the Deeply Satisfying Life You Desire.