I
t is my belief that we are much more
capable, creative and expressive than we allow ourselves to be. Helping people embrace their more expressed self is my passion. And it is always a journey. When- ever we step outside our comfort zone, our inner saboteur is ready for action. This is not because we want to trip ourselves up; rather it has to do with our hardwiring for safety and survival of the species. Anything that feels new or strange will subconsciously be experienced as a threat.
If we can understand how our inner sabo- teur works we can learn to work with it. Here are some things I have learned about self-sabotage: ‘Our subconscious mind proc- esses 20 million environmental stimuli per second. Our conscious mind just 40.’ (‘Relax and grow Rich’, by Michael Hutcheson and Claire Wadey .)
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We respond to stimuli, whether they are conscious or subconscious. This means that we often respond without either knowing it or without knowing why we respond in a certain way. Another way of putting it is: 5% of us is conscious and 95% of us is subcon- scious.
Our inner saboteur springs from our sub- conscious. It is the job of the subconscious to protect us from harm. Our subconscious does not differentiate between a physical, emotional, mental or spiritual threat. The response will be the same: protect!
Also the subconscious doesn’t differentiate
between the past and the present or future. The physi- ological responses are the same.
An example: Your conscious (5%) choice is to write an article about your work. Logically, this seems to be a good idea because it will get you more visible in the professional arena, which may lead to more work. It will also sharpen your own thinking on this topic in the process.
Three months later you haven’t done anything. Why?
Your subconscious (95%) says: ‘What!? Are you crazy?! People might not agree with what you say, they might think you don’t know what you’re talking about, or they might laugh at you. No way are you going to do that!’
Our subconscious is wired to protect us
All of us have a collection of experiences in which we have felt humiliated or not good enough, starting from our early childhood. Our subconscious is wired to protect us from further hurt, in this case by undermining our con- scious goal of writing this article. We might be shamed again and the subconscious is doing everything it can to prevent that from happening.
If you look at our evolution, we started with a reptilian or primitive brain which has all the hardware for our survival. It is hardwired for the survival of the species. It’s from our primitive brain that our fight, flight or freeze response is triggered. It’s from here that we know when we’re hungry or cold. As we evolved, so have different parts of our brain, creating different layers on top of the primitive brain.
Even though we have come a very long way in learning how the brain functions, we still don’t know which areas actually contain the conscious mind, other than the neo- cortex; the thin layer of brain tissue behind the forehead.
You could picture a stimulus reaching the brain from the bottom up, first the primitive brain, then the other parts of the brain and finally the neo-cortex. Experiments have shown that the neo-cortex can be the last neural area to know when a decision is made: the other, more primitive areas of the brain, may have already dealt with the issue.
Here is an example of how your subconscious can affect you, without any conscious awareness.
Imagine you’re walking along on a nice sunny day, feel- ing great and all of a sudden you don’t feel so good, but you don’t know why. You’ve responded emotionally to a stimulus which was noticed by your subconscious but not your conscious awareness. Someone has just walked by wearing exactly the same t-shirt as your friend. As it happens you are having some conflict with your friend at the moment. This instantly triggered feelings of conflict and sadness, without conscious awareness.
The language of the subconscious includes images, smells, sounds, associations and body sensations. For us to communicate with our subconscious more effectively we need to use the right language.
Dr Bruce Lipton , a cell biologist, has written about his research and how it has com- pletely changed his view of life. His book, “The Biology of Belief” is well worth a read.
AAMET LIFE AUTUMN 2012
www.aamet.org 31
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