Is it fate? Or just your unconscious mind’s relentless bid for control
Have you ever been stuck in a negative pattern in your life?
- train wreck after train wreck in the relationship department
- never being able to surpass a certain income level despite more effort
- chronic worry or anxiety
- never can lose the weight
- starting projects but never being able to finish them
Welcome to your unconscious mind and the power it holds over your behaviour!
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung
Meaning: Deep-seated beliefs and parts of your personality that you aren’t even aware of are controlling the events of your life, and you don’t even know it.
Huh.
Curious about the inner workings of your unconscious mind and how it shapes your reality?
Read on, friend.
Individual Perception TL;DR
According to the neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) field, in any given second, we are receiving about 20 Million bps of data from our environment using our 5 senses:
- Auditory (hearing) 👂
- Gustatory (taste) 👅
- Olfactory (smell) 👃
- Visual (sight) 👁
- Kinesthetic (feel) 💆♀️
Yet, we can ONLY perceive about 134 bps to create the reality of what we perceive at the moment. So at any given second, we automatically filter out most of the data being received.
The picture above explained:
Incoming data -> goes thru individual generalization, deletion and distortion filters -> filtered down to sizeable bites -> creates an internal representation of what is happening -> puts you in a certain state (via emotions) -> this state then influences your behaviour.
To deal with the gap between 2 million and 134 bps — our brain filters data by distorting, generalizing and deleting information to make it useable.
Also, your belief system is a glutton for confirmation bias. It rather enjoys creating self-fulfilling prophecies, meaning that it will delete, distort or generalize incoming information — what you see, hear, feel, taste, smell — to support your existing beliefs about yourself and the world.
This is why people repeat the same patterns over and over and over again in their lives—all compliments of the unconscious mind and her bid for control over your life.
Your beliefs guide your generalization, deletion and distortion filters, so when you change your beliefs, you change how you perceive the world.
Your beliefs literally shape the lens through which you perceive the world.
This concept is the foundation behind changing your life and behaviour/achieving your goals by changing your beliefs.
People will often try and develop more innovative strategies to achieve their goals, but I would strongly argue that this will only get you so far when you are battling deeply engrained beliefs that oppose what you are striving for.
In my humble opinion, INDIVIDUALIZED STRATEGY + UNCONSCIOUS MIND ALIGNMENT is the winning recipe for achieving your goals faster and with less perceived effort.
What does this look like?
Individualized Strategy:
- Join a community, group or mastermind to keep you accountable and make it more fun
- Create a detailed plan of action along with the specific tasks required to complete during each stage
- Leverage the best technology and software to get you there — daily reminders, task lists, mind maps, digital planners, AI, etc.
- Forecast future pitfalls or hurdles you might encounter on the journey toward your goals and come up with a game plan ahead of time to navigate them — doing this ahead of time will make you less likely to succumb to them down the line
- Books that can help with this: Atomic Habits — James Clear (new goals = new habits), Your Best Year Ever — Michael Hyatt (takes you through the stages of completing your goals)
Unconscious Mind Alignment:
- Shadow work — exploring the hidden desires of your unconscious mind
- Determining your limiting beliefs and using NLP techniques to change your limiting beliefs
- Daily affirmations to continuously support the rewiring of new positive beliefs
- Daily reframing of unwanted thought patterns when you are aware of them
- Healing past trauma and any unresolved emotions
You don’t need to do everything listed, but they are some excellent places to start.
