What's a million times smarter than you? Your subconscious mind~

At a Glance

Estimated Reading Time: 4 Mins

Style: Scientific

Why Read This? Because most people don’t understand how to tap into the power of the human mind

Key takeaways:

• The subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than your conscious mind
• The subconscious mind only understands two languages: Images and Emotions

note: for simplicity, I use the term subconscious to refer to both the subconscious mind and the unconscious mind

The common notion that we only use 10% of our brains is utter nonsense since the whole brain is always active, however, if we replace the word ‘brain’ with ‘mind’ then we get a more plausible statement. This 10% can be referred to as consciousness and represents the tip of the iceberg philosophy that we only use a minute fraction of the human mind.

Given this rather optimistic figure of 10% it begs the question what about the other 90%?

The Subconscious Mind

Below all human consciousness exists a subconscious and unconscious partition of the mind. For convenience and simplicity we will refer to them both as the subconscious mind.

It represents an infinitely large repository of life, a virtual library of every single thought, feeling, memory and experience you’ve ever had in your entire life. It is hyper-intelligent beyond our conscious mind and is responsible for creating and defining who we are today.

The problem is most of us don’t how to access and control this vast virtual library optimally. Instead, we allow it to run on ‘auto-pilot’, allowing it to control us and operate on a sub-optimal level.

Now, what if we could manually (or consciously) optimize the way our subconscious operates? Effectively hacking our own minds so that we can utilize the infinite potential the subconscious mind possesses. Turns out there simple ways to hack the mind, however, we must first understand how it operates.

To give you an idea of magnitude of power the subconscious mind holds compared to the conscious mind, it estimated that we can process on average of 40 bits of information consciously. On the other hand, the subconscious mind can process on average of 40 million bits of information effortlessly! Just imagine the power you can achieve if you learn how to harness the power of your subconscious mind.

A Useful Metaphor of the Mind

Imagine you are using a computer. The user (you) would represent the conscious mind, whereas the computer itself would represent the subconscious mind.

The user (conscious mind) is responsible for executing the array of commands to access the various resources of the computer (subconscious mind). Based on the commands given, the user can control and access these resources, i.e. opening a program, accessing images or watching video files.

Now this metaphor parallels the mental processes of storing and recalling information in our own minds. By understanding that the subconscious is merely a computer, we can learn to hack our own minds to optimize our lives, i.e. improve memory and cognition, rapid skill acquisition, goal achievement etc.

The human mind is like an organic computer that can continually upgrade itself

Programming Language of the Mind

Just to clarify, we are only interested in hacking the subconscious partition of the human mind which holds infinite amounts of knowledge and information.

To understand how to hack the human computer we must understand the ‘programming language’ of the subconscious mind.

Like all computers there are different operating systems, i.e. Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux etc. Simply put, if you don’t understand how to use a certain operating system you can’t fully utilize the capabilities of the computer, in our case, most people don’t know how to use their own subconscious.

Similarly, it would be like trying to speak to an American in Chinese; they might get the gist of what you are saying (through body language) however it’s obviously not as optimal as speaking to them in English.

Fortunately for most people, the programming language of the subconscious is extremely easy to learn yet extremely powerful!

The programming language of the subconscious is primarily in two forms: Sensations (VAK Model) and Emotions.

• Sensations are anything that stimulates an immediate sensory response in the mind, i.e. Visual, Auditory, or Kinaesthetic (hence VAK). For simplicity let’s use ‘Visual’ as the primary sensation

• Emotions are psycho-physiological responses in the mind and body

Essentially, the subconscious only understands images and emotions.

Too often when people make affirmations to change their subconscious behaviour they use words. Just think about all the times you tried to tell yourself to change or do something with ‘words’ only, i.e. I will stop smoking, I will be a millionaire etc.

Going back to our speaking Chinese to an American person example, you can see that the words have minimal impact in influencing the subconscious.

Hacking the Human Mind

Ok, now that we know the programming language we can begin to hack the human mind. Just like how there are many ways to hack into a computer there are various ways to hack the human mind. We will cover various hacking methods in future articles.

The easiest way to hack the mind is a common technique called ‘Visualization’.

Images are extremely powerful. As the new adage goes ‘a picture is worth a million words’ especially given that the subconscious is literally a million times more powerful than the conscious mind.

Let's use for example: try to imagine a shape whose center is equidistant from all points given a specified radius. Now it might have taken you maybe 3-5 seconds for your mind to register these words, however if I showed you a picture of a circle – you would have knew instantly what I was talking about, better yet practically every single person on this planet would have understood with the picture rather than the words.

Now how to use visualization as a method to hack our own minds? Here are two powerful uses

For optimal goal attainment

If you ever wanted anything in life all you had to do was see yourself achieving it. Seeing your goals significantly increases the chances and rate at which you achieve them.

Professional athletes are known to use visualization before they attempt new challenges. For instance in the case of olympic gymnasts, they would visualize precisely how they would actually perform a routine in their mind before they actually do it. This dramatically increases the chances of them succeeding as their subconscious mind (which controls all parts of their body) roughly knows how to perform to achieve that particular feat. As in all cases, practice makes perfect, once the subconscious knows exactly what is required it becomes effortless.

Improved Memory and Learning

Using visualization as a learning tool is incredibly effective. We know rote learning can be extremely time consuming and let’s face it ineffective. By visualizing new concepts and information it becomes extremely effective in retaining in our memories.

This is why flashcards and infographics are used.

To memorize effectively (i.e. a concept, story, some information etc.) convert it into visual form through immediate natural associations, that is, focusing on whatever images pop into your mind first. Let’s use an example to illustrate this point.
If you were learning Chinese, the character 火 or ‘Huǒ’ (pronounced ‘hwaw’) means fire – to remember this I would immediately visualize a mini bonfire since the character reminds me of a fire.

The key is to use the immediate images that are already in your mind and make new associations.

As you can expect we've only touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hacking the human mind. In the following articles we will discover even more powerful ways to utilize and optimize the potential of the subconscious mind.

If you have any thoughts, comments or suggestions, please leave them in the comments below. I'd be happy to discuss any thoughts further.

Happy hacking~