Self-Mastery Nº39
Reconnecting with Your Subconscious Mind
Welcome to Self-Mastery — a place for exploring timeless ideas to become the architect of your mind, create yourself, and do less, better.
“You are the author of your own story.”
— Joxen
Your subconscious mind is responsible for your beliefs. While the conscious mind thinks, the subconscious mind absorbs. While the conscious mind is the garden, the subconscious mind is the deep, fertile soil. As seeds of both success and failure can be planted in this soil without discernment, your conscious mind is the gardener, choosing which seeds are sewn.
Most of us allow good and bad seeds to lay within our soil. Limiting ideas are then among those taking root in our subconscious. As the subconscious mind isn’t mindful of these ideas, they have permission to gradually reshape our beliefs. And as a result, fearful, jealous and power-hungry individuals often constantly feed bad seeds into our mind, limiting our potential.
Deep, habitual thinking that stems from undesirable subconscious impressions will perpetually try to lead you from your goals. But once you learn to mute the noise of the world and think for yourself, you’ll soon realise there’s nothing you can’t do.
Mentality is reality
In life, your mentality is your reality. I’ve noticed that more over the past few weeks. I never expected that I’d be a writer. And I never expected that I’d write about and sell something that I believe in, and people would see it and be excited to buy it. But it shows that reality is what you perceive it to be.
Philosopher Immanuel Kant pointed out over 200 years ago that all our experiences, all the colours, sensations and objects we see, are just representations in our mind. What it means depends on your perception.
Our perception of our outer world is rooted in our beliefs. Our beliefs are mere individual truths that create subjective realities. We’re belief systems. And a belief is simply a feeling of certainty about something—a passive knowing. We live our lives based on the subjective beliefs we’ve acquired through our experiences and accumulate ideas to either reinforce or dissolve them.
As a consequence, we all view the world differently.
I think open-mindedness is very important. It’s valuable for us internally but also how often future opportunities reveal themselves to us. We should be willing to change our beliefs and be open to a better way of looking at something, one that is more accurate and empowering for us. If we can be shown that, then we need to embrace it.
Ask yourself every now and then, “Do my beliefs help me live a life I truly love?” and “How many of my beliefs are my own—and how many were given to me?”.
“The next time someone tells you you’re being unrealistic about your goals, realise that it’s their reality that they’re talking about, not yours.”
— Joxen
Believing is seeing. If you don’t believe in who you are or what you want, it can’t be your reality.
Negative perceptions reinforce negative beliefs, and positive perceptions reinforce positive beliefs. The deeper you believe in something, the greater it roots itself in your subconscious mind.
Move beyond your thoughts
Growing up, I had problems with anger. In school, I was always quick to react to things or people with frustration and overreact faster than you could blink. I wasn’t a violent person; I’ve still never been in a full fight to this day. And it was easy for me to feel guilty about upsetting someone or saying harsh things to them, even if they weren’t a nice person. That said, I felt I had a constant level of rage and unhappiness inside.
My rage was born from pain. I developed an automatic response of rage as a defence against it. The idea of violence cultivating peace is a prevalent misconception. But I didn’t know it yet. Eventually, I distanced myself from trying to be around people and things that didn’t make me happy to focus on what did make me happy: sport. From there, I learnt to channel my anger through catharsis and how I became on the outside was built around laughter and purpose. It wasn’t easy; I still struggled for a while after I left school. But looking back now, I learnt something valuable.
How we perceive an event determines its experience. Events are neutral, but we give them labels.
When a bad situation appears, take a pause and observe your thoughts. It switches your mind from unconscious to conscious, replacing instinct with awareness. Meditation is powerful for this. Because only when you can notice your thoughts can you choose how you respond.
I learnt to give myself more discernment between disempowering thoughts in my mind and my choices. If you notice disempowering thoughts in your mind, look at them as not really you—and let it pass by. You can choose a more empowering thought to respond with.
For example, let’s say you’ve just lost your job (hopefully you haven’t). You could focus on the thought that says, “You’re going to be unemployed and broke”, which will make you feel hopeless and lower your vibrational energy. Or, you could focus on the opportunity, “I can now find a new job that pays more”. The second thought will clearly make you feel better and raise your vibration.
The more positive you are about things, the higher your vibration and energy, and the larger your surface area is for “luck” so good things can land in your life.
Self-mastery and reconnecting with your subconscious mind is about unlearning and reconditioning, giving you more freedom to be who you really are. It’s not a quick process. But with patience, dedication and consistency, you’ll start to shift from a cycle of negative thinking into a new model of positive thinking.
What’s on My Mind
We are a jigsaw puzzle piece of a certain shape. We move through life, trying to change our shape to fit an existing hole in the world. But there’s another way that can be better for us and the world: grow a new puzzle around us.
Explore
"You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame."
— Erica Jong
Article of the Week
This week’s article focuses on The Big Three; three core exercises you can do at home in just 15 minutes. It comes from one of the most respected professors and researchers of back pain, core training and rehabilitation: Dr Stuart McGill. His work helped me relieve years of chronic back pain.
Interesting Thing of the Week
SpaceX just landed their first Starship flight back on earth after launch in just their third try—and then it blew up. This is a monumental moment in history.
Question of the week
How often are you creating something new each week?
Sincerely,
Jelani.