Anyone who has studied human behaviour, Freud, Jung, psychology or NLP would probably accept that the unconscious mind is many times more powerful than the conscious mind.
In fact, the idea that our conscious mind is in control is an illusion. The “me” that you perceive yourself to be is capable of paying attention to only two or three pieces of information at a time in a world that throws thousands of pieces of information at us every second.
Therefore what we are seeing is a series of snapshots rather than a movie. Our brain fills in the gaps to make it look continuous!
Science is now playing catch-up by demonstrating this illusion in a series of experiments, some of which were shown on the BBC’s Horizon documentary Out of Control?
In one telling moment, the scientists involved in the programme were asked to imagine a sheet of blank paper to be the brain and then draw what percentage of the sheet of paper represented our conscious mind. Some of them seemed a little confused by this (perhaps their unconscious didn’t like it!) but in the end none of them shaded out more than 10 per cent of the paper.
In its review of the programme, the Independent put it like this: “knowing was just a thin skin on the top of unknowing” but it did give a sense of an “iceberg of sentience”, with much of our perception and actions operating below the waterline of awareness.
This image of the iceberg has long served as a metaphor for the relationship between conscious and unconscious. Only a small part of an iceberg is visible above the surface of the water; the vast bulk of it lurks beneath.
All awareness that is not in the conscious mind in the present moment is held in the unconscious. All memories, feelings and thoughts that are out of conscious awareness are by definition unconscious.
The scientists in the documentary seemed overwhelmed by the task of identifying exactly what goes on in the unconscious mind. But there were glimpses of hope in the area of neuroplasticity and “brain rewiring” experiments.
I’m no scientist but as a coach I understand the power of challenging the thoughts, limiting beliefs, assumptions, memories and judgments that lie beneath, often out of conscious awareness. These are the programs that run our lives.
This is a subject as vast as the unconscious itself so I won’t attempt to delve into it here but to return to the iceberg metaphor, make sure you plot your course to sail in safe waters by understanding as much as you can about what’s going on underneath your surface.
We ignore the unconscious at our peril. If we do so we are at risk of our own personal Titanic.
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