Getting to know your thoughts

“You can be anything you want to be, If you put your mind in to it”

“The mind is everything. What you think, you become”

You might have came across motivational quotes more than once in your life. Let’s just be honest, sometimes we came across them accidentally through different medium. Sometimes it came through our social media feeds and mostly followed by moments like “this speaks to me perfectly” or “Thank god someone actually said it!”. Sometimes it came through our friend, our favourite movie, songs and etc.

I used to think that motivational quotes, words of wisdom or mostly those that motivates you to achieve something and reaching your goals, is full of bullshit. I used to think that those are just sayings that we approve as true when we are in need. Or more likely, words that confirmed our thoughts. Sometimes we forget about it when all we need is reality that is presented right in our face. It then all came down to a point where we feel helpless. As if nobody understands what we actually feel. However, I’ve learned that the doubts I have about words of wisdom were not necessarily true.

I discovered the meaning behind them through a small workshop mentored by inspiring psychologists, weeks ago. It was an eye and mind opening experience, that moved me to share some bits of it here. Though I’ve came across the subject gazillion of time during my undergrad study, I’ve discovered that discussing it again in a non-academic way was surprisingly different.

Alright, moving on.

I’m going to share the tidbits about what I’ve learned here because I think people needs to know how actually our mind works especially when we wanted to achieve something. This also proves that those words of wisdom were actually true.

The Mind does not work like a machine, the body does.

As we all know, our mind is where the process of thinking takes place. We called it The Brain. The brain itself is smaller than our body, but it’s abilities are much larger than it’s figure. Our mind controls our body, as it is only the tools to direct our action towards the result we want.

Wait what? How can our body be a tool that moves us toward the result? Keep reading!

Subconscious domination

Even though we thought our behavior is based on our conscious thought, it’s actually the other way around. The things we do is 80% rooted from our subconscious mind. Where is actually the subconscious mind? Nobody knows. Even the scientist failed to figured it out. It doesn’t have an accurate place in our brain, but it’s there.

What’s actually they do? They stored everything.

Imagine like a hard drive on your computer, where the long term memory stored. The database. The storage. The lost and found, where you can look for the things that have been missing. For example: Trying to complete the lyrics of your favorite old song. If you’re trying hard enough, the words will come through. They also obeys all the commands from the conscious mind. If your conscious tells you “This ain’t gonna work. It’s too hard”, they’ll obey you and stored those thoughts.

However the thing about subconscious is, they’re clueless. They can’t keep track of time, day, present, past, future, dream and reality. They don’t even know the good and bad. That’s why sometimes when you had a really bad nightmare, you woke up with your heart thumping, your imagination seems real as if the ghosts of your dream will come and get you by any minute. They have no idea whether the thought you had is outdated. This is the reason why reminiscing the good ol’ memory with that one particular Ex could get you drown in tears. They don’t get the memo that you were having those throwback moments.

Stored thoughts = Belief

What happened to the thought that is stored in subconscious? It kept added and builds up until it becomes a chunk of beliefs. Belief are the thoughts that is stored either by you, your parents, friends, strangers or anything that you heard or experienced. Thus, Belief might consisted of positive and negative components in it. Beliefs also made of concrete walls, it gets stronger when you keep repeating the thoughts that convinced you. These chunk of concrete wall will makes it harder to think of other thoughts outside of your beliefs.

This is the main reason why getting out of your comfort zone seems like an endless endeavour. Simply because you thought you’re comfortably chilling in your comfort zone and getting out of it was a terrible idea. It also explained why sometimes, when we think something bad will happen (because we believe it) it will happen eventually. Remember, the subconscious does not have the ability to tell you what’s good and bad.

The subconscious will take control over your body and direct you towards a specific result.

Controlling the Conscious

So what actually we can do about it? Controlling your conscious before it stored in the subconscious is the only answer.

The fact is, 20% of our conscious mind works 24/7 a day since what we called it ‘the thinking mind’, where all the process of thinking takes place.The nature of your conscious is smart and full of positivity. Conscious can reject and approve ideas. Conscious knows what’s good and bad. Conscious have focus.

Your conscious mind is the only thing you can control. You can control the kind of thoughts that will ‘get’ you. So actually, you can control and sort out the things before it stored in your subconscious.

This tells you when trying to achieve your goal, your conscious mind is the Goal Setter, while your subconscious is the goal getter.

By and Large…

These are the reasons why all those quotes and words of wisdom make sense. Cause it ain’t no magic, it is your mind who do all the work. When you thought the words does not make any sense, then it will not making any. When you thought you’re not going to succeed, you will not succeed.

By controlling your conscious, simply by repeating positive thoughts, sayings, motivations, it will all automatically stored in your subconscious. Then it will added up to a new belief and guides you towards the outcome you want. This also the answer of why dieting won’t work, because you’re focusing your mind to your body transformation without trying to change how you think or get to know how your mind works. Therefore my friend, there is no point in letting negative thoughts be little you, because your capacity to create them is infinite. Negative thoughts can also brings you to a downward spiral if you keep letting it coming in to your subconscious repetitively, as it builds up a new negative belief that will forever haunts you.

I hope this inspired you a little bit about how your mind works and what can you do about it. Keep those positive thoughts coming and don’t let the negative ones get you!

Have a good night!

Xx,

Belle