What is our conscious and subconscious mind? Consequences of how our mind works.

We have both conscious and subconscious minds. Your conscious mind is your critical or rational mind and allows you to make yes/no decisions and is responsible for those things you are consciously aware of.

The subconscious is that part of the mind that looks after everything else for you. It is the part that controls everything you do without conscious effort or thought – things that happen automatically, without thinking – blinking, laughing, crying, breathing, etc.

Your subconscious mind remembers everything you have experienced in your lifetime. All your experiences – from the time you were in the womb to this point in your life – everything you learned, everything you saw, everything you heard, everything you touched, everything you said, everything you smelt, every emotional reaction – every memory of that experience is stored in the data-bank of your subconscious mind.

That is why you don’t have to learn to tie your shoelaces every day, or to walk, to talk – everything you do automatically without thinking, and you always do those things the same way.

Your subconscious mind accesses that data-bank millions of times each day and uses the stored information to guide the mind in the way it will respond to any given stimuli. These reactions are automatic, and consciously you may not understand why you respond this way.

That is why you also respond the same way every time to the same stimuli. It is a learned behaviour. It is highly unlikely you would even remember when you first learned that response because the incident was so insignificant at the time, but over time the subconscious response became more intense because the subconscious became better at it. The same way you notice, you get better at doing something when you practice.

This is how your habits are born and grow. Any response to any stimuli is something that has been learned and practiced.

You might have felt a little peeved at something as a child, but over time something similar to that incident occurred and gradually that grew to anger. It is the same way anxiety is born. All your habits and beliefs developed the same way – from exposure and practice. You don’t even notice the development as it is so gradual.

When the stimulus occurs, the mind is still at the same age of the first response but acting with the experience of all the practice it has experienced. The negative behaviours only grow in intensity over time.
Any habits and beliefs you may have around food and exercise aren’t things you were born with. They were things you learned. Perhaps from your family or from people around you, perhaps from books or television. They’re simply things you learned.

The same way you learned laziness or to procrastinate, and it grew worse over time and became more noticeable and affected you more and more in a negative way.

The same way some use alcohol, or tobacco, or drugs – or those habits like biting nails, skin picking, grinding teeth. You weren’t born doing it – you learned it.

During a hypnosis session we can "undo" the unwanted learned behaviour and "reprogram" (= learn new desired behaviour, thoughts etc.) our mind.

Source: Hypnotherapist Kenneth Eldridge, Perth