Are you conscious of what your subconscious is doing?

Each week I like to assess how it went and take a look at my progress.  The week before last was pretty mediocre (if not poor).  I didn't accomplish nearly as much as I wanted to and, most of the time, I was engaged in mindless, time waisting behavior.  Frustrated, I took time to reflect on what was going wrong.

I realized that throughout the week, I kept falling into these trance-like episodes where I mindlessly surfed the web or kept walking to the fridge to grab something to eat or failed to take action even though my mind kept prompting me to behave differently.  It's like I checked out and was on auto pilot for the most the week.

Here was the issue.  The problem is that we have two ways of operating.

#1. The Default method of Operation
#2. Operating with high Awareness.

Let's discuss the differences between the two.


Default operation is what happens when we are operating from past habits and behavior.  Most of the time we're checked out when in default mode.  We're designed to run on autopilot as a way of saving brain power.  It kinda reminds me of how a screen saver pops up when we're not actively using the computer.  When we are not actively operating from a place of high awareness, we slide into default.

Default is not necessarily a good place to be. Why?  Because unless you've been living a consistently action oriented life, your default actions aren't ideal.  For example, I've been an early riser for years.  So no matter what's going on, I will automatically wake up before 6:00 am.  It's my default time of waking up. No effort is required.  But, because my workout habits have been on and off, my default is NOT to work out (we tend to default to what is easiest for us).  Going to the gym requires effort.  The longer I go between gym visits, the more effort is required.  In the same way, if I'm not ACTIVELY thinking about my goals, my default is to just go through my day without making any progress towards achieving it.

 Reflecting back to last week, I noticed that if the start of my day looked very similar to the day before, it was almost guaranteed that I'd be operating from the default.   I used to get mad at myself for falling into the default pattern but then I learned that this is a natural occurrence.  Airplanes are off course 90% of the time, yet they manage to land at the intended destination on time.  How?  The pilots are constantly course correcting throughout the trip.  If the course corrections never occurred, the passengers would land several states away from where they wanted.

It kinda reminds me of the time my car alignment was off. Each time I drove the car, it tended to veer to the right.  To correct the issue, I had to constantly keep pulling the steering wheel to the left.  If I didn't, I was in danger of sideswiping other cars.  This is just like how our subconscious works.  It takes over for us, moving us slowly off course.   Worst of all, it works from beneath the surface, behind the scenes, and most of the time we aren't aware until we've drifted way off course.

The solution is to either operate in a state of high awareness or train your subconscious to do the things you WANT IT TO DO without any extra effort.  The only way, I know to reprogram your subconscious is to repeat the action over and over and over and over again until it becomes permanent. But in order to get there, you've got to operate with high awareness as you build your actions into long term behaviors.

How do you operate with high awareness?  Great question.  I feel like this topic deserves it's own post.  Which is why I'll continue this conversation with you next Monday.  In the mean time, I want to do remember things:

#1. Your job is to continuously feed your subconscious  the behaviors you want it to manifest.
#2. You are constantly going off course.  This doesn't mean that you are a bad person, it means that you are normal.  Knowing this, your job is to "pilot your life" by consistently bringing yourself back on track (over and over again).