Thoughts
In the first few chapters, we will try to create an exhaustive list of the processes that are at play to keep you from altering your life in the way you choose.
Thoughts are regurgitated impressions brought to your notice highlighting certain connections which may solve a problem you perceive.
There are broadly 2 types of thought
Conscious Thought
SubConscious Thought
Conscious Thought
Conscious thoughts are the thoughts that occur to you when you focus on something. These surface when you come across something new that you want to explore. They have a touch of uniqueness to them and/or danger. Conscious thought uses the frontal lobe of your brain and drains a lot of energy.
The body will choose “important” thoughts and impressions and store them for later evaluation. The evaluation happens in the posterior part of your brain. This normally happens when you sleep.
You need sleep to convert impressions into long term memory, habits and connections.
During sleep the brain collects the new impressions and begins assimilating them into the existing neuron structure. The assimilated thoughts and impressions become sub-conscious.
Subconscious Thought
Subconscious thoughts on the other hand are just re-hashed impressions. These impressions could be of the form of sight, sound, smell or any other input from a sense organ. Although these are old thoughts or impressions, at times your mind may have come up with a new connection between these impressions. This new connection will appear suddenly as a conscious thought.
Serendipity happens this way. We spend a lot of conscious thought on a problem, filling our mind with impressions. We then go to sleep and when we wake up we have found a solution to our problem.
Subconscious thought is also your status monitor.
Subconscious thought is also your status monitor. It is constantly telling you who you are, what status you have. Your level of happiness etc. Its a constant conversation going on your head.
Sit quietly and try not to think of anything. You will find that thoughts slowly rise to the surface of your conscious. These are your subconscious thoughts coming to your focus.
This self talk is a major contributor to why your life remains the way it is.
This self talk is a major contributor to why your life remains the way it is. In fact one of its aims is to keep you out of harms way by telling you constantly that evil lurks around every corner, and reminding you of your limitations.
The most important thing you need to know about your thoughts is that by default you believe them, and many times the only reason you believe them is because they are yours.
The world is a very complex place and we can’t continually analyze everything from first principles, so we tend to rely on our subconscious thoughts. These thoughts then are your mental model of the world.
Your world looks like your mental model to you. If you have a wrong mental model you will struggle with life and you won’t even know why.
Your world looks like your mental model to you. If you have a wrong mental model you will struggle with life and you won’t even know why.
So it’s important to question your model by trying out new things and having different varied experiences.
The second important thing about our mental model is that it is built out of our experiences. Many of us do not realize that we experience only a very small fraction of a fraction of all possible experiences. Yet we still try to make rules from the experiences and add them to our mental model. There is no way around this as we need to quickly setup rules of engagement to interact successfully with the world, but we should remember to revisit our rules periodically.
Thoughts usually occur as conversations. Its like someone talking to you.
Healthy self talk is a very important sign of good mental health.
Assignment: Take 5 minutes and sit quietly with a pen and paper. Don’t try to think of anything in particular but note down all the things that come to mind. This is a good snapshot of your subconscious mind. Are the thoughts positive or negative? Do they cause worry or joy.
It’s important to understand that these thoughts are triggering your sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system, either pushing you towards panic or keeping you rested. If you have a constant negative self-talk then your body is in a constant state of low intensity panic. This is very bad for your health.
In the next few chapters we continue with looking at the various processes that keep us where we are physically, mentally and emotionally.