The Growth Mindset Book Podcast: Mindset Mastery Chapter by Chapter

Subconscious Strategies for a Healthier Mindset

• Michael Fox • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Unlock the untapped potential of your subconscious mind and transform your life in ways you never imagined. Ever wondered how the thoughts you entertain daily could be shaping your reality, for better or worse? Join us as we unravel the secrets of "The Power of the Subconscious Mind," and discover how a shift in habitual thinking can lead to greater health, success, and prosperity. This episode promises to equip you with the tools to consciously plant positive beliefs, making the subconscious your staunchest ally in shaping a fulfilling life.

Venture into the compelling distinction between the conscious and subconscious realms, where choice meets automatic response. While your conscious mind reasons and decides, your subconscious takes cues and acts, often without your awareness. Learn how this dynamic plays out through fascinating examples, from self-hypnosis to everyday interactions. We'll explore how the subconscious mind, ever accepting of suggestions—be they true or false—literally crafts the world you experience. Whether it’s the theta state during sleep or the sensory cues from your environment, we'll guide you in mastering the art of impressing positive beliefs onto your subconscious.

Our exploration doesn’t stop there. We'll navigate the subtle yet profound impact of perception on your reality, illustrating how interpretations of social cues can feed into subconscious narratives. Through stories and insights, we emphasize a mindful approach to thought, encouraging you to end each mental journey on a positive note. By cultivating mindfulness and building constructive thought habits, you can shift your mental landscape toward a more positive and empowering future. Join us, and start the journey to mastering the incredible power of your mind.

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Speaker 1:

We're back with the fifth episode of the podcast. The good news is it only took us four 45-minute podcasts to get through the first chapter, and there's a reason and purpose. We're taking that time to dive in and really explain all the pieces of the chapter because we really wanna get it. We really wanna practice applying it and doing it so that we get better and stronger Again. What we tend to do often is read quickly through a chapter, say it's an amazing book, and then don't do anything with it. And in this podcast and in this format we're not doing that and we're repeating things over and over again so that we can reprogram our subconscious mind. So let's jump in. We're going to start chapter two of the power of the subconscious mind. So how your own mind works. You have a mind and you should learn how to use it. There are two levels of your mind the conscious, or rational level, and the subconscious or irrational level. You think with your conscious and whatever you habitually think sinks down into your subconscious mind, which creates according to the nature of your thoughts. So let's pause for a second and look at this Again. There's two levels of our mind. There's the conscious mind. That's where we do our thinking. And there's the subconscious mind, which doesn't think at all. It takes whatever we give it and says your wish is my command. So again, whatever we're experiencing often in our life, whether it's good things or bad things, good emotions or bad emotions, it's all because of the way we're thinking, and if we just change our thoughts, we will literally change our life.

Speaker 1:

Let's go back to the book. Your subconscious mind is the seat of your emotions and is your creative mind. If you think good, good will follow. If you think evil, evil will follow. This is the way that your mind works. The main point to remember is, once the subconscious mind accepts an idea, it begins to execute it. It begins to execute it. Let's pause there for a second. As soon as you start to have thoughts, you're immediately starting to get your subconscious mind to go to work.

Speaker 1:

However and this is really important if we go to the opposite of what we want, then our mind goes to working on that. So let's use it in an example. I say I really want to grow my business. My subconscious mind will begin to work and it will begin to present ideas, thoughts, things will come into my life, people will come into my life. Ideas, thoughts, things will come into my life, people will come into my life. However, if I do the opposite and then start to think well, I don't know, I've tried this kind of thing before and it doesn't really work then what immediately happens is the subconscious stops doing what it was doing, which was giving us the things we need to get what we want.

Speaker 1:

But now, instead, because we're going to the negative, we're tricking our subconscious mind yet again, and whatever good had started to grow, it starts to move backwards. So think of it like if you planted a seed in the ground and you start to water it and it's getting ready to sprout. It's getting ready to grow, except what you do is you dig in and you pull up the seed. When you start thinking those negative thoughts after you planted the positive seeds, you're doing exactly that You're digging into the dirt and pulling the seed up. So what we want to practice is, as soon as our mind goes to that negative, we want to just flip right over to the positive. Always end with the positive, never with the negative, because whatever you end with is what your subconscious mind is going to be working on. So we always want to end on a positive on, so we always want to end on a positive.

Speaker 1:

Let's go back to the book. It is an interesting and subtle truth that the law of the subconscious mind works for good and bad ideas alike. This law, when applied in a negative way, is the cause of failure, frustration and unhappiness. However, when your habitual thinking is harmonious and constructive, you experience perfect health, success and prosperity. Let's talk about this for one second. It says, however, when your habitual thinking is harmonious and constructive, you experience perfect health, success and prosperity. There's key words that are being used habitual thinking.

Speaker 1:

Whether you're thinking negative consistently or positive consistently, it has become a habit. And the only way that a habit is formed is by practicing doing something over and over and over again, and then it becomes a habit. So, again, if you're doing this in a way that's not working for you and you're getting results that you don't want, no problem, just start building a habit right now. Of every time I go to the negative, I'm going to flip and go to the positive Again. We're going to repeat this over and over. When you're in the negative, flip to the positive. When you're in the negative, flip to the positive. And you're in the negative, flip to the positive and you'll start to build a habit. It's not going to happen right away, necessarily, because you've been doing it a different way for a very long time. So the practice is what makes us get what we want. So we're going to build a new habit by just doing one step at a time. All right, let's go back to the book. Habit by just doing one step at a time. All right, let's go back to the book.

Speaker 1:

Peace of mind and a healthy body are inevitable. When you begin to think and feel in the right way, whatever you claim mentally and feel is true, your subconscious will accept and bring forth into your experience. Let's pause here for a second Peace of mind. You want to feel good. You're feeling stressed out at work. You're feeling stressed out at home. There's only one thing that's causing the stress and it is the way that you're thinking. In that and previous moments prior to that, that's the only thing that can make you feel bad is the way that you're thinking about any situation. So again, we just pay attention to how we're feeling and when we're feeling in a way that we don't want to feel, just start saying things in a different way, thinking things in a positive way. Whatever you claim mentally and feel is true in a positive way, whatever you claim mentally and feel is true, your subconscious mind will accept and bring forth into your experience. This is such a powerful statement. Our subconscious is there saying, hey, just give to me what it is that you want and I'll give it back to you. We forget we have this power, we get into a habit of negative thinking and ultimately start getting the things that we don't want. So the power is right within us and we're going to keep practicing.

Speaker 1:

Let's go back to the book. The only thing necessary for you to do is to get your subconscious mind to accept your idea, and the law of your own subconscious mind will bring forth the health, peace and position you desire. So if you think about it this way, it's like going to work and you have a job, and your job is to train your subconscious mind. If you had an employee that you needed to train, you would go over something with that employee until they got it. Well, we need to train our subconscious mind, and the way that we train it is real easy. We just place thoughts and ideas of what we want and we repeat it out loud or repeat it to ourselves, and that's all we have to do. We plant that into the subconscious mind and then the subconscious mind goes to work and it will bring forth health, peace or the position or anything else that you desire. Belief is key. Belief comes from repeating a thought over and over again. So if you don't believe it now, just keep repeating it, period. Okay, back to the book. You give the command or decree and your subconscious will faithfully reproduce the idea impressed upon it. The law of your mind is this you will get a reaction or response from your subconscious mind according to the nature of your thought or idea that you hold in your conscious mind. It's repeating the same thing over and over because it's trying to get us to see that this is our job. Our job is to train our subconscious mind by training it with the thoughts that we want. And even when those negative thoughts come up, fine, just let it go and then go to the positive thought. All right, let's go back to the book.

Speaker 1:

Psychologists and psychiatrists point out when thoughts are conveyed to your subconscious mind, impressions are made in the brain cells. As soon as your subconscious accepts any idea, it proceeds to put it into effect immediately. It works by association of ideas and uses every bit of knowledge that you have gathered in your lifetime to bring about its purpose. It draws on the infinite power, energy and wisdom within you. I want to pause right here on this line that's highlighted the subconscious draws on infinite power, energy and wisdom within you. Energy and wisdom within you. We've said it before, but remember there's some force or some energy that's working miraculously inside of us to keep us functioning. Your heart's beating because of that power that's already within you. You're breathing because of that power that's in you. It draws on the infinite power, energy and wisdom within you. It's already inside of you. You already are amazing. If you ever say you're not powerful, you're going against this incredibleness that already exists. You're living proof because you're able to think about this. You can think to yourself I want to stand up and within a second, all these muscles, your legs, go into motion on whatever we plant in our mind. So if I plant that I want to get up, my mind will go into action. My subconscious knows exactly what it needs to do and it starts to put everything into motion. So we're using that power that's in us.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's go back to the book. It lines up all the laws of nature to get its way. Sometimes it seems to bring an immediate solution to your difficulties, but at other times it may take days, weeks or longer. Its ways are past finding out. We may start planting seeds in our mind and they may not come to us immediately. In fact it could take months. It could potentially take years.

Speaker 1:

But if we want it to happen we've got to keep planting the seeds over and over the bamboo tree. You plant the seeds, you water it and literally nothing. You keep watering it and I can't remember how long it takes, but I think it's a couple of two to three years. And then all of a sudden it sprouts through and it grows like nine feet in a very short period of time. But if you're looking at the ground, you would say to yourself this isn't working, nothing's happening. There's never going to be a bamboo that sprouts through. But it does it in its own time and everything's programmed in its own time. I remember my mentor once saying that everything that we plant has its own timing. For example, if you take an orange seed and you plant it in the ground, there's a specific amount of days in that seed that it knows, until it's actually going to be able to produce the fruit that you want as well as having a baby. The sperm goes in and it connects with the egg and we know then that within nine months, we're going to have a baby, because everything's programmed in a specific way by a much higher force, a much higher intelligence, and this is part of that power that already exists within us, and so we want to keep tapping into this incredible power that already exists within us.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's go back to the book. Conscious and subconscious terms differentiated. You must remember that these are not two minds. They are merely two spears of activity within one mind. Your conscious mind is the reasoning mind, the thinking mind. It is the phase of mind which chooses. So let's pause for a second and really get clear on this. The conscious mind is where we have choice. I can choose to think anything I want. I can choose to do anything that I want. I have a choice. I can exercise that choice. Human beings have that power. Animals don't. Animals are instinctual. They do what their instincts tell them to do. We, as people, have a choice, and it's in our conscious mind, our reasoning mind, that gives us this power to choose.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's go back to the book. For example, you choose your books, your home, your life partner. You make all the decisions with your conscious mind. On the other hand, without any conscious choice on your part, your heart is kept functioning automatically and the process of digestion, circulation and breathing are carried on by your subconscious mind through processes independent of your conscious control. So let's talk about that for one second. We don't have to consciously do anything when we're eating food. We start eating food and our digestive system goes into process. We start to salivate, it starts to help us chew the food more easily, and then it breaks it down and then it goes into our stomach and then into our intestinal tract. It has a process and everything is happening without you choosing. You're not thinking about the digestive process. It's just happening behind the scenes, unless, of course, you eat something that's not good and then you start having symptoms from that. But again, barring that, whatever you eat, that's all happening behind the scenes from this power that is part of your subconscious mind and again, you don't have control over that. It just does it. So we want to consistently tap into that power. All right, let's go back to the book.

Speaker 1:

Your subconscious mind accepts what is impressed upon it or what you consciously believe. I want to break down this sentence because this is really important. Your subconscious mind accepts whatever is impressed upon it. So you can think about something and start thinking about it over and over and you're impressing it. You can say something out loud and you can start impressing it upon your subconscious mind. However, it upon your subconscious mind, however, it's very important here. It says what is impressed upon it or what you consciously believe. So we have habitual ways of thinking that are our beliefs, and those beliefs will take over. Let me give you an example. If I have a belief that I'm not good enough because I chose to think that over and over, or someone else told me that over and over, then that belief is running the show. At this point, however, I can change that belief, and when I change this belief I'm not good enough. By consistently repeating over and over again that I am powerful, I am strong, I can get whatever I want, I'm going to create a new belief, and then this new belief will start to control a lot of other things that are going on subconsciously. So by planting and creating these new beliefs, we're actually changing our destiny as it is moving forward.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's go back to the book. It does not reason things out like your conscious mind. It does not argue with you controversially. Your subconscious mind is like soil which accepts any kind of seed, good or bad. Your thoughts are active and might be likened unto seeds. Negative and destructive thoughts continue to work negatively in your subconscious mind and in due time will come forth into outer experience which corresponds with them. This is just saying, like we've said a number of times up to this point, whatever we choose to plant in the subconscious mind, we will see it in our outside world consistently. Change your thoughts, change your life. Back to the book. Remember your subconscious mind does not engage in proving whether your thoughts are good or bad, true or false, but it responds according to the nature of your thoughts and suggestions.

Speaker 1:

This point is extremely important. Why? Because a lot of the beliefs that we have come from other people. Our school teacher may have said to us when we were younger you're just not really that great in math. Some people are stronger, you're not so strong in math, and if they said that to us enough, it would have been accepted as true. And that problem with. That is, we didn't consciously choose to put that there yet those beliefs that are inside of our subconscious mind. Unless we start to weed the garden, weed the beliefs out, then they're going to be in control as we move forward.

Speaker 1:

So let's go back to the book. For example, if you consciously assume something is true, even though it may be false, your subconscious mind will accept it as true and proceed to bring about results which must necessarily follow because you consciously assumed it to be true. Let's discuss that for a second. If you think and have these beliefs and there are some really key beliefs I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not capable. Those beliefs, if we believe them to be true and we don't start planting the positive seeds that are the opposite of that, they're going to control our outside world, they're going to control what we experience. We don't have to do anything. They're already impregnated in the subconscious mind, they already live there. However, we can change that by changing the new programming, by planting different seeds. Does that make sense? Okay, let's go back to the book.

Speaker 1:

Experiments by Psychologists. Innumerable experiments by psychologists, innumerable experiments by psychologists and others on persons in the hypnotic state have shown that the subconscious mind is incapable of making selections and comparisons, which are necessary for a reasoning process. They have shown repeatedly that your subconscious mind will accept any suggestions, however false. Having once accepted any suggestion, it responds according to the nature of the suggestion. Given so quick commentary on this, whatever we say over and over will be believed, and that will be our experience. Back to the book, to illustrate the amenability of your subconscious mind's suggestion.

Speaker 1:

If a practiced hypnotist suggests to one of his subjects that he is Napoleon or even a cat or dog, he will act out the part with inimitable accuracy. His personality becomes changed. For the time being, he believes himself to be whatever the operator tells him he is. Let's talk about this for a second. We've all seen people get hypnotized before. You can always tell when someone's pretending that they're hypnotized versus the person that's actually hypnotized. You can see clearly that the person that's hypnotized is really not in control. There is a subconscious suggestion that was provided to it. They're in a state of theta where they're almost in a dreamlike state, but their subconscious is wide open and whatever is given to the subconscious will then go and act accordingly.

Speaker 1:

If you tell a subject that's under hypnosis that they're a dog and to act like a dog. They will get down on all fours, walk around barking with their tongue out and panting, because they're not even in control at that point. Their subconscious mind is in control. So we have absolute proof that this concept is real, because we know that when someone is hypnotized and they're given specific instructions, they act out those instructions without thinking about it. They could be on a stage of a thousand people and have no real concept that they're in front of those people and they're just acting out and doing whatever it is that they're told. If they're told they're freezing cold, they start shivering. If they're told they're boiling hot, they start sweating. Their mind doesn't understand. It's given instructions and those instructions go to work. That's the power of our subconscious mind. So again, that power exists within us. So rather than getting hypnotized by someone else, we can hypnotize ourself. How do we do that? We give this programming to ourselves at times of the day, especially when you first wake up in the morning and when you're just about to go to sleep. You're in this state of theta, which is your subconscious mind is wide open. So if we give programming to our mind at that point, it starts to act on the instructions that we just gave it.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's go back to the book. A skilled hypnotist may suggest to one of his students, in the hypnotic state, that his back itches, to another that his nose is bleeding, and to another that he is a marble statue, to another that he is freezing in temperatures below zero. Each one will follow out the line of his particular suggestion, totally oblivious to all of his surroundings which do not pertain to that idea. These simple illustrations portray clearly the difference between your conscious reasoning mind and your subconscious mind, which is impersonal, non-selective and accept as true whatever your conscious mind believes to be true. Therefore, the importance of selecting thoughts, ideas and premises which bless, heal, inspire and fill your soul. Hence the importance of selecting thoughts, ideas and premises which bless, heal, inspire and fill your soul with joy. So just some commentary on that.

Speaker 1:

We are essentially the hypnotist, because whatever we're instructing our subconscious mind to do on a consistent basis is going to be what we're going to get on a consistent basis. It's going to be what we experience on a consistent basis. So we are the hypnotist. We don't have to go see one and have them hypnotize us. We have to hypnotize ourselves. And the way that we do that is by using our conscious mind and choosing to have specific thoughts that we're planting in the subconscious mind. All right, let's continue.

Speaker 1:

In the book, the term objective and subjective mind clarified. Your conscious mind is sometimes referred to as your objective mind because it deals with outward objects. The objective mind takes cognizance of the objective world. Its media of observation are your five physical senses. All right, let's pause here. This is super important. Our conscious mind, the thoughts that we think on a consistent basis, are influenced by one thing and that is our senses. So whatever we see, hear, smell, taste and touch is going to influence our conscious mind.

Speaker 1:

Example I'm out walking down the street. Someone bumps into me and hits my body pretty hard. That's going to immediately influence my thoughts and potentially could go to a very negative thinking immediately influenced my thoughts and potentially could go to a very negative thinking, so much so that it could cause me to react in a negative way, either yelling, screaming or maybe even pushing that person back. That would never have happened if it didn't come through our five senses. So my senses were impacted. I saw someone push me, I felt them push me. I may have heard them do some kind of sound when they hit me. So it was coming in through multiple senses and therefore triggered immediately all kinds of thoughts. Our senses are impacted consistently.

Speaker 1:

Think of some things in your life that may have been triggered by an outside event. Example you take one person and he's terrified of dogs. And then another person loves dogs, gets on the floor, starts rolling around and playing with them. Why is the one person so scared? Because an outside event the dog came up to him at one point, started barking, jumped on him, scratched him and maybe even attacked him. That moment his senses were impacted and his conscious mind went into fear at a very high level. And then the thoughts that raised through his mind were I got to get out of here. Oh my God, I'm scared to death. Terrifying, worried, doubt and fearful thoughts started to go through his mind. They never would have occurred had that outside force that came in through his senses see, hear, smell, taste and touch never would have occurred. He wouldn't have had the fear of dogs. But ultimately he was attacked and therefore his conscious mind started to have all these negative thoughts. Now, if we don't do something to reprogram those thoughts, like, for example, maybe it was just one bad dog, this was just a dog. How many dogs are out there that are kind and loving and caring and would never hurt me? We got to start reprogramming, because if we don't reprogram, then what's going to happen is the subconscious has a program which says anytime we see a dog, especially one that looks like this, we need to go into fight or flight mode and be extremely scared, and then have worry, doubt and fear hit us through these negative thoughts that are in our mind. Is this making sense? Are you getting this? Send us feedback with your questions, if you have questions, and I'll make sure to weave them into these discussions so that you will get your answers to your questions.

Speaker 1:

Back to the book. Your objective mind is your guide and director, your contact with your environment. You gain knowledge through your five senses. Your objective mind, your conscious mind mind, your conscious mind, learns through observation, experience and education. Let's pause there for some commentary. Your conscious mind learns through using our senses. We're observing by looking and listening and sensing. Through our senses. It's different things that we experience. We experience the dog attacking us and this is how our mind learns.

Speaker 1:

Back to the book. As previously pointed out, the greatest function of the objective mind is that of reasoning. It's our ability to think. Suppose you are one of the thousands of tourists who come to Los Angeles annually, you would come to the conclusion it is a beautiful city, based upon your observation of the parks, pretty gardens, majestic buildings and lovely homes. This is the working of your objective mind. Your subconscious mind is oftentimes referred to as the subjective mind. Your subjective mind takes cognizance of its environment by means independent of the five senses. The subjective mind perceives by intuition. Let's have a little commentary on this and then we're going to wrap it up for this week.

Speaker 1:

This is really important. Our conscious mind is learning by the five senses, but our subconscious mind perceives things by intuition. And intuition comes from divine intelligence, a higher power, higher being. It comes from that power that's running everything inside of our body. You ever get an intuitive thought where you're like I know this is the right thing to do and it always is the right thing to do, because there's not discussion in your conscious mind about that feeling. That comes from your intuition. It's a knowing that this is the right thing. We know that intuition isn't occurring when we're having a discussion in our mind. That's in our conscious mind. Intuition comes from our subconscious mind and that's a feeling. It's a knowing, just like the feeling or knowing of taking care of the inner workings of our systems in our body. This is a knowing of what we need to do. So we want to start practicing paying attention to our mind when it's quiet, to this intuitive feeling that comes up, that knowing. And when that knowing comes up and it's not followed by a bunch of chatter in our mind, it's just a knowing and a feeling. The key is to act on that immediately, because it's always the right thing for us to do. Again, it's a feeling and knowing. It's not a discussion in our mind, and that's how we can differentiate between the two.

Speaker 1:

All right, we're going to pause here. Next week we'll pick back up. Let us know if you have any questions at all. We appreciate you being here. We appreciate you being a part of this. Please share this with other people. If you're getting value and you're listening and this is the fifth podcast the best thing that you could do is share this with other people. If you're getting value and you're listening and this is the fifth podcast the best thing that you could do is share this with someone else, because if you're getting value. They're going to get value and the key is we want to consistently spread the light to others. We want to spread this information to others so that they'll realize they have this power inside of them. Okay, I'll see you next week. Have an amazing week Practice noticing how you're using your five senses and how, when you just see something that will directly impact your thoughts that go in your head, you could look at a person and if they have a specific look on their face, you're going to start having thoughts in your mind and again, we can control that by noticing what's happening and questioning it.

Speaker 1:

So, for example, with that person and we see that look on their face, you say they may have some struggle going on in their mind. This probably has nothing to do with me, but if I have the habit of thinking there's that look on his face, he's pissed, he's angry, he's thinking, do with me. But if I have the habit of thinking there's that look on his face, he's pissed, he's angry, he's thinking something about me, he must be mad at me. Whatever conscious thoughts go in our mind, that's going to control what we're planting in our subconscious and, ultimately, what our experience will be. Got it Good. See you next week. Practice, practice, practice. That's how you get better.

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Michael Fox

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