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Did you know that the average person is aware of around 700 individual thoughts per day? These are actual conscious things that come into our mind and are therefore memorable. That’s quite a number.
But what if I told you that it was only around 1% of the actual number of thoughts that pass through our mind at a subconscious level? That’s right – our minds process an average of between 60,000 and 80,000 thoughts per day – we just aren’t aware of them.
One way of investigating this is to think about when you last bought a new car (or anything new). Before you decided to buy a Mini, you barely saw them on the road. Now you’ve made your mind up all you see are Mini’s everywhere! That’s because your subconscious mind has started to alert you of these thoughts as they are now relevant.
So why the focus on our thoughts?
Well, we can also use this knowledge of how our minds work to help us overcome personal barriers. That’s because our habits – the thoughts and sequences we go through without even knowing – often end up in our subconscious and, unfortunately, they are often negative.
Our mind is perhaps too clever at choosing what reaches our conscious thoughts. Our barriers become challenges to our personal development because we automatically believe everything the subconscious tells us is fact. We believe it and so we experience it.
Take sportspeople: they need to work hard to overcome anything which might hold them back if they are to achieve the outcomes they desire. They need to self-manage their minds. They probably spend as much time on this ‘mental training’ as they do on the physical stuff because even if you are at the top of your game, a poor mindset can be the difference between success and failure.
How to self-manage your mind
Since the pandemic hit us, and during the various lockdowns, I’ve been doing a lot of running. I’m enjoying it and I’m improving but my mindset towards it is often another matter. I’ll start a run and just a few seconds in, I’m already telling myself it’s too hard. I don’t feel like it today. It’s not the right weather/time/route.
Our brains can be very persuasive and this ‘saboteur thinking’ is often the cause of us failing to achieve what we set out to. There are a few things you can do to quiet the background narrative:
1. Remind yourself you have a choice in what to listen to. These words and phrases are a habit you’ve got in your subconscious and you need to decide whether it’s one that serves you. If not, it needs to be broken;
2. See the thoughts for what they are: our brains are designed to keep us alive. That’s the short, sharp total of it. It will literally avoid risk, even if that is the risk of getting a little puffed out on the morning run. This risk aversion needs calibrating by our conscious mind which can reason the positives as well as the risks of any action we take;
3. Chat to those you know and trust about negative thoughts. Just saying things out loud can help put them in perspective and balance the facts and myths racing in your head;
4. Finally, there’s a great online test you can take to understand what sort of ‘saboteurs’ you have in your head: it’s free and you can access it here.
Keep a track of the results of your test as my next blog will give you the background to the man behind it and his theory of Positive Intelligence.
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