Notice the difference between your unconscious and conscious thinking

Edwin Selij
June 16, 2014

The subconscious part in us is big, very big and much bigger than you think. Research shows that the unconscious part in us determines practically everything and our conscious is very small. To give you an example of unconscious and conscious you can do the following exercise

Unconscious and conscious thinking

 

How much is 5 x 3?

And 6 x 2?

And 4 + 5?

And 347 x 589?

Well?

Je merkt dat je bij de eerste 3 sommen nauwelijks nadenkt. Je weet het gewoon (hoop ik ;-)). With the latter, something interesting happens wat Daniel Kahneman beschrijft in zijn boek 'Thinking fast and slow' als systeem 1 en systeem 2 denken. Je zou kunnen zeggen onbewust en bewust denken of snel en langzaam denken.

When you are in resting mode your brain is already using 20% of your total energy supply. And when you consider that that brain is only about 2% of your total weight (at a "normal" weight), you can figure out what it consumes when put to work.

For example, did you know that during a chess tournament, the average participant loses 4 to 5 pounds? The thought process that needs to happen takes a tremendous amount of energy and that is drawn away from the body. This is why system 1 (your unconscious) does the major work. Only when there is no other way is system 2 switched on as in the last sum.

And now did you make that last sum or did you drop out... Most people drop out and so that's what it feels like to do something consciously. Now when you think about what all you did consciously today it won't be much. Consciously doing something feels like making the last sum in fact and you don't want to feel that very often.

So most of it goes through system 1, or your unconscious, but mistakes creep in there as you can imagine. Because look closely at this video below.

Now you saw that video and how was it with you? It's about 50-50, but that's interesting of course. Our mind only deals with things we know and (re)know, not with things we know but don't (re)know. So you are far from seeing everything around you that you could see.

System 1 thinks for you...

Because system 1, your unconscious, is so important and often makes a decision without even really thinking about it, it is helpful to connect with it. Now you anticipate situations directly from system 1. You immediately feel something with that, maybe you make whole scenarios of what might happen, and so on. Typical case of system 1 thinking or unconscious thinking.

Now that's not a bad thing because it saves energy, as you've noticed, but when you have a problem it also takes energy, right? The interesting thing is that it doesn't matter to your unconscious, because it doesn't take energy to think about it, and that's the crux of the matter. You want everything to be fully automatic so that you can go through life energy-efficiently and stay here as long as possible. That is the (biological) goal.

But yes if you have a few energy-consuming unconscious automatic programs running then of course it doesn't get anywhere. That is why it is good to build a contact with your unconscious part and that can be done through a great way, the Swan.

How to do The Swan aka IMR+

The Swan is a technique developed by Bob Burns, who is coming to the Netherlands on October 5 to teach you the finer points of the technique. Text is not extensive enough for that and not even video so that is why he will give a workshop at Hypnosis Institu

ut Netherlands. You can still sign up for that advantageously here.

What you do is the following:

  • You sit in a quiet place and bend your arm while supporting yourself with your elbow on the back of the chair.
  • Your hand relaxes completely and totally
  • Then you ask your unconscious if it feels like making contact, and if it wants to, whether it would like to move one of the fingers on the (relaxed) hand
  • You wait for a signal and then ask him to move all the fingers
  • Then you ask him to turn the hand to your face
  • When that happens, you have contact and can start agreeing things with your unconscious, asking him to help you solve problems, and so on.

This technique is super cool and I use it very often in my own practice. You can learn it too if you want to in order to get a deep contact with yourself. When you don't have that you keep running into things that wouldn't be necessary when you do have that contact with yourself.

It is a technique that you can use very easily with yourself and you will benefit from it for the rest of your life. That connection you will experience and the freedom that will result are indescribable.

Good luck and let me know how it went. And by the way, the result of the sum is 204383.