11 Interesting Facts About Your Unconscious Mind

Our unconscious mind is a tool of magic which lies sheathed from our immediate conscious awareness. It acts like an undercover magician who is controlling our whole life without even knowing to us.

The subconscious mind is our bigger better half. It governs us. But still most of us are not even aware its power and capability.

Once we harness the power of the subconscious mind, we will be able to bring out tremendous changes in our lives.

All the successful people you know, are successful only because they had tapped into the power of our mind.

Below are some of the interesting facts you might like to get started with the power of our subconscious mind.

1. The subconscious mind is a huge storage system

Every one of your memory is stored inside our huge memory bank - the subconscious mind.

Right from your first birthday, everything is stored and is ready to be retrieved. It is a huge memory bank.

By the time a human reaches the age of 21, the amount of data received and stored is 100x the contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica—that’s 32 volumes—32,640 pages of 40 million on half a million topics!

2. Subconscious works on Autopilot

When we develop a new habit, new connections will be formed between neurons. When you keep on practicing a habit consistently it will be transferred from your conscious activities to unconscious activity.

Once, when the habit has entered into the unconscious state, you will be in an autopilot mode while performing that activity.

For example, you are so comfortable with walking that it has become an unconscious habit. Imagine, if you have to instruct each and every step consciously just to walk. You should be constantly thinking "I have to place the left leg first, now the right leg, I have to watch for any bumps or stones, now again the left leg". Ugh. Wouldn't it be a tedious task?

Thanks to the subconscious mind for making such activities very easy for us!

3. Subconscious mind keeps working when you are sleeping

The functions of our organs are totally controlled by our subconscious mind.

Importantly, our breathing is taken over by the subconscious. Even when we are sound asleep, our subconscious mind is awake just to keep us alive.

Isn't this incredible!?

4. The subconscious mind controls our feelings and emotions

How you feel is totally controlled by our unconscious mind.

Our unconscious mind saves us by triggering some feelings. For example, when you are in danger, the unconscious mind triggers the fight and flight emotion, it pushes the adrenaline, sending a message across your whole body indicating that you are in danger. It also pumps more oxygen at times of danger and increases sweat to cool you down.

Basically, the subconscious mind does everything to save you.

5. The Subconscious mind does not process negative information

This one thing really fascinates me. Subconscious mind does not know the difference between positive and negative.

Suppose, if you say "I am not going to be late from tomorrow", then it will consider something like "I am going to be late from tomorrow". That is why itis always important to observe what you are talking about and use the correct words.

Another most confusing thing about this is, the question "If the unconscious mind cannot process the negatives, then if I say 'I cannot do it', will it consider it as 'I can do it'?". The answer is, subconscious mind also associates your words with feelings, suppose you have a negative feeling and you are expecting the subconscious to decode it as positive then it is not going to happen. The way it will decode is, "I can do the process of not doing it".

6. The Unconscious mind does not understand logic

All your logical reasoning will happen in your conscious mind. The Unconscious mind does not deal with it since it does not know to differentiate things.

7. Your core values and beliefs are stored in your subconscious mind

The core values and beliefs you hold are basically formed at the earlier stages of your life.

Everything you see and think is right is only your belief. For example, you may see one religion as correct because of your belief that it is, while another religion might not be congruent with your values and beliefs.

These values and beliefs are the ones that make us see and feel what we see and feel. You might feel affectionate towards a person because your values might be in alignment whereas you might hate someone because you believe that your values are not matching.

Just by going to the core of your subconscious mind and tuning some values and beliefs, your whole life might change.

8. Subconscious mind does not differentiate imagination and reality

Since your subconscious mind does not work based on logic, it cannot differentiate imagination and reality.

This is the reason you get sacred while seeing a horror movie. Your subconscious thinks that you are actually experiencing those events in the movie and trigger certain hormones and adrenaline.

9. Time passes quick when subconscious mind is dominant

Have you ever wondered why time always seems to fly whenever you're doing something interesting? It's because you don't keep looking at your watch every few minutes.

The subconscious mind doesn’t have a sharp sense of time you'd feel like you've hardly spent any time while doing a joyful activity.

The same happens when you fall asleep. When you go to sleep your conscious mind becomes dormant while your subconscious mind stays awake. That’s why time passes quickly while you are unconscious.

10. The subconscious mind controls 95% of your life

The best way to visualize how the conscious and subconscious works are like an iceberg—the conscious being the small part of the iceberg that appears above the water, and the subconscious being the huge part that rests below the water.

It controls what you see, hear, and feel. Your decisions are predominantly controlled by your subconscious mind. It has a hold on your behavior and habits. Basically, you are under the control of your subconscious mind.

11. Subconscious mind remembers information in chunks

There are so many things that the subconscious mind is processing.

Instead of remembering things in one string of information, the subconscious mind always groups the information in 7 chunks to make it easier. This process is known as "chunking".