Each person has three different “minds” with which to think, solve problems, make decisions, and achieve goals. Your ability to understand the differences among these three different minds and to maximize their potential to improve your life and business can transform and multiply your results.
The Conscious Mind
This is the awake, alert mind that you use whenever you are busy and active. The conscious mind is objective, analytical, rational, critical, and pragmatic. It takes in information from many sources, analyzes the information, compares the information with other information that has been stored in memory, and makes decisions. Your conscious mind is the place where new information enters your brain, like a doorway.
Daniel Kahneman, in his bestselling book Thinking, Fast and Slow, explains that you have two ways of using your conscious mind almost all the time.
The first way, “fast thinking,” is intuitive, automatic, instinctive, and immediate. This is the thinking style in your conscious mind that you use to navigate the rapidly unfolding events in your daily life activities. Fast thinking is very much like driving through traffic; you are making quick decisions, reacting and responding to changing events, as you move along. Most of your time during the day is spent in fast thinking. You utilize fast thinking in conversations, telephone calls, and in your replies to e-mails and responses to external demands. This is the normal and natural use of fast thinking, and it is quite appropriate in most cases.
THINK SLOWLY
The second form of thinking described by Kahneman is “slow thinking,” which is another function of your conscious mind. This type of thinking requires that you slow down the pace of thinking and give careful consideration to what is happening before you say anything or react in any way.
The proper use of slow thinking is when you are engaged in any activity or making any decision that has long-term ramifications or consequences. For example, strategic planning in a business forces all participants to engage in slow thinking. This is absolutely essential because the decisions made in strategic planning have long-term consequences and can largely determine the success or the failure of the enterprise.
One of Kahneman’s great insights is that people too often use fast thinking when slow thinking is required. Instead of taking a time-out and carefully considering all the facts and details of a major decision, many people use fast thinking and inadvertently make commitments and decisions that have long-term ramifications.
THINK ON PAPER
One of the best ways to switch from fast thinking to slow thinking when it is more appropriate is by asking questions and thinking on paper. The very act of asking questions forces you to slow down and think much better about the issue at hand. Writing things down on paper, especially when you are assembling all the facts or details concerning a situation, forces you to think slowly.
The rule is that you will always make better decisions if you take more time to consider them in advance. Whenever possible, you should “buy time” when making an important decision of any kind. Delay the decision for twenty-four hours, a weekend, a week, or even a month if you possibly can. Without exception, the more time that you take to think slowly about an important decision, the better-quality decision you will make when you finally choose to act.
Your Subconscious Mind
This is the great powerhouse or library part of your mind. It takes in and stores all experiences, knowledge, decisions, ideas, and thoughts that you have ever had. And it can access this memory almost instantaneously. Your subconscious mind records and recalls all data; it remembers everything and is capable of combining existing information into new forms and patterns to solve problems.
TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS
Peter Ouspensky, the metaphysician, said that your subconscious mind functions 8,000 times faster than your conscious mind. An example is the intuitive response we have to new people. Throughout your life you will meet different people; some of them you will instantly like and some you will instantly dislike. This complete assessment usually takes place in less than four seconds. Later, you will find that you had good reasons for liking or disliking, trusting or not trusting another person. But at the instant of meeting, it was as if your conscious mind took a snapshot of the person’s face, passed it on to your subconscious library, and instantly compared that face against every other facial experience that you have ever had to give you an instant feeling that was either positive or negative.
A major purpose of your subconscious mind is to make all your words and actions fit a pattern consistent with your self-concept, your basic belief system. Your subconscious mind controls your body language, your tone of voice, your levels of self-confidence, and your feelings of competence or ability in any situation.
FILL YOUR MIND WITH POSITIVE THOUGHTS
When you feed your conscious mind a steady stream of positive ideas, messages, and pictures, this information is passed directly to your subconscious mind and begins immediately to affect the way you think and feel about yourself.
Earlier, I mentioned how important it is for you to repeat the words “I’m a genius!” over and over. When you first say these words, or almost any other positive words to yourself, you may feel a little uncomfortable. But as you repeat the words over and over again, you wear down the resistance in your subconscious mind to this new self-concept. Eventually, your subconscious mind accepts your new command as your new reality. It then goes to work to make sure that everything you do, think, say, and feel is consistent with the new pattern that you have programmed into your subconscious mind.
The Superconscious Mind
This is the most powerful mind that you have. Almost all great accomplishments in human history have been accompanied by superconscious ideas and inspiration. Your ability to tap into and use your superconscious mind on a regular basis is your key to unlocking your creative genius in every part of your life.
The superconscious mind is sometimes called the collective unconscious. It is also called the universal subconscious mind or infinite intelligence. Carl Jung called it the “superconscious” and said that it was the source of all originality and creativity in the human universe.
The superconscious mind is the starting place of all creative breakthroughs, insights, intuition, inspiration, and imagination. This mind works continuously on a nonconscious level to solve problems, remove obstacles, and move you toward your goals.
When you clearly define, in writing, a goal that you want to achieve or a problem that you want to solve, this information is passed on automatically to your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind then transfers it to the supercomputer of your superconscious mind, which then goes to work to help you achieve your goal or solve your problem twenty-four hours a day until the answer comes.
Integrate Your Three Minds
Remember, you are a potential genius. You have 100 billion brain cells, each connected to as many as 20,000 other cells, giving you a thinking capacity beyond that of the biggest supercomputer that can ever be built.
You can use your mind for good or ill. By using your conscious mind to develop absolute clarity about what you want, and then by visualizing your goal and writing it down so that it is transferred to your subconscious mind, you use your thinking powers at a higher level. When you confidently and calmly expect and believe that your superconscious mind is working twenty-four hours a day to bring you exactly what you want at exactly the right time, you activate your superconscious powers and take complete control of your mind.
By using all three of your different minds in harmony, you unlock the genius that exists within you.
1. Take the time to think slowly and develop absolute clarity about what you want and what it will look like when you achieve your goal. Write it down clearly so that a child could understand what you really want.
2. Repeat positive words over and over again. “I’m a genius” is one suggestion, but use whatever phrase you respond to best.