not only store information but can also access it. Some people believe that, through hypnosis, we can retrieve information from that time – that we can go back to our earliest experiences before and after birth and recall events. Even though we never experienced this time consciously, it was being recorded.
This component of the brain can store unlimited amounts of information.
Component B consists of our images of who we are and what we are. These are locked into our subconscious mind. They aren’t easily accessible, and for good reason! If we were affected and changed by anything anyone ever told us about ourselves, life would be quite a roller-coaster ride for us. That’s why these images are under lock and key.
Here’s an example to help you understand this concept better. You see yourself as a healthy person with a healthy heart. Because this is locked into your subconscious mind, if you walk down the street and somebody tells you you’re sick, it’s not going to affect you. You know you’re healthy.
Part of your job in achieving the life you desire is to make some changes to this part of your mind. But for now it suffices for you to know that this is part of your subconscious mind.
Part 3 – Your Conscious Mind
Your conscious mind is where you experience the thoughts you’re aware of. The conscious mind is very limited! For example, scientists claim that it can hold only seven to nine bits of information at a time.
But it also serves a very important function. It is the doorway to the subconscious mind. Anything that your senses experience passes through your conscious mind on the way to your subconscious mind.
Part 4 – Your Critical Filter
If we experience something through our senses, why is it that we don’t process everything consciously? Why are we not affected by everything we experience? The answer lies in the part of the brain called the critical filter, which is between your conscious mind and subconscious mind. It decides:
• which experiences will go in to the component of the subconscious mind that is just concerned with memory (it can be accessed at a later time without our even being aware that it was stored there), and
• which experiences in our conscious mind will reinforce those images we have of ourselves.
Going back to the example of your beliefs about your health, let’s suppose we’re friends and I tell you that your heart is weak. My statement would likely have no effect on you. It would go through your conscious mind and be funneled into the memory side of your subconscious mind. You’re going to remember that I said it, but it’s not going to affect the picture you have of yourself.
What would happen, though, if a cardiologist in a white coat made this statement to you? The information would go into the component of your subconscious mind that maintains the image of who you are, and it would affect that image. In no time at all you would see yourself as a person with a weak heart.
BYPASS THE CRITICAL FILTER
Let’s understand how the critical filter works so you can see that you can sidestep it and create the changes you desire.
The critical filter refutes information based on old knowledge.
Children don’t yet have a lot of information, so they have a very slight critical filter. They are easily affected by their parents’ statements of what is right or wrong. Their impressionability can work for good or ill.
When parents tell children something about themselves – good or bad – they will accept it, because they don’t have enough information to refute it. Children borrow their parents’ critical filter in order to make judgment calls.
As children mature, their own critical filter becomes stronger and stronger. But certain things will still bypass it, such as information from an authority, as in my example above. That’s one of the rules of the critical filter – that you don’t refute an authority.
Let’s say you have developed some negative views of yourself, of the world, or of certain situations, views that are now on the inside, having gotten past the critical filter. You now associate certain people, situations, yourself, and your life with these negative views. The connections between feelings and events are locked in and protected by your subconscious mind, on the other side of your critical filter, and your life runs accordingly.
By reading this book, you may have decided that it’s time to go in and change these negative feelings. Your challenge is going to be to bypass the critical filter to see the changes that are needed and to make them.
Taking Control of Your Imagination
Again, the secret lies in your imagination.
The reason is simple. If you imagine something, and you can identify with it, you thereby utilize your conscious mind. To add the feelings you want to experience, you access the emotions that are locked away in your subconscious mind.
By attaching the feelings that you choose to attach, you can circumvent the critical filter. Over time, you can get good at this. You can start to slowly but surely change associations in your mind and give yourself feelings of calmness, security, safety, or confidence. Then you can begin to associate these feelings with various events and situations in your life as you see fit.
MAKE IT REAL
How Would You Like Your Life to Look?
Let’s bring this discussion down to the practical level. As just discussed, the first part of creating emotional change is being able to imagine your desired outcome. If you can imagine something, you can slowly but surely begin to create the feelings to go with it. Attaching the feelings you want to attach requires you to bypass the critical filter. This is what will enable you to change the associations and the feelings connected in your subconscious mind. And by changing them, you change the way you feel and experience the world.
EXERCISE
Imagining How You Would Like Your Life to Look
List ten vivid images of situations you want to experience in which all your limitations have disappeared. As you envision a situation, also imagine the new, more positive feelings you want to associate with this new reality. Be clear on the emotions associated with each one. For example:
I get up in the morning (situation)
and
I feel strong and confident (emotions).
All ten should be written and expressed in this way.
To help you get started, consider the following situations that many people say they would like to change.
• I speak in public and I feel…
• I am sitting at my desk and I feel…
• I talk to prospects and I feel…
• I get up in the morning and I feel…
• I am doing a sales presentation and I feel…
The
