Happiness is all about Self-care!

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What Is your conscious mind vs. your subconscious mind?

Your conscious mind is all the things you are currently aware of, including things that you know about yourself and your surroundings. It is your thinking or objective mind that lives within the realms of the five senses: what you are feeling, doing, experiencing, touching, and seeing is subjective and unique to you. It is only capable of short-term memory and has a limited capacity. When you dream about the future or get nostalgic thinking of the past (memories that are banked in your subconscious mind), it is the conscious mind at work.

It is easy to control your conscious mind because you are able to use it to make choices.

Your subconscious mind is constantly focused on the present moment and always working on your background, like an autopilot shaping your life. You can compare it to giant memory bank, it stores your beliefs, values, determines your memories and monitors the information all around you. Deciding what to send to the conscious mind and what to store for later.

It influences 95% of your behaviour, control how you walk, sit, breathe, act, talk, and so on.

It is said that your subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind - The human brain can process 11million bits of information every second. However our conscious mind can handle only 40 to 50 bits of information per second.

So basically, it is your subconscious mind that is running your life!

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says 'Morning boys. How's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What the hell is water?'

The novelist David Foster Wallace told this story in his 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College. His point was that there are some things that are so familiar, so integral to one's perception of the world, that we don't notice them any more. They melt into our experience, permeate our senses, and become part of what we might call the background conditions of life.

By telling you this little story, my point is for you to understand that your subconscious is like the water for the fish. If you cannot perceive the mind that shapes you, you are impotent to have control of it.

The key is using your consciousness to positively influence your subconscious thoughts. Learning how to use the two together is a powerful tool.

"It is psychological law that whatever we desire to accomplish we must impress upon the subjective or subconscious mind" Orison Swett Marden

Why is it necessary to understand your subconscious mind?

According to Napoleon Hill, the author of The law of Success, your life experiences are the result of the contents of your subconscious mind.

Every moment that you are awake, your five senses are taking a constant stream of information. You think and experience with your conscious mind, and, whatever is happening to you it sinks down into your subconscious mind, which creates according to the nature of your experiences and your thoughts about it. These experiences are stored as memories, like a computer stores data.

However your subconscious mind doesn’t evaluate whether something is true or not, it just assumes that everything you tell it from your conscious mind is true.

If you tell your subconscious mind that you’re worthless, or you can’t do it, it will believe you!

If you tell your subconscious mind that you are worthy and capable, it will believe you!

Your subconscious mind is the source of your real hopes and fears, and as you know we all wear a mask.

Sometimes even several masks…

According to Lise Bourbeau, author of the book “Heal your wounds and find your true self”, there are 5 major wounds that we face on a daily basis: the wounds of rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, and injustice. Most of these wounds come from our childhood and impact our way to live and act around others and with ourselves.

With these masks, we adopt behaviour that does not really correspond to who we are or what we would do in a normal situation.

I myself carried these masks for many years.

These wounds can explain things about you such as why you are shy, sensitive, lazy, addictive, have phobia, depressed- even the shape of your body..

By understanding and accepting that you are not your wounds, treating yourself kindly and with love and compassion can help you reorient how you shape up in connection with yourself and others, and you can become more motivated, confident, successful, cheerful, optimistic, fearless..

"Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become reality" Earl Nightingale

Benefits of Self-care and Mindfulness:

Self-care is the little things you do to look after your own well-being. We lead increasingly busy lives and it can be easy to forget to put yourself first, especially if you have multiple responsibilities and other people to care for. However looking after yourself will make you feel better, and the better you feel, the better you will be in all areas of your life from work to relationships. Having an effective Self-care routine has been shown to have a number of important health benefits.

Some of these include:

- Improve your physical health, happiness and relationship

- Increase your energy, your motivation and your life expectancy 

- Reduce risk of burnout, anxiety, depression, heart disease, stroke and cancer

- Boost your life quality, your love and your self-esteem

The important thing with Self-care is not what it looks like, but what is does for you and how it makes you feel.

When it comes to it, it's not one thing, it's your thing!

"Love yourself enough to set boundaries.

Your time and energy are precious.

You get to choose how you use it.

You teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won't accept" Anna Taylor

Mindfulness is a series of Self-care techniques that enable you to take care of yourself in the midst of your everyday life. The aim is about focusing on the magic of the present moment and improving your wellbeing. An important part of it is being able to reconnect to your body and the sensations of your experiences, and paying more attention to your thoughts and your feelings. 

And as we rush through our lives, mindfulness encourages us to stop constantly striving for something new or better and to embrace acceptance and gratitude. Rather than fretting about the past or worrying about the future, the aim is to experience life as it unfolds moment by moment.

When you become more aware of the present moment you begin to reflect on things that you have been taking for granted, this allows you to tap into the joy and wonder in your life. You will be able to listen easily to the wisdom of your hearts.

Activities can be free and take many forms, such as taking a break, breathing exercises, meditating, getting enough sleep, reading a book, positive Self-talk and affirmation, writing a journal, going for a walk, gratitude, challenging yourself, setting boundaries when necessary, grounding yourself and many more..

Today some people see Self-care as a luxury rather than a priority. However, as you can be aware now that your subconscious mind is shaping your life, is present-based and controls 95% of your emotions and behaviour, you understand the importance to take time for yourself - use your subconscious mind as your best ally to improve your life.

The best way to find out what you want in life is to try a lot of things”  Oprah winfrey