You know who’s a lot smarter than you? You! Yes, you read that correctly. You are smarter than you give yourself credit for. In fact, we all are. The part of us that’s smarter than we realize is our subconscious mind. Today I’m not here to explain your subconscious mind to you, but it’s a topic important enough for a quick reminder. If you’ve never heard about the subconscious mind, I’d go read chapter 12 of Napoleon Hill’s famous book “Think and Grow Rich” if I were you, and I’d do it today.Think of the times you arrive home after work and you don’t recall a moment of the drive home. Clearly you drove home, but you didn’t think about it, it just happened. That’s how brilliant you are. Without even thinking, you can control a motor vehicle and navigate yourself all the way home at the end of a long day. Without even trying. That ability is so engrained in you that it takes no effort. How did that happen? Without getting scientific, it happened with reps. When you do something enough times, your mind just remembers how. It would be completely insane if at the end of the day we got into our cars and had to relearn how to drive. Similarly, it would be equally dumb of us to learn how to safely deadlift at the gym one day, only to completely forget how to not hurt our backs the next day. After enough reps, it will come naturally. In other cases, it only takes one rep for our mind to know enough about the event to trigger appropriate behaviour the next time. This happens with larger impact events, the kinds that leave a mark so to speak, whether good or bad.
The point is this. Our minds are trained by what we do repeatedly and by what happens. This is the case whether you like it or not. We get conditioned by certain things. Specific events trigger certain actions or feelings, based only on previous knowledge. Knowing this is like a secret weapon because we can train our own minds to think and feel certain things automatically without effort. It’s already happening, so why not give your tendencies a nudge towards behaviours that lead you closer to your goals? Don’t leave what your mind does to chance, train it. You can do this by first looking backward.
I’ve spoken about the importance of reflection many times before and the reason for this is simple. Without knowing what led you to where you are, where you go next is completely unpredictable. We all have our quirks and tendencies, but few of us actually recognize them in ourselves. If you know why you are the way you are, you’re more able to design who you want to be. You can leave it to chance and just see what happens, but I wouldn’t take that risk. Take note of what’s happening around you and see what you can discover. You may find that some things that don’t serve you well are happening automatically and without intention. Maybe you can swing it into something that happens automatically and with intention. A good book to read through for more application is “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. Like I said, your brain has a brilliant ability to do things for you without any effort. That ability is there to serve us, so don’t waste it.
Consider what you think about and what you do on a daily basis. If there’s any area of improvement you’re looking for, try feeding your mind what it needs to help you out. It could be reps or actions or words, but whatever the case, don’t leave it to chance and let your brilliance go untapped.
- Cody