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Today, we’re diving into how our minds work, especially our subconscious. It’s all about getting to know our subconscious better so it doesn’t end up running the show for us. Think of it like this: if you don’t know how your mind operates, it can control you and stir up anxiety and stress. I’ll share some cool analogies, like why a computer engineer isn’t worried when their computer freezes—they just know how to handle it. By understanding our instinctual mind, subconscious mind, and human mind, we can find a way to take back control and make decisions that lead to more peace in our lives. Let’s get into it!

Finding peace in our busy lives can be tough, right? This episode dives deep into how understanding our mind can help us chill out. We chat about the three different minds we all have: the instinctual mind that reacts super fast, the subconscious mind that stores our experiences, and the human mind that thinks and cares. It’s like having a brain team working together! We break down how each part of our mind works, and how by getting to know them better, we can be less stressed and more in control. Instead of letting our subconscious take the wheel, we can be more present and aware, making decisions that actually feel good to us. It’s all about befriending our mind and making it work for us, not against us. So, if you've ever felt overwhelmed, this episode is packed with insights to help you find your calm amidst the chaos.

Ever feel like your mind is running the show? You’re not alone! In this episode, we explore how our minds operate and how we can take back control. We talk about the instinctual mind, which is all about quick reactions, and how that can sometimes lead to anxiety. Then, we dive into the subconscious mind, a massive storage house of all our experiences, and how it influences our daily choices. It’s like a library filled with all the things we've ever felt and done, guiding our actions without us even realizing it. Finally, we discuss the human mind, the part of us that has empathy and awareness. By recognizing which mind we’re operating from, we can start to change our habits, make better choices, and ultimately lead a more peaceful life. If you want to understand yourself better and find that inner peace, this episode is a must-listen!

Understanding our minds can be a game-changer for inner peace. Today, we break down the three types of minds we have: the instinctual mind that reacts to threats, the subconscious mind that holds all our experiences, and the human mind that thinks critically and cares about others. We chat about how these minds interact and how being aware of this process can help us take control over our lives. It’s all about moving from automatic reactions to conscious decisions. By being mindful and present, we can change our habits and reduce anxiety. The more we understand how our minds work, the more we can navigate life’s challenges with ease. If you’re looking for practical ways to calm your mind and find clarity, this episode offers valuable insights and tools to help you on your journey.

Takeaways:

• Finding inner peace is about understanding how our mind works and operates.
• Our subconscious mind stores all experiences, influencing our habits and reactions in life.
• The instinctual mind reacts quickly to danger, while the human mind thinks and reflects.
• Being aware of our thoughts helps us make better decisions and reduces anxiety.
• Meditation can help us become more present and aware of our thoughts and feelings.
• Understanding our three minds can empower us to take control of our lives.

Hello, and welcome to Stillness in the Storms, the podcast that helps you find inner peace amidst life's chaos.

I'm Stephen Webb, your host, and in today's episode, you're going to find out how the mind works.

And not in the neurological way, in the way.

In a practical way that will help you to become more of a friend with your subconscious mind rather than your subconscious mind controlling you.

And take this analogy.

Have you wondered why a computer engineer never worries about their computer locking up or they just reboot it and get on with it, or a mechanic never worries about knocking in their car or anything like that?

Well, they don't worry about it because they probably know what it is.

They're not worried about it and they know they can fix it.

That's the problem with us.

In our mind, we very much don't understand it.

So therefore it's alien to us.

Therefore it controls us.

And it makes us anxious and it makes us.

It takes over and makes us stressed and we worry about it.

And it's just like driving the car with a knocking in it and we don't know how to fix it.

We don't know what it is.

We normally makes us quite anxious.

So let's understand the mind that's on today's podcast.

Just before we start, I want to say thank you to Catherine for treating me to a couple of coffees and to Jesse's girl in Australia for giving me a couple of reviews on the podcast.

That makes a big difference.

It really, really helps helps me to know where I'm going in the right direction.

It helps me to know if I'm going in the wrong direction.

So if you've got an idea for the podcast or if you want to donate and help.

I don't have any sponsors.

It's literally through the kindness of people like Catherine that treats me to a coffee, that helps me to get the show edited and out there each week and the hosting of it.

So thank you very much and you can head over to thankousteven.com just to make it really easy for you where you can contact me or treat me to a coffee.

Anyway, let's get on with today's show.

Understanding your subconscious mind, different minds, and everything to do with your mind.

That's today's show.

So let's back up a little bit.

I can remember about seven or eight years ago, I went on a course with Bob Proctor and he taught me about the subconscious mind and the really fast mind, the subconscious mind and the human mind.

I don't know if he called them those three things, but that's basically why I called them in my book the Moving Road.

Three Simple Practices for Lasting Success or something like that.

It's a book I wrote about seven, eight years ago and it's only available on Kindle.

You could probably find it.

If you go to Amazon and type in Stephen Webb, the Moving Road, you will find it.

But I explained the way.

We've got three minds and every bit of information comes into the mind in the same way, either in through our ears and through our eyes, through our senses, through the feelings of our body.

And it.

The mind takes all this information and it passes them through three separate minds.

And the first mind is the instinctual mind.

It's the reactionary mind.

You've all heard of that.

Flight, fight or freeze.

Well, that's the mind that everything passes through.

Everything.

You know, if you pick up a hot tray of buttons and you drop it, that's because the mind has taken the information your hands are burning and it's made a decision without consulting you drop it.

Then you wouldn't overly drop them on the floor.

If it had a little bit more time, it might pass it to the subconscious mind and then to the human mind to get them to the side as quick as possible.

But in general, it will drop them or it will just, you know, panic.

It'll just do whatever it needs to do at any cost or expense.

And that's the instinctual mind.

That's everything has to pass through that once it realizes that you're not in danger or it's not a threat or it doesn't have to deal with it, it will then pass it over the subconscious mind.

And what's the subconscious mind?

The subconscious mind is like the great big storehouse of information.

Everything you ever do gets stored into the subconscious mind.

And it gets stored in such different ways of, you know, from the movies you watch to the experiences you have.

And like when I got really drunk, and I always use this analogy, but it really works.

But when I got really drunk on a particular drink, and I won't say it just in case they sue me or something, but I got really, really drunk on a particular drink and now I only smell it to be really ill because my body, my subconscious mind stored everything about it to protect me in the future.

So you're not going to have that again.

So, you know, and I bet everybody out there that's ever got really, really, really ill on any kind of alcohol or any kind of food or something, you only have to come near it to like, that's it, I cannot go near it.

I cannot even smell it.

I almost cannot be in the same room as it.

And it's a way of protecting you.

And it stores it full body, it stores the feelings with it, the emotion, the taste, the smell, everything.

And it stores it in such a vivid way so make sure you don't come in contact with it again.

And your subconscious mind stores everything in that way, from experiences to from when you're very much very born.

Even things before you're born, as the mind's developing, you know, what you hear in the womb and all that, I presume I can't remember, you know, in the first few months, you remember if somebody leaned over you and frightened you and they had a particular color hair or they looked a particular way, your subconscious minds go, I'm going to clock that.

And it might be that when you're 20 or 30 or 40 years old, you'll come across someone that looks similar.

And you won't know why, but you'll feel this fear, but you won't know why.

You wouldn't have a clue, but your subconscious mind does.

So the information goes in.

Your instinctual mind says, yeah, no, you're right.

And then your subconscious mind goes, ah, okay, we're not immediately a danger, but.

But I know that face.

I know, I know that tall person.

And it might not be the same person, but it's stored in a similar way.

And it goes with music and it goes with food and drink and smells situations.

So you often wonder why you might fear a certain situation, but you don't know why.

You've got the really gut feeling that's because your subconscious mind has stored it and it's there to protect you, but it does the other thing as well.

It also brings out the things you enjoy.

So you might have a really good experience with someone when you're really, really young, like one or two years old.

And from then on, you always like that voice, the sound of that voice or that accent.

Maybe you had an auntie with a Welsh accent, for example.

And for some reason your whole life you just like the Welsh accent because you remember the peace and calm that it gave you, or the opposite.

So your subconscious mind just stores everything and it then looks and goes, well, okay, have I got the answer?

Have I got.

Have I already been in this situation before?

What did I do last time?

Did it kill me?

Let's do it again.

And that's where all your habits come from.

Your subconscious mind is just repeating the same thing.

Again, if it didn't kill you, let's do it again.

Whether it's good or bad.

And what's really interesting is your subconscious mind doesn't, it's not your friend.

It's not like only giving you the stuff that's good.

It's not like making a judgment of good or bad in the world.

It just purely on a library or memory is looking up again, what did I do last time?

It doesn't have a class of good or bad.

All it has is how did this make them feel last time?

Did it create a big emotion?

Emotion?

And let's do the same thing again, whether you run from it or not.

And that's why sometimes we'll run from things where we don't need to run from anymore or we're running towards things that we really shouldn't be running towards and we still do and we know they're bad for us, but they didn't kill us last time.

The subconscious mind is like, yeah, do it again.

Like smoking when you get into the car or when you get home from work or something like that.

The habit is, well, didn't kill you last time, you enjoyed it, let's have a cigarette.

That's what we normally do in these situation.

And that's why it's so subconscious.

That's why I call it subconscious.

And then you have the next mind, which is the human mind, the one that developed last of all.

And when I talk about these three minds, I'm oversimplifying the brain and the mind.

But you know, it's way for us to understand and the way in which we can befriend it and we can stop it controlling us.

So if you go back to evolution, you know nearly everything that has like a spinal cord that has a hunting mechanism, it'll have the instinctual mind, it'll have that flight, fight or freeze.

Not all of them have a subconscious mind that stores things and memory.

Although we're learning now even goldfish that haven't got a three second memory, Spanish and even things like lobsters and you know, everything has some kind of memory and they learn and they learn habits and they train and things like that.

So a lot more has a subconscious mind than we think.

But everything has the instinctual mind.

Most things have a subconscious mind.

But very few things have developed the human, the compassionate third mind.

And it's the one that cares.

It's the one that is conscious and thinks about things.

It's the one that doesn't always know the answer but can look around and consciously be aware.

So if I said to you, what's one plus one?

Instantly you know it's two.

Your subconscious mind, well, first of all, your sting to your mind goes, yep, not a threat.

Passes onto the subconscious mind.

Subconscious mind said, no, that's two.

And then you reply to.

But you didn't work it out.

You didn't go, oh, this is a sum.

They're two numbers.

I'll add them together.

What does it make?

But If I say 47 and 148, well, you have to think about that.

You analyze it.

Two numbers, let's add them together.

And you do some kind of calculation in your conscious mind, you're consciously adding them up.

And if I said to you, spell London, you instantly see the word London.

You don't have to work it out.

Subconscious mind again.

And it comes down to if you don't have to think and it's instantly there, it's your subconscious mind.

But when your subconscious mind doesn't know what to do with it.

Like if I said to you, what color is a thought?

Well, thoughts don't necessarily have a color.

So.

So if you actually, if you ask someone what color is a thought, they'll go, okay, not a threat.

Subconscious mind.

Do you know the color is a thought?

No.

Okay, human.

So then we, then we have a discussion and we think about it, and then we consciously go, okay, if a thought had a color, what would it be?

And then we go into a dialogue with our mind.

We have a conscious cognitive way of looking at these things.

And very often we don't go to the human mind.

We don't go to that place.

And bearing in mind the human mind cares, that has empathy, and that's the main thing.

The human mind very often wouldn't hurt someone, wouldn't go out of his way to make trouble.

It wouldn't go out of its way to hurt you.

But very often the subconscious mind doesn't worry either way as long as it survives.

And that's why very often when we make snap decisions on a habit and then suddenly, four hours later, we go, why did I do that?

I can't believe I did that.

And that's the human mind coming online a few hours later and the guilt coming in and things like that.

But if the human mind was present at that moment, you wouldn't have made that decision.

And that's what we're trying to do.

We're trying to take over from the instinctual mind, which will always go through.

You can't really take over from that but it's taken over from the subconscious mind a little bit, moving some of those thoughts and patterns and reactions into the conscious mind so you can choose to make the decisions.

And I think that's where when I started to understand this, it started to make me really think.

And I observed my mind.

I was like, oh, yeah, I can see those thoughts coming up.

I can see that process.

And suddenly I started to have more control over what I was doing.

I was conscious of what I was saying and how I was saying things.

Do I still argue?

Yes.

Do I still get frustrated?

Yeah.

Do I still get anxious?

Yes.

But it affects me less and very much more.

So I think about it in the conscious mind of how this has affected other people, how this has affected me.

Should I go there?

Should I make this decision just because I did that last time?

Should I have to do it again?

And it's those kind of things that really improve my life and give me more inner peace because I'm just consciously making the decision rather than subconsciously.

So you're moving your habits into the conscious mind because there's lots of things that you would you do on a daily basis that if you are really conscious, you wouldn't do or you would feel guilty doing.

You wouldn't mindlessly sit there and just keep on doing the same thing day in and day out.

If you moved in the conscious mind, you realize that it's probably not the most beneficial.

Still not easy to change habits.

Don't get me wrong.

But you first of all have to move where things are going into the conscious mind.

And what's wonderful with the conscious mind, it has a conscience.

It has a way of knowing whether it's feeling right or wrong, whether or not it's doing the right thing, whereas the subconscious mind doesn't.

The subconscious mind isn't worried about right and wrong.

It's just worried about, let's repeat the same habit because it didn't kill us last time.

And that's basically the.

I'm really, really simplifying it.

But that's it in a nutshell, really.

And the more we befriend our mind, and when I mean befriend it, is be aware of the process, watch the process, be entertained by the process.

So when something comes into your mind, like, oh, you're feeling cold, be aware of I'm feeling cold, what do I do?

What's my brain do?

What's my brain do with it?

What does my mind do with it?

And when you're feeling angry, just be aware.

Okay, I'M feeling angry.

Oh, my mind wants to do that.

Okay, that's interesting.

And you can be really entertained by it and you can smile at it, and suddenly you have a massive amount of control over what you do in life and the decisions you make and how you move forward, rather than just mindlessly doing the same thing again and again.

Very often we're just repeating the same habits, but that's purely because we're not in the conscious mind.

And this is what mindfulness and meditation does.

Even if you do guided meditations, which you can do on my other podcast, Inner Peace Meditations, even if you just do a few guided meditations every single day, what that does, it just moves you into a more of a presence.

You're here rather than thinking about something else.

You're making a decision rather than some subconscious mind based on the past making the decision.

And it's okay.

The subconscious mind is just there to protect you and help you.

And so is the instinctual mind.

You know that they're not enemies, they are your friends, but don't think they've got your back for the right reasons.

They've got your back to protect you, and that's it.

They're not worried about whether or not it's the conscious or the right thing to do.

They're just worried whether you did it last time and whether you got killed or not, whether it went really, really badly or you managed to get over it.

And that's what it tends to repeat.

It doesn't care about other people.

And in the chimp paradox, it explains it brilliantly.

You have the fastest computer mind, which literally takes all the processing information as like 20 times faster than the subconscious mind.

Then the subconscious mind comes on, which is way slower than the computer mind, the reactionary mind.

And then you've got the final human mind, which is 20 times slower again.

And we know the mind has this processing power by one of the experiments at university Stanford or something, I can't remember now.

But what they did is they put two speakers, one to the left and one to the right, and they got the person to close their eyes, and they put two pips out the left one and one pip out the right one.

And when they play each pip between all three more than, I think, about 130 milliseconds or something, you hear two pips on the left and one pip from the right.

But when they speed it up to bring it down below about 90 milliseconds, you hear 1 pip from the left, 1 pip from the middle in front and 1 pip from the right.

Why is that?

Isn't that incredible?

It's because your mind is taking all that information and calculating it and then giving you what it is, its interpretation of it, and that's what it's doing.

It takes our mind about 9, 80 to 90 milliseconds to process anything.

So as much as you think you're online, you're actually about 90 milliseconds behind everything.

Isn't that amazing?

An interesting fact.

You're just totally behind.

You know, it's in almost in real time because it's so quick.

You know, it's less than a tenth of a second, but you are behind.

We all are.

You know, we're not ahead.

Everything we're witnessing was just about a tenth of a second ago.

And we think we're seeing it in real time as it happens, that the Earth of the universe happens to work quite okay with us working in that real time speed.

And our brains are what, I don't know, six inches across, something like that.

I'm not very good with measurements, so for a thought to go, it's got to go a good few inches across the brain.

And when you see these animals, and I noticed it first of all in the albatross movie from the Easter Islands, where the albatrosses dance incredibly quickly, moving their head in sync with each other way quicker than we ever could do.

And I thought about it and thought about it, and I read somewhere on the Internet what it's to do with the size of the brain, size of the mind.

So if you've got a mind that is only.

I don't know what size of an albatross mine, I don't know, a centimeter, 18 millimeters or something.

So in order for that mind to have a thought, a complete thought, it's only got to feel the space of about a centimeter.

For us to have a complete thought and understand it, it's got to feel 6 inches.

So that whole electricity going across the mind works in the same speed as everywhere in every animal.

You know, physics is physics.

You know, there might be a slight fluctuation between the neurons and the way the brain works, but essentially, they're all neurons.

They're all the brain tissue is essentially made up the same thing.

It has the same relative speeds to each other, but one's a lot smaller than the other.

So therefore, it's a lot quicker thought.

And that's why when you try squatting a fly and you go to do it, and you go to move your hand and the fly's like, oh, yeah, you're going to move your hand.

Yeah, well, I'll fly around here a little bit and I'll move out of the way last minute.

It's like, it's like as if we're in slow motion to the fly, because the fly can see it, process it, take it all in.

And their brains are what, about 2 millimeters across?

So they can have a complete thought pattern that fills their whole entire mind in the time we've just thought about moving our arm.

And that's why we're incredibly slow.

And the bigger the mind, the slower we react, the slower our thought pattern is.

So humans are one of the slowest thinkers, one of the slowest animals on the planet.

Enough.

Isn't that incredible?

Isn't that amazing?

And it's what it is.

Nothing special about it.

You know, what makes us so brilliant is our bigger brains, but also is a flaw.

So, yeah, it's really interesting knowing how the physical side of the brain works and how it stores information.

And it stores information in a really ad hoc way.

And it's a mess.

That's why when you're retrieving it, you might mix real life events with movies or with conversations.

And when you retrieve it, you create a movie of it.

You're not re watching the movie you recorded.

You create the movie of it just the same as if I said, can you recall a football rolling down the street?

But the street has a carpet on it, it's a red carpet, and the football has pink and purple spots.

You know, you're creating that movie in your mind as if it's real.

So when your mind recalls conversations or recalls thoughts, it recreates, doesn't.

It doesn't play you a recording of it.

It recreates it quite badly, actually.

And I did a podcast when I realized this.

I stopped arguing with my sister and different people because I used to argue, well, you did say that.

And they go, no, I didn't.

I say, yes, you did.

I heard you.

Well, of course, I realized I was replaying what they said in my head, but I wasn't replaying what they said.

I was recreating what I thought they said.

But it sounded clear to me because I was recreating it in their voice, in their dialogue, in their dialect.

So, you know, when we recall information, we do it incredibly badly.

But that's part of what the mind makes the mind brilliant.

That's why we're more creative.

That's why we can do these things.

You know, we never store Everything, absolutely.

You know, whenever we call things.

Otherwise if we did record things absolute, it'd make it easier for solicitors and everything in court.

But that's why they need several witnesses because our recollection of things is quite terrible.

Isn't it fascinating the way the mind works?

So that's my podcast for today.

It's just how the mind works and when you befriend the mind and when you understand the mind that you have this really quick instinctual mind, just let it protect you.

Then you have the subconscious mind that just is a storehouse of fighting cabinets of what you did last time.

And then you have the human mind which is just that heart opening, conscious mind that we need to spend more time in.

You know, you know which mind you're playing, you're batting from.

If you're driving through five villages and you're not aware you did, you're batting from your subconscious mind.

You know, if you drop those buns or you lash out at someone without even thinking, literally without thinking, you know, you're in your instinctual mind.

But if you're conscious and you're aware and you're open hearted to how they're feeling and you seeing things in real time to what's happening right now, then you're conscious, you're here in your presence and there's so much less anguish here and present.

Just ah, just right here now.

There's nothing we have to do with this moment.

Just listen to the podcast.

Head over to thankousephen.com thank you Stephen.com just to help.

If you want to donate to the show or leave a review if you can, that'd be awesome.

I'm Stephen Webb and I'm your host of Stillness in the Storms.

Take care guys.

I love you and speak to you next week.