The truth is, you can hardly control your actions when you consider the driving force behind each action. Before taking action or making a decision, we usually use our conscious mind. We link a lot of habits in our life at each point in time to our conscious mind. These habits are not necessarily products of our conscious initiatives though; our subconscious mind is also instrumental in making some decisions. Habits fueled by your subconscious mind are beyond what you can control. In order to change habits to enhance your life, you need to understand the difference between your conscious mind and your subconscious mind. You also need the right techniques to reprogram your mind for positive habits.

Conscious Mind vs. Subconscious Mind

Your conscious mind powers the awareness of your environment, your emotions, current thoughts, as well as the physical sensations in your body. Your unconscious mind supplies any information that goes below the domain of your current awareness. This is why you need to learn how to choose what you think. Your conscious and unconscious thoughts define your habits (present reality). The Law of Attraction affirms that you can define your present realities and attract success into your life, work, finance, relationships, and health by choosing your thoughts.[1] Our subconscious mind influences most of our decisions, choices, and thoughts. It regulates at least 95% of the choices that we make each day. For example, you stopped at a red light, avoided a fight, and blew on foods that are too hot to be eaten. Do you recall not having to think before taking some of these actions? Those responses were automatic. Your subconscious mind records your encounter, just like your journal.[2] The subconscious habits you form can be positive habits or negative habits. You can have bad habits which you exhibit without thinking about them. Examples are biting your fingernails when you are nervous, transferring aggression when you are under pressure, or overeating at a buffet. Do you remember having these negative behaviors without recognizing them? That’s the power of your subconscious mind. Here’s the good news: You have all that’s required to change the bad habits.

How to Change Habits with Your Subconscious Mind

It’s not that difficult to hack your subconscious mind and change your habits. You can leverage some or all of the following techniques:

1. Develop Self-Awareness

This is the first step to break free from bad habits. It’s about stepping out of your mind and examining your actions from a different perspective. While it may seem challenging as you start, you can master it by constant practice and sheer commitment. Judson Crewer, in his Ted Talk, explains that you can change habits by becoming curious about them:

2. Choose Your Network And Environment

Who you associate with and things in your environment can add positive and negative inputs into your subconscious. Be selective when it comes to choosing folks you spend time with. The truth is negative people and environment will always encourage bad habits. You will absorb negative messages if you find yourself in a toxic environment. Environmental factors include social media, and news feed coupled with your physical environment. Seek only information and knowledge that can empower you, and surround yourself with positive people.

3. Visualize

You can reprogram your mind with positive images. Visualization is a technique that you spend some minutes each day to imagine scenes that feature you and your realities. These scenes could be:

A beautiful home A happy family A successful business Fulfilling relationships Financial freedom…

You can visualize whatever you want to attract in life. You can also reinforce your visualization by emitting positive emotions that align with the picture. Emit joy, peace, gratitude, and feelings of love. Let them flow through you as you visualize those pictures in your mind. Your subconscious mind will naturally adopt them as realities. Remember, visualization will enable your subconscious to discard, limiting the information that produces bad habits to absorb pleasing images that will be replayed in the future.[3] Learn how to visualize in this article: How to Become a Person Who Can Visualize Results

4. Affirmations

You can install positivity into your subconscious mind through affirmations. Affirm positive statement in its present tense. You can say: “I am diligent, confident, and successful,” instead of “I will be diligent, confident, and successful.” Since your subconscious mind only attunes to the present realities, it cannot process future conditions. Also, utilize positive statements. For instance, don’t say: ‘I am not a failure,’ Your subconscious mind is not programmed to process negatives. Affirm the corresponding feelings. You need to align your emotions with the realities of what you say. Say ‘ I am successful’ while feeling like a failure will only create conflict in your subconscious. Your subconscious will only believe what you say when you feel the corresponding emotions. Say it again and again. Affirmation is effective when it is repeated. It is not enough to say it twice or thrice. Recite them and integrate them into your day. As you say those affirmations to yourself, they will integrate into your routine, and you will be positioned to behave in line with what you say. Practice and repeat. If you want to be good at anything, you will need to be consistent by practicing it. Your mind needs to be trained through constant practice as well. Be aware of your environment and things that surround you, replace the bad habits with good ones, and repeat the process continuously. Reprogram your subconscious mind by redefining your beliefs, values, and lifestyles. Eliminate the negative ones and reinforce positive habits through awareness, affirmations, and visualization.

Reprogramming Your Subconscious Mind

Some mind therapists believe you can reprogram your subconscious mind within six weeks. However, if you have degenerating habits, it may take you 12 months to completely reprogram your mind by following the steps above. Why does it take that long to reprogram the subconscious mind? It takes considerable time for your subconscious to absorb information, the same way it requires enough time to override the data once it is absorbed. Everything starts with a thought! It could be a negative or positive thought. This thought coordinates your body to a vibration level. If your body is creating a negative vibe, you will attract negative things; and if positive, you will attract things that are relevant to your success. To reprogram your mind for a clear direction that leads you to success, here’re the keys:

1. Goals Setting

Your subconscious mind is an organized domain that demands clarity of purpose to determine what matters to you. You cannot achieve success without a goal. A goal provides your subconscious mind with a map that defines your present realities (bad habits) and the destinations (good habits).

2. Consistency

When you repeat new behaviors, you make some incremental leaps each day in reprogramming your mind. For instance, if you discard a bad thought and replace it with a positive one, you will improve your subconscious mind, which in turn, produce good subconscious habits. You must censor the thoughts that come to your mind by eliminating fear, doubts, and anxiety. Your subconscious mind is a field, your thought is a seed, and the fruits you produce are habits (good or bad).

Final Thought

Your subconscious mind is capable of directing your experiences in life. It influences your everyday decisions and habits including the clothes you wear, the food you eat and your reactions under pressure without you even noticing it. As powerful as the subconscious mind is, you can still change your habits if you learn to be more aware of your actions, visualize what you want for yourself, and control your environment wisely.   Featured photo credit: Bookblock via unsplash.com