Why a 7-Year Old is Running Your Life
How Your Subconscious mind is programmed
Imagine this. You are a 30-year old adult who has a 7-year old child in charge of your life. To clarify, this 7-year old has lots of information but very little experience, yet they are making decisions about your relationships, career choices, finances and even where to live. Sounds scary, right? Well, psychologists have determined that your personality is fully formed by the time you are about 7. Until that time, your brain is in a theta state, which is akin to being in a meditative, receptive mode, recording all sensory experiences as well as learning complex motor programs for speech, crawling, standing, etc.
That time is the most influential perceptual programming of the subconscious mind.
At the same time this child is downloading massive amounts of information about the world and how it works while making decisions, which form their beliefs. They observe behavioral patterns of people in their environment, parents, relatives, teachers and learn to distinguish acceptable and unacceptable social behaviors. The decisions and beliefs at this time become the fundamental subconscious programs that shape the character of a person’s life.
What this ultimately means is that the fears and perceptions of that child through 7 years old is playing out in your life into your 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and beyond unless you question and shift those beliefs to ones that serve your life now. Consider some statements may people repeatedly heard as a child which are implanted into the subconscious and become the driving force behind many behaviors.
Some common ones are:
- “You’re not good or smart enough”
- “You can’t do anything right”
- “You will never amount to anything”
- “ You aren’t pretty enough”
- “Who do you think you are to want/have that?”
How might this play out for someone who struggles with not feeling worthy or deserving of success? No matter how hard they work at something, if their underlying belief (and thus the energy they are putting out) is that they are not worthy, they will unconsciously create obstacles or even self-sabotage to prevent them from having it. The subconscious mind is only doing its job to bring you what it has been programmed to believe is true for you.
The subconscious mind functions like a computer and records everything you have experienced in your life. It is very literal. It’s primary role is to keep you alive as it controls all the automatic functioning of the body such as muscle control, breathing etc. The subconscious is always in the present moment unlike the conscious mind, which can remember the past and plan for the future.
Scientific research has shown that at least 95% of our life is automatically operated by our subconscious mind without our awareness of it. It’s like a warehouse of limiting beliefs and old outdated “programs” that are no longer true for who you are or who you are becoming.
Subconscious programming shows up throughout our lives. Our beliefs act as filters for what we focus on and what information we allow into our consciousness and this can act as an obstacle to getting what we want in life. For example; let’s say you want to attract a new romantic relationship but have been hurt in the past and have the belief that you will get your heart broken again, it’s not safe to be in an intimate relationship or that you are not lovable. If a new person would come into your life the beliefs which are opposing what you really desire are acting as resistance to you getting what you want.
How to tell what your beliefs are around a particular area of your life? Look at the physical evidence in your present situation. If you are happy with how that is showing up in your life then your beliefs are in alignment with what you desire, but if an area of your life causes struggles and challenges, examine the beliefs you have about it. Once you change your beliefs, the results will change.
Beliefs are like filters on a camera. What the camera “sees” is a function of the filters through which it is viewing it’s subject. Through our beliefs, we define our reality.
How does our brain filter what information to allow in and what to ignore? We have a bundle of nerves at the base of our skull called the Reticular Activating System or RAS. This acts like a gatekeeper and decides what information gets into your brain and subconscious and what information, events and experiences are kept out.
Your RAS looks for situations that will validate and prove your beliefs and filters out those that don’t. A great example of this is when you are at a party with lots of background noise and yet you are able to make out a part of a conversation that is exactly what you need to hear. Because there is so much data coming at us at all times being picked up by all our senses, the brain can only process so much at once, so it relies on the RAS to only allow certain important information to come through.
The way it knows what to let in is from beliefs/thoughts you have repeated over and over again or what you expect to see. Your RAS will give you evidence to support what these are. The best way to make your RAS work for you is to repeat affirmations, do some subconscious work to reprogram your beliefs and perceptions and be very conscious what you give your attention to and expect to show up.
How and why trauma get stored in our subconscious mind.
A life experience often triggers a dominance of one hemisphere of the brain over the other when responding to specific situations. The more emotionally charged an experience (usually traumatic) the more likely it will be stored for future reference, and the more likely we will automatically over-identify with only one hemisphere when faced with similar life experiences in the future, therefore not having the benefit of access to the attributes of each hemisphere.
One way of changing the perception of past traumatic events and stress triggers by getting into a whole brain state through the PSYCH-K process, a modality I use with clients. In this state there is a bilateral, symmetrical brain wave pattern which allows for maximum communication and the exchange of data between the left and right hemispheres.
Accessing the whole-brain state, in regards to trauma is vital in enabling someone to achieve a new perspective of their past experiences. This new perspective can free them from the programming that is held in the subconscious, which can make a past traumatic experience in to a current nightmare. By re-perceiving a past traumatic experience with new whole-brain filters, a person can be freed from the automatic response that limit their happiness and wellbeing. The whole-brain state also can be used as a foundation for quickly and effectively changing self-limiting subconscious beliefs.
The subconscious mind’s processing capacity far exceeds that of the conscious mind at 40 million bit of information per second vs 40 bits. Most standard approaches to psychotherapy address only the 40-bit processor (the conscious mind), while the enormous power of the 40-million bit processor, (the subconscious mind) is largely unused. The most effective ways to change subconscious programming predominantly is to address the subconscious mind.
So, how do we reprogram the subconscious? There are different modalities that one can use, but first you need to be aware of what your current beliefs are in order to transform them. You can use affirmations, which are empowering statements that you repeat over and over and new neural pathways are formed. Visualization is also a very powerful technique, as the mind cannot distinguish between something which is real and that which is imagined. If you are desiring to manifest more money you can visualize all the ways money can show up and at the same time feel how you would feel when is comes and you are activating an energy which will draw it to you.
Some modalities I use with clients that are extremely effective and fast are PSYCH-K and Emotion Code. They both utilize muscle testing and PSYCH-K creates the whole-brain state referenced above. There are also other methods such as EMDR and hypnosis.
Once you have an understanding of how the subconscious mind works it can be extremely freeing to realize that you had no control over the programing you received during your formative years or from things like subliminal TV advertising. Knowing that this information has been stored much like data saved into a computer you can see how the subconscious mind is only doing it’s job by displaying what it’s been told, through actions and behaviors.
The good news here is that you can change any subconscious programming and shift the perception of past trauma by directly addressing the subconscious to not only uncover what’s been programmed but to then give it new information, i.e. beliefs which are more empowering and support how you want to live your life.
