New Beginnings & The Subconscious Mind

Today (14th Sep 2009) is a big day for me as I launch my new Website and Company Flow & Balance. Originally it was planned to send out the first waves of announcements to friends, colleagues, associates and potential clients on 09/09/09 - aligned to the Chinese belief that this is day is special and brings GOOD LUCK & FORTUNE. Yet, I told myself "first things first" and realized an additional small dream this year: "going on holidays with my mother" who has come to Singapore for the 2nd time in 6 years. Her first visit was in Nov 2003 - the month I moved from Shanghai to Singapore and got involved in Antony Consulting. This time it seems her mission was again to launch me off into a new venture. What would we do without the parental support in our lives? At least for me, my mother has always been a role model, my friend and critic and I am utterly grateful to have her on my side during this exciting time in my life.

So, we decided to spend a few days in Langkawi (including 09/09/09:)) and enjoyed the beach, sun and rain forest. While browsing in the hotel store, I made a worthy discovery, a book written by a German who is based in Langkawi since 1992 and has been involved in NLP and Hypno Therapy, running his own Workshops ("My Life in my Hands"), IronMan Camps and Nature-Tourism ventures. I was hooked on - somebody promoting, living, writing and helping people successfully with positive & deep inside-out changes on a Malay island - evidence that progress & consciousness development can start anywhere, anytime. In his book, he covered a cross-section of topics including how the mind works, the body-mind connection and Hypnosis and the paranormal. He shared many of his client cases to demonstrate the effectiveness of hypnosis. A few points stuck with me and reinforced my own take on deep, personal change which I would like to share with you over the next couple of blog entries:

1. The subconscious mind rules until "mission accomplished".

It is a fact that the subconscious mind controls and guides about 90% of all acts that a human being performs throughout any given day or moment. This is so, because consciously we have a very limited capacity to process information (7 + 2 chunks of information maximum). You can compare this with driving a car. Remember when you first learnt to drive a car, how difficult it was to pay attention to all the new things: clutch, rear mirror, direction, speed, traffic lights, other drivers etc. After a while your learning’s have become subconsciously stored and you do things automatically. In this way, habits are formed. An experienced driver cruises, the conscious mind only springs into action when the need arises.

Now, the interesting thing is that the subconscious mind has always a "positive" (in a sense of mission accomplished) intention for the individual in mind. However, depending on under what circumstances and need a habit was formed, sometimes this can have detrimental results. Unlike the conscious mind, the subconscious mind has no ability to consider, reason or end its activity, once programmed. It will follow through until mission accomplished. An example, if a person wants to be slim, very slim and shows this intention in non-eating patterns, the subconscious will follow through until the person can become anorexic and may even die. This could definitely be the case if the reason for wanting to be slim is an emotional protection from something the subconscious mind has registered based on certain experiences earlier in life - meaning that there is even a deeper, emotional reason for the non-eating behaviour and need to feel slim rather than being slim for the sake of being slim.

In such cases, the underlying emotional root cause and the program that subconsciously runs, influencing the person’s eating habits has to be addressed to really produce change. A mere behavioural change approach would be too tedious since it would address the symptoms, but not the root of the matter and hence require many months of behavioural re-training.

This explains maybe a little bit why I always wanted to focus on “Holistic Coaching” rather than “Coaching” alone. A person coming to me wanting to set a goal to become a healthy eater may find that deeper issues that have to be addressed than recognizable on the surface. While it is my task to help the person be focused on the positive goal and build-up or reconnect the person with his / her inherent positive resources, I do believe that lasting change requires eradicating the root cause. Not always is Hypnosis the answer, sometimes a cognitive understanding or looking at the issue from different angles can also help the person to change.

But whatever technique used, it is important to understand that “old habits die hard” and by combining cognitive & emotional awareness, goal-setting, resource-building and subconscious re-programming or energetic changes, we may increase the chance of realizing positive changes and ultimately our goals. An approach, I would like to foster, grow and nurture in Flow & Balance.

I will share some more thoughts in the next blogs, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I do enjoy my time with my mother a bit more. She will stay until 22nd Sep 2009 and I would like to show her a bit more of the Singapore way of life.

Take Care and I will be back soon.

Best,
Vanessa