Making the subconscious conscious
Pause for a few seconds and ask yourself: “ how do I feel today?”. What springs forth in your mind?
In our busy lives seldom do we find time for ourselves: a time to reflect on our thoughts and our feelings. Having such a time called the “me-time” will help us to make our subconscious conscious. Paying attention to our subconscious mind enables us to reveal our hidden thoughts, emotions, memories, and behavior patterns into our awareness. This plays a key role in facilitating a deeper understanding of ourselves and promotes a more fulfilling life.
Unlike our conscious mind, the subconscious mind is active 24*7. It regulates our breathing, heartbeats, dreams, intuitions and many more. We don’t need to consciously think every few seconds: ah let me breath! nor do we think: ah I have chewed the food well, let me swallow it after two more chews! Our subconscious is in-charge of us more often than we think, for such physical tasks and also in regulating our emotions and feelings. Have you ever made a moment to reflect what is going on in your subconscious mind?
It is believed that our conscious mind is a door to our subconscious mind. Me-time is when we spare few minutes to comfortably sit down and relax and analyse the thoughts in our conscious mind. Analysing the thoughts in our conscious mind allows us to have better understanding of our subconscious mind. In order to observe our thoughts, meditation is a well established proven technique. How can we practice meditation in a manner that enables us to calmly observe our thoughts?
Long story short: find a comfortable position to sit, relax the body and start concentrating on your breathing! Long story Long: As you breath in through the nose, feel the air rushing through the air sacks of your lungs and air exiting all the way out via the nose or the mouth (preferably longer exhales). After a couple of such deep breaths, try not to think about anything. Or convince yourself to STOP THINKING. Fun fact is that a brochure of thoughts rushes in as soon as we try this, just like the visitors on your wedding party waiting to greet and convey their congratulations.. one after another!
Our mind is a natural wanderer. So it isn’t unusual if we are drenched in thoughts. We should indeed welcome those thoughts without judging ourselves. Let the thoughts come in and pass by. Let yourself be a mere observer of your thoughts. Have you seen cars, buses or trucks pass by when sitting beside a road or a highway? Imagine yourself sitting on the road side and let the thoughts be that passing car or truck. An alternative would be to imagine yourself sitting in a beach and the thoughts passing by like a cloud up in the sky. If you are taken away completely by a particular thought, bring the attention back to your breathing.
Lets consider an example. Suppose a thought about the presentation at the college/work is nagging your mind. It means that this is the current concern or desire that needs to be addressed. You can interpret the meaning of such thoughts by asking yourself several questions about the situation. For example: why the presentation is bothering you? If you are worried about messing it up, ask again: how or when can it be messed up? May be your inner self is worried about not being able to present it confidently or the fear of so many eyes watching over you is freaking it out. As practise makes perfection, with practise all such irrational fears can be addressed. So convincing yourself to practise more is one of the solutions here. You will notice on your next me-time session that your subconscious reacts to the “presentation thoughts” much better than the previous day.
However, there are few thoughts that are more complex than this. We can hardly do anything about them such as grieving the loss of a close family or a friend. Letting go might be one of the right course of action. Which is easier said than to do. But again, keep on asking yourself the difficult questions. Learning to let go of thoughts and situations we can do little about, can do magic in life. This is what philosophical concepts like stoicism intend to convey: that we should focus on what’s within our control, accept what we can’t change, and find inner peace by detaching from external circumstances. To practice this requires effort!
By often analysing our thoughts and asking ourselves difficult questions, we understand our minds better. The practise of me-time helps in self discovery, improved decision making and better emotional management because our thoughts and body/emotions/decisions/etc. often interact and influence one another. During moments of such personal introspection, the concerns that occupy our subconscious mind — often unnoticed during routine days — tend to surface and give us better understanding of what is really going on in our heads. Next time when you feel feel happy, excited, sad, stressed, burned out or when feeling the meh moments in life, try to take few minutes to slow down and to observe the thoughts. Make it a habit to ask yourself often “HOW DO I FEEL TODAY?”.
By holding on to a particular truck or a cloud, you might miss experiencing even more trucks and clouds! So just relax and concentrate on your breathing! :)