Impressing the Subconscious: The Ultimate Guide of Techniques
In my Best Method to Manifest post, I explained why you should target your subconscious with your new ideas, assumptions, beliefs, and specific desires.
This post covers the how.
However, before diving into the technical advice, let’s recap first what is the subconscious mind.
We all know that we only have one mind, so why do we differentiate between the conscious and the subconscious? Is there some magical line that separates the two – like the Rio Grande separates the United States and Mexico?
No.
The conscious and the subconscious are not two different territories of the mind that could be located physically but two different functional aspects of it.
The conscious mind has five functions: 1) analyzing, 2) evaluating, 3) making decisions, 4) exercising willpower, and 5) storing short-term memory.
The subconscious’ main functions are 1) handling our body functions like heart rate, breathing, digestion, etc., 2) storing and processing the data for all the experiences we have ever had, and 3) housing our long-term memory.
Now, before the age of seven, your mind only functioned on a subconscious level.
You were a sponge and took in everything around you without analysis or evaluation.
For example, when you learned how to walk, you didn’t judge yourself and became depressed every time you fell. You enjoyed the trial and error.
That’s because when you were a kid, your mind’s primary goal was to learn about yourself and the world around you as much as possible. In essence, you were in a super-learning mode.
Once you gathered enough information, your mind “leveled up” and turned on other functions like 1) analyzing, 2) evaluating, 3) making decisions, 4) exercising willpower, and 5) storing short-term memory.
But the biggest change was that your mind changed its primary goal.
It switched from learning about yourself and the world around you to defending yourself and the world inside of you.
In other words, you stopped freely accepting and internalizing every piece of information coming your way and started to “verify” everything by consulting with your mind’s database (e.g. your prior experiences).
Now, if the self-concept and worldview you internalized as a child serve your goals as an adult, you will have an easy life.
Conversely, if you internalized an unpleasant worldview and many harmful self-concepts, you will feel that the whole world is against you. And, in a sense, it is. Your internal world – that is creating your external circumstances – is in opposition to your dreams.
In case you found yourself in the latter scenario, you first need turn off your mind’s defense mode and then upgrade your worldview and self-concepts.
Therefore, as an adult, impressing your subconscious always starts with deactivating – or bypassing – two conscious functions of your mind: analyzing and evaluating.
Consequently, we will discuss 1) deactivating and 2) bypassing methods.
Deactivating Methods
All deactivating methods have two essential elements:
- relaxation; and
- communication of new ideas/beliefs/assumptions.
Relaxation
So why is relaxation necessary to turn off – or at least dial down – your mind’s conscious functions?
The answer is very simple. The more you relax, the more your brainwaves slow down. The slower your brainwaves, the less you analyze.
Now, there are two ways to get into a relaxed state. You can either slip into it naturally or you can induce it at will.
Slipping into a relaxed state naturally
First, your mind gets relaxed every night right before you fall asleep and every morning right after you wake up. You also slip into a relaxed state of mind whenever you eat yourself into a food coma.
Second, your conscious functions subside when you engage in a “mindless activity.” Every time you perform well-practiced motor sequences – like walking, brushing your teeth, driving, etc. –, your mind gets relaxed since it already knows how to execute the movements without paying attention to them on a conscious level.
Third, your brainwaves slow down when your eyes fixate on a single point in space for an extended period (e.g., staring at the screen of your TV or mobile phone). As discussed in my Best Method to Manifest post, our conscious mind relaxes when we stop looking around. Why? Because its most important task is to protect us. If we stop scanning our surroundings, it thinks that we do that because we are safe; there is nothing in our vicinity to harm us.
Inducing a relaxed state at will
Since there are myriad ways to self-induce a relaxed state of mind (hypnosis, guided meditation, etc.), I will not attempt to give you an exhaustive list of all the techniques here.
Instead, I want to draw your attention to the common denominator of these methods: body relaxation.
You probably noticed that these techniques always ask you to get comfortable (i.e., sit or lie down). Have you ever wondered why?
Well, the relaxation of the body facilitates the relaxation of the mind.
So if you find a technique that starts with relaxing your body, you can rest assured that it’s effective.
“To yield successfully to the wish as an accomplished fact, you must create a passive state, a kind of reverie or meditative reflection similar to the feeling which precedes sleep (…) An easy way to create this passive state is to relax in a comfortable chair or on a bed. If on a bed, lie flat on your back with your head on a level with your body, close the eyes, and imagine that you are sleepy. Feel – I am sleepy, so sleepy, very sleepy.” – Neville Goddard
Now, having a relaxed state of mind in itself is not enough. Heck, 8 billion people go into a state akin to sleep every day, but most don’t live their dream life.
Why? Because what matters is what you do in this relaxed state. What matters is what you feed your mind with during this precious time.
Do you waste it by taking an inventory of your problems? Or do you invest it as a conscious creator?
Do you dose off with the TV on and let some made-up drama color your inner world? Or do you visualize what you want?
Communication of new ideas/beliefs/assumptions
Once your mind is relaxed, you can entertain it with new ideas, beliefs, and assumptions. It will soak them up like a sponge. Just like it did when you were a kid.
Again, there are myriads of techniques to communicate new thoughts to your subconscious. However, if you take a close look at the thousand different methods people come up with and deconstruct them, you realize you really only have two tools at your disposal;
- images; and
- words.
In essence, you either show or tell your new story to your mind.
Classic “show methods” are visualization and scripting.
Typical “tell methods” are affirmations.
Here, let me interject that a mental diet, in substance, is a string of affirmations.
Each of these methods has its preferred use.
For example, visualization is an excellent way to impress a specific desire – something that could be reduced to a single thing or event (like a car, job, vacation, wedding, etc.) – into your subconscious. However, it could be challenging to apply when it comes to general or abstract ideas (like “I always have more than enough money” or “I’m always at the right place at the right time”). Especially when you want to change more than one belief/assumption.
Affirmations are more versatile. You can use them for changing general beliefs or impressing specific desires. There are also several ways you can implement affirmations into your manifestation routine.
You can repeat them in your mind.
You can record them and listen to them.
You can write them down and read them.
Or you can keep writing them down over and over again.
So which method should you use?
The one that you can consistently stick to on a daily basis. That’s always the best method.
Also, use your common sense. For example, if you want to change 50 beliefs at once, don’t start writing down 50 different new beliefs every day. Trust me, you will not be able to do that daily.
Bypassing Methods
There are certain “inputs” that your mind handles immediately on a subconscious level. The bypassing methods take advantage of such inputs.
Creating Memories
Your mind records everything that happens to you and then files these recordings away on a subconscious level as memories.
Now, your memories also serve as evidence corroborating your subconscious beliefs.
For example, let’s say you believe that you are a popular person. As a consequence, you are creating a lot of external circumstances where you feel popular. You receive invitations left and right, beautiful women are lining up at your door, employers are bombarding you with job offers.
All of these experiences will be filed away in your subconscious as memories and thus, reinforce your belief that you are popular.
If someone told you that you are actually disliked, you would laugh at the comment and think that they are probably jealous of you. You have tangible proof that you are popular! And not one, but many. So no one can tell you otherwise.
But what if you believed that you are unpopular? What if your mind’s cabinets are full with painful memories reminding you of how unwanted you are?
Well, you can weaken a harmful subconscious belief by providing evidence of the opposite to your mind.
How? By using your wonderful imagination!
Thus, you imagine that you receive invitations left and right, beautiful women are lining up at your door, employers are bombarding you with job offers.
You create new “memories” for your mind to file away.
By submitting “evidence” that you are a popular person now, your mind will start to question your previous self-concept. And if you submit enough evidence (making it the dominant story!), your subconscious must accept your new self-concept.
Fortunately, your mind doesn’t care if the memory you submit for filing is real or simply fabricated by your imagination. It accepts both types.
And not only you can create new memories that are line with your preferred self-concept, you can also alter your old, painful ones (Neville’s famous revision method). When you revise a memory to your liking, you are essentially destroying evidence of your undesirable beliefs.
Generating Emotions
Emotions go under the radar of your conscious mind because it cannot categorize them as true or false.
If you feel happy, you are happy. If you feel anxious, you are anxious. End of story.
Your conscious mind is simply not in the position to question the ‘realness’ of your emotions.
Thus, emotions are a tool of persuasion that you can use to convince your subconscious of the realism of your imaginal act.
So what if you struggle with generating positive emotions at will?
No worries.
Fortunately, emotions are not necessary to manifest what you want. They could be helpful. But they are not necessary.
Just think about Neville’s famous ladder experiment. Let me ask you, what kind of emotions did you feel while climbing up and down on a ladder?
Did you feel happy?
Sad?
Or indifferent?
I bet most of you felt nothing special but still manifested climbing a ladder. Why? Because sensory vividness without feeling emotions is more than enough to realize a specific scene.
Now, if you still want to tap into the power of your emotions, here is what you need to keep in mind.
Emotions never show up randomly. They always follow the words and pictures you feed your mind with. Even if the words and pictures are not true or real.
For example, the movie Titanic makes people bawl their eyes out. Everyone knows that Leonardo DiCaprio is not drowning in real life, Kate Winslet is not losing the love of her life, and no one on the ship actually dies. Yet, we let ourselves to be moved by the actors’ performances and cry a river or two.
Why? Because the right combination of words and pictures has immense power to elicit emotional states. The film industry capitalizes on this knowledge big time.
As you can see, emotions are nothing more than unconscious reactions to specific stimulus.
Therefore, to generate positive emotions, you need to present your mind with words and pictures your body responds to positively.
In other words, you don’t force emotions to uprise within you; you invite them – with your words and pictures – to show up.
It is also important to note that an emotion’s intensity will naturally fade if the stimulus is always the same. Many of you experienced this phenomenon.
At first, you felt happy and excited when you visualized your chosen scene or repeated your affirmations. Then, after a couple of weeks (or days), a neutral, indifferent feeling replaced your joy.
That’s okay. This change means that having your desire starts to feel natural to you. And that’s exactly what you need to manifest what you want.
As Neville points out in The Power of Awareness, “The time it takes your assumption to become fact, your desire to be fulfilled, is directly proportionate to the naturalness of your feeling of already being what you want to be – of already having what you desire.
The fact that it does not feel natural to you to be what you imagine yourself to be is the secret of your failure.”
Just think about all the milestones you have already achieved, all the things you already have in your life. Do you feel crazy excited about them? Or does it feel normal to have something to eat, drive your own car, have an iPhone?
The key takeaway is that starting to feel neutral about your visualization scene or affirmations is not your cue to stop doing them or change them. On the contrary, those feelings indicate that you are doing it correctly; your manifestation is getting closer.
Asking Questions
Did you know that your mind can’t ignore a question?
It’s your own built-in Google.
Even if it doesn’t have the correct answer, it will search for one in its database – aka sift through all the information you are storing on a subconscious level.
In other words, your mind immediately processes every question you throw at it. When you ask the right questions, you can use your mind’s automatic search function to your advantage.
How?
By “packaging” your new ideas, beliefs, and assumptions into questions that cannot be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ For example, you can ask yourself: “why are my sales skyrocketing?” or “why is mathematics so easy for me?”
When you phrase such open-ended questions, your mind needs to access all the information you have on file about yourself and the world around you to be able to come up with the best answer.
And since your mind stores most of its data on a subconscious level, your question – “as is” – must be relayed to your subconscious for processing.
Now, you probably noticed that our example questions all contained a presupposition – aka an implicit assumption.
Let’s unpack them:
“Why are my sales skyrocketing?” Implicit assumption: → My sales are skyrocketing.
“Why is mathematics so easy for me?” Implicit assumption: → Mathematics is easy for me.
By the way, most of you are already using this technique when you ask yourself “why can’t I [fill in the blank]?”
As I mentioned above, your mind can only process these type of questions on a subconscious level. This means that the assumptions you embedded in them (“my sales are skyrocketing”; “mathematics is easy for me”) also make it to your subconscious without your conscious mind’s interference.
And no, you don’t need to (consciously) answer your questions. You just need to ask them.
If you want to read more about this technique, I recommend picking up “The Book of Afformations” written by Noah St. John.
Now, let’s end this guide with three pieces of practical advice.
- Never waste those times when your mind is naturally relaxed and thus impressionable. Always invest in them.
- Learn at least one relaxation method. Here is my favorite one.
- Stop asking questions that imply you don’t have what you want.