The Power of your Subconscious

One of my favourite writers is Malcolm Gladwell and I have really enjoyed his books like Outliers, Tipping Point and Blink.

In Blink he examines the human subconscious and it's huge impact on our lives and outcomes. 

One example he uses is that of a pitcher in a baseball team. Now forgive me here as a Scotsman I am no expert on this sport but what he says is that actually the batsman does not actually have enough time to see the ball arrive. The human brain can't process the information quickly enough as the ball is moving so fast from such a short distance.

So how can anyone actually hit the ball if they don't have time to see it arrive? Well they judge the shape of the pitcher's arm and body using their subconscious and use that and their experience to judge the trajectory of the ball. 

What has this got to do with helping to build confidence? Often we approach a situation expecting negative outcomes based on our subconscious fears rather than any real life issues.

There is a cliche here "We find what we are looking for" and if our minds are looking, even subconsciously, for failure or negative outcomes then we will find them.

My big issue as a child was rejection and a crippling fear of it. Now when I examine my life so far I can see plenty of evidence that I managed be "be rejected" even though there was no actual rejection taking place.

Thankfully, the converse is true and we can train out minds to expect positive outcomes. Is this possible overnight? Obviously not, but by using CBT to re frame our thought processes we can certainly train out conscious and subconscious brains to be more have more positive and realistic expectations.

More of CBT and how to use it later.

Cheers