Thursday, November 03, 2016

The Subconscious is Awesome


Did you know? Apparently, your subconscious mind is 30,000 times more powerful than your conscious mind.

I've been doing a lot of non-fiction reading in the past few months. I wanted to read more personal development books, books on successful entrepreneurship, books on living a life of purpose, books on growth, positive mindset and so on. In my reading, I stumbled upon some concepts around harnessing the power of the subconscious mind. These concepts are not new, in fact they've existed since the beginning of time, but I was reading them this time, with the intention to apply these principles to my life, especially when it comes to setting my big goals and putting things in place to achieve them. I've also learned about the power of my thoughts. Thoughts create things. What you think about will determine your actions, and your actions will bring you the results you've created.

There is no special technique to activate your subconscious mind if you have a clear goal and a burning desire to achieve the goal. The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.

I was reminded of this phenomenon just this morning. A few days ago, I was chatting with a friend who wants to write a novel. We've worked together in the past, and we enjoyed writing our blog series together, so she was thinking about taking the character (Funmi) and writing her complete story. Whilst we were chatting, I mentioned that I needed to start writing Temmy's story too. I decided that I will finish working on the Creative Writing Course in December, and I'll restart my 100-Day Novel Writing Challenge in January, which is the time-frame I'll use to complete the novel, at least the first or second draft. She said it was a good idea, and she would think about joining me in the 100 day challenge so that we can motivate each other.

After the discussion with my friend, I made a note of my schedule for the next few months, and moved on to do other things. And then something interesting happened. Last night, I had a dream about Temmy's story, specifically her love interest, and the first chapter of their story. A very detailed, vivid dream. It was like wow! While I was doing other things during the day, my subconscious mind had gone to work, putting some ideas together, and while I was sleeping, the ideas just came to me, almost ready to go.

I'm sure a lot of writers can relate to this. Sometimes, ideas just "come" to you when you're least expecting them; perhaps when you're in the shower, when you're about to fall asleep, when you're doing the dishes. Sometimes, you've been sweating over a particularly knotty bit of your story for days or weeks with no success, but when you step away from it and take a break to focus on something else, suddenly you see a way out. I think that's your subconscious doing its work in the background, solving your dilemma and giving you a solution.

Well, for me, this is great! I'm excited about writing this next book now, and I can't wait to start putting my ideas together. I'm also going to continue working on harnessing the power of my subconscious mind, so that I can have more exciting breakthroughs like this. That would be awesome, wouldn't it?

Have you ever had a similar experience? Do you engage your subconscious mind to help you with making decisions or tackling a problem? Let me know!

As always, stay blessed and favoured!

Tolulope Popoola