The Conscious Mind & Reprogramming Your Brain | Dr. Bruce Lipton
Dr. Bruce Lipton holds a Ph.D. in developmental biology and is a former researcher at Stanford University's School of Medicine. He gave himself a notable name by promoting the idea that gene expression can be influenced by environmental factors, known as epigenetics.
In this new age of chakra alignments, the law of attraction, and affirmations, the focus is on the conscious mind and utilizing it to change mindset and behavior. According to Lipton and his research, this will likely be a failed experiment.
Positive Thinking and Its Missing Piece
Bruce Lipton states that positive thinking is not enough for people to have what they want because the mind works differently. First, people must acknowledge that the brain functions consciously and subconsciously.
The subconscious mind is more potent than our conscious mind because the latter primarily operates only at 5% on a daily basis. The 95% majority of our operating mind works in “auto mode” based on the neurological pathways our mind learned to make at a young age, aka subconscious programming. “The subconscious mind is over a million times more powerful than the conscious mind”, says Lipton. In order for any kind of positive thinking to “stick”, the subconscious programs first need to be rewired, especially if they're in opposition to the positive thought.
The Innate Beings and Outside Conditioning
Bruce Lipton further explains that during the first six years of life, brain activity measured on an EEG shows a hypnagogic trance state. The experiences that occur during this time get recorded in the brain, similar to a tape recorder, i.e. outside conditioning.
For example, babies are born with an innate ability to hold their breath underwater and can simulate movements of swimming (though they may need a little help at first). They don't have any fear of water. The fear of water and lack of ability to swim generally becomes conditioned over time when parents panic if their child is near water. The child then learns to fear water.
Programming of this type whether created by parents or society is prevalent as a child grows up and sometimes leads to a loss of innate abilities. Whether an ability is innate or not, the brain needs to be rewired in order to create a new mindset, habit, skill, etc., to “rewrite” the old programs and replace them with the new upgraded program.
The Process of Reprogramming Your Brain
The things that come into your life easily happen because you have the programs to support them. What you struggle to receive is a lack of programs that support that. The first step to reprogramming the brain is to recognize the patterns it runs.
The subconscious mind is quick to resist change because it operates from habit. To create a new program, you have to slowly integrate a new habit. That means, it takes practice. Lots of practice.
Every time you catch your old pattern running, decide you don't want to go down that same path again, and take a new step to change it in the direction you want to go. Doing this over and over again will eventually dismantle the original neural pathways in the brain that are connected to your old programming and replace them with new neural pathways that are reprogrammed to create the results you want.
This process takes time and patience but time is going to pass by anyway. So why not spend it by taking one step closer to the life and mindset you'd like to live in?
References:
https://www.brucelipton.com/resource/interview/mind-growth-and-matter
https://www.brucelipton.com/blog/there-way-change-subconscious-patterns
