Our monthly columns will be submitted by experienced and professional top coaches and trainers, as well as leaders from all kinds of businesses.
This month's column was writen by Arjan Arwert.
Arjan is a former Jazz musician and professional sound engineer who has worked for a wide variety of artists, and is currently managing media affairs for eKCosystem.
“Let’s say you pick up a rock and you throw it. And in mid-flight you give that
rock consciousness and a rational mind. That little rock will think
it has free will and can give you a highly rational account of
why it has decided to take the route it’s taking.”
-Tom Wolfe-
You might think this column is about (sub)consciousness, and it is. We only have
to
deal
with the conscious mind first because it’s the joke of the century.
To value the subconscious mind we need to reconsider our perception of our consciousness
as well as of our unconsciousness.
We think too highly of our conscious mind because we think. We think it’s more
important than our subconscious mind.
We think it’s the CEO of our body while it’s not!
How else do you think you are able to hold a glass of something while you are
reading this, in the meantime scratch your nose and not fall of your chair? While
you are reading this, your breath is being regulated and your unconscious mind
coordinates the posture of your physical body, and reminds you of buying bananas
next time you go to the supermarket. And in reality our subconscious mind is doing much, much more.
Our conscious mind is a serial working machine. It can only perform a limited
amount of tasks at the same time. Try to remember more than seven digits, and
you’ll see its limitations.
Below I have written down three ranges of numbers. Look at the first range for
a few seconds and repeat without looking. Then do the same with the second range
and than the third.
15974
2845479
8245298623
You probably had no difficulty with the first range, the second one was more
challenging, and the last one for most of us is impossible to repeat.
This is the case with the majority of people. We can only recall 7 digits (+
or – two). I assume that’s why PIN-codes have just 4 digits…
The same goes for the “gestalt” images I used in a workshop. Looking at the picture
below is a serial process.
Either you see the old woman or the young lady, never both at the same time (although
they can switch very fast).
Our conscious mind is not able to perform both tasks simultaneously.
Now our unconscious mind has way more capacity than that. It is
multitasking in a parallel way, just like a computer. Translating this
into computer language we can say that in binary code you need 5 bits
to reflect each character of the alphabet (thus the word “character”
has 45 bits).
Scientists calculated that if you convert our brainpower into binary
code, our conscious mind is able to process 45 bps (bits per second)
while reading, when reading out loud this drops to 30 bps, and counting
can be done at a maximum speed of 4 bps.
Try to count the number of characters in “ hottentottententententoonstelling
”… no more than 4 per second! This shows that, depending on the task,
we can do better and worse. The bottom line is that our conscious
mind is able to process at a maximum capacity of 60 bps.
Lets jump to the scientific conclusion of this all:
Our subconscious mind can
process up to 12 million bps!
Our eyesight alone is able to process 10 million bps! The biggest misunderstanding
is that our conscious mind is mastering this process, and for that matter, our
lives.
Ever heard of the “cocktail party effect”?
It’s like this: You are in a room with many people, having a discussion with
two or three guests. Everybody else is having a discussion too and in this
cacophony you are only consciously involved in your own discussion. Now when
someone on the other side of the room mentions your name you react to it. You
can hear it, and you aren’t even aware of it.
Your subconscious mind is recording all kinds of things simultaneously and filters
out only that what’s important for you.
During this process it keeps track of your physical needs and gives a signal
when you’re hungry. Your obedient conscious self goes to the kitchen and eats.
“Consciousness
is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we
cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of. How simple is that to say,
and how difficult to appreciate!
It’s like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that
has no light shining upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever
direction it turns, would have to conclude that there is light everywhere.
And so consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it is not.”
-Julian Janes-
So whoever
is looking for unconscious processes with consciousness is looking for a dark
spot with a flashlight.
Anyway, our conscious mind is playing a small part in the act of our lives. And
when it has a line, where does it get its text?
Does it take real decisions, or are we simply becoming aware of decisions being
taken unconsciously?
I think our conscious mind is more a PR. guy than a CEO, and not a very good
one. It is always late with the facts and when it has no clue it will just fake
it. We come up with all kinds of bullshit when we have to explain our choices
to others…
We all can refer to these situations, most of the excuses we have for our choices
are made up after we decided.
At the same time we are able to have an accurate impression of things with only
very little information at hand. Researchers discovered that people only need
to look at someone for a few seconds to determine his or hers qualities. Test
persons could determine the quality of a teacher in a few seconds and the results
were equal to the qualities the students saw after experiencing the teacher for
a year or so.
When we look at those thin slices of behaviour, even without sound, we can tell
in a split second how extravert a person is, or if a person is gay or straight,
or
either a
qualified
leader or an in-the-box person...
In daily life we also have no problem recognising a rectangular plank with an
iron handle as a door. When you say “look before you leap” to a person in
a wheelchair he will not think you expect him to jump. We automatically
know the meaning of each word or shape and source from a vast database inside
us without effort,
without conscious thinking.
The beauty of this is that we have a subconscious mind that solves everything
for us, and we don’t even have to shine a flashlight on it. The answers
are presented to us from “below” and ready to use. Thrown in our lap so
to speak, and when nothing comes up there must be a reason for that we’ll
never know.
We all have, or have had the experience of not being able to come up with something,
and thinking harder is only making things worse.
And, in most cases, our most
brilliant ideas just pop up from nowhere. That’s where creativity lies, hidden
in our subconscious
mind waiting to act.
I never think about what note to play in a saxophone solo, and when I do, I get
blocked.
This happened to me when I went to Conservatory. People from the business (teachers,
fellow students) were so charmed by the way I played that they empowered me to
study there. Come to think of it, I was a “natural”.
What happened then was that I lost my natural way of playing, because teachers
and other examples inspired me to be like them instead of me. I lost my musical
“I Am Type” so to speak.
During this process I also had other problems, but never a good enough reason
not to be involved in music today.
And that’s what I have learned. Getting to be aware of my natural me, and what
lies beneath, or as some say: “what’s in the space…”, the space that includes
what is in everyone else's subconscious too... (remember the cocktail party effect?)
So on a spiritual level we can say that an individual's subconscious really is
tapped into the greater level 3.
Now, to the point…
What I am actually saying is that whenever you have problems coming up with something,
stop thinking about it. And I don’t mean using heavy breathing or Zen Yoga...,
just don’t think.
Go do something else, do some gardening, make love.
It will probably fall in your lap sooner or later, like ripe fruit. And when
it does, it seems so obvious that it’s almost ridiculous.
Lets raise a glass of something to our conscious mind because we need it to be
open and to call forth.
It’s the child inside us, and it wants to play!
My motto for now and ever will be:
Don’t look before you leap..! Just watch where you’re going.
“We have many things in our subconscious of which we are unaware, and unless
we become conscious of them, they will continue to have an unconscious
hold on us”.
-Rosie McHugh-