The mind is a combination of three basic units; the primary processing unit, conscious mind, and the subconscious mind. All three units work together to run the mind either in consciousness or in autopilot mode through good & bad habits.
In the journey of life, your mind, the driver of the vehicle of your life drive the vehicle in three different ways; you consciously, your good habits subconsciously, and your bad habits subconsciously drive the vehicle of life.
➡ Chapter 1: 4 Steps to Be Your Own Life Coach
➡ Chapter 2: You Are Here
👉 Part 1: What is Consciousness?
👉 Part 2: What is the Subconscious Mind?
👉 Part 3: How to Control Your Mind
👉 Part 4: How to Master Your Mind
➡ Chapter 3: Why Do You Need to Be Attentive?
➡ Chapter 4: How to Improve Attention
➡ Chapter 5: How to Boost Your Intelligence
➡ Chapter 6: What is Self-Awareness?
👉 Part 1: How To Stop Unwanted Thoughts
👉 Part 2: How to Be Happy
👉 Part 3: How to Deal With Anxiety & Depression
➡ Chapter 7: What is Conscious Intelligence & How to Be Conscious Intelligent
Understanding the mind is one of the difficult jobs from time immemorial but, it is not impossible. In this article, I shall let you know your mind in three stages:
Without further delay, let’s get started.
Mind, its components, and working
In its basic architecture, your mind consists of three parts; the primary processing unit, the conscious mind, and the subconscious mind.
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Unwanted thoughts, emotions, and feelings are always ready to pass the gateway of the conscious mind; these are always ready to pop up to the processing unit by passing the barrier of the consciousness.
In the mind, all the good or bad actions can happen only when it passes the gateway of the conscious mind to load into the primary processing unit.
So, making the conscious mind efficient through reprogramming the autopilot programs and developing a filter program for the conscious mind is the goal of life skills development.
The Functionalities of the Mind
Following are the four basic functionalities of the mind; the mind can be in any of the states when the processing unit is in action.
Autopilot Mode
The habits or autopilot programs developed through repeated actions over a period of time.
In the journey of life skill development, you have to develop certain autopilot programs that can filter out unnecessary thoughts or emotions and certain intelligent autopilot programs/ skills to map with your consciousness.
Engaged State
In this state only necessary thoughts or sensory input can pass the barrier of the conscious mind. All other unnecessary thoughts or sensory inputs are in polling state. But whenever any one of them passes of the barrier of the conscious mind, you get distracted.
Distraction can be of two types, internal distraction, and external distraction.
When an unwanted thought passes the barrier of the conscious mind to and loads into the primary processing unit, you get a distraction, and this is an internal distraction.
Suppose you are reading this article and suddenly your phone rings; you lost attention towards reading this article and you started reading your SMS, this is an example of external distraction.
Distraction has a lot of contribution towards hampering your intelligence, in the journey of life skill development; you have to train your mind to keep/divert your attention towards the right place at the right time to avoid distraction. For this reason, the first stage of life skill development begins with improving attention; you will come to know in detail about attention and distraction.
Structured Pattern of Thinking
This is the way of thinking a conscious person always seeks. In this state of mind, you only let the necessary thoughts and mental diets to pass the barrier of your conscious mind so that it can be processed in the primary processing unit.
Unstructured Pattern of Thinking
It is a way of thinking randomly without cognizance. When unwanted thoughts pass the boundary of your consciousness unknowingly, you might think a lot.
One of the major effects of unstructured thinking is the ‘Echo Effect’. Suppose you have listened to a song many times in a day, in the evening, you are sitting idle and started singing the songs without your cognizance. This kind of situation happens with most of the people, but people are not aware of it.
In the era of the Internet, you might have observed certain bullish thing goes viral and people of every nook and cranny start gossiping about the topic for few days, then the topic expires and a new topic comes.
Understanding the mind through self-introspection
I hope you have understood how the subconscious mind is throwing tons of thoughts or emotions to pass the gateway of the conscious mind and the functionalities of the mind from the above two parts.
Now it’s time to understand unstructured thinking.
After you complete reading this paragraph; it’s time to sit comfortably, close your eyes and hold the idea in your mind that you are not the mind, you are somebody else observing the activities of the mind. Observe how thoughts are letting your awareness wander from here to there.
Now, you have to check unstructured pattern of thinking while your eyes are open.
Log in to your social media account and hold the idea that you are not the mind and you are observing the activity of the mind. Scroll down the home page of the social media account for a few minutes and count how many times your awareness wandered in response to different attentive posts in the home page.
Sometime, your unstructured thinking may hijack your attention for long and you might realize the hijack after a long gap.
If you are in engaged mode or in structured thinking, don’t divert your attention. But, make only one minute after an engaged activity and observe whether your attention was hijacked by unwanted thoughts.
I don’t think that you need to introspect how autopilot programs of habits work, you know it well.
Conclusion
What would happen if you train the mind to think structurally in autopilot mode?
You will become the moon amongst the thousands of stars.
So, let’s continue the journey of life skill development from the next article.
If you have any doubt, please do let me know.
Ashim, the Founder of MindWiper, loves to learn, share, and educate various dimensions of life skills development. After graduating with an engineering degree, he worked with major ICT industries in India and finally he followed his dream to integrate technology for Cognitive Skills & Life Skills Development.