The subconscious mind is the part of the mind that is not in the state of awareness. This part of mind contains the memory banks, thought generators, emotions generators, a sensory input controller, and a dedicated storage for habits.
The subconscious mind is basically responsible for recording events gathered through five sensory organs, producing thoughts or emotions, and providing habits or autopilot programs to the conscious mind.
➡ Chapter 1: 4 Steps to Be Your Own Life Coach
➡ Chapter 2: How to Understand Your Mind
👉 Part 1: What is Consciousness?
👉 Part 2: You Are Here
👉 Part 3: How to Control Your Mind
👉 Part 4: How to Stop Reacting and Start Responding
👉 Part 5: 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
In this article, you will be acquitted with the various parts of the subconscious mind and the functions of the subconscious mind.
Parts of the Subconscious Mind
Subconscious mind has the following five basic parts:
Memory Bank
This is the place where all the information you gathered through your sensory organs and thoughts generated from realizations/emotions are stored.
The memory bank can remember information when it is extreme emotion, divergent information, relational information, and through repeated actions or rehearsal.
Among the four ways of remembering, extreme emotions and divergent information get remembered easily by the mind. Because of the involvement of the mind-body in extreme emotion or divergent information, which leads to deep attention and visualization, you remember easily.
You may remember only a few childhood incidents; try to recall what you remember from your childhood. I hope all of the incidents involve certain kind of extreme emotion, whether it may of happiness, sadness, nervousness, or excitement.
Among the following faces, which one is easy to remember? I think the divergent one (Number: 2).
Remembering through relational information is quite easier than remembering through rehearsal. For example, you know the spelling of ‘nation’ and ‘ass’. If we relate these two words to remember the spelling of assassination=ass+ass+i+nation, I think it would be easier to remember.
The rehearsal, the time-consuming way of remembering, I think I don’t need to explain to you, you know it well.
Autopilot Storage
Autopilot programs are developed through repeated actions or rehearsal. Autopilots are also called habits, it may good or bad. Only the conscious mind can discriminate between good or bad habits, for the subconscious mind, habits are just habits; there are no good or bad habits.
You might not be able to read Chinese, but you can read English. You have trained your mind to recognize English letters, then recognize words, and then sentence over a period of time. That’s how you developed the habit to read English through rehearsal.
The default life controlling programs are also autopilot programs. These are mapped to the conscious mind for some time to run your consciousness knowingly or unknowingly.
In the journey of life skill development to make yourself conscious intelligent, you have to erase the corrupted default programs of your subconscious mind by doing following tasks:
✅ Task One: Identify corrupted default programs
✅ Task Two: Develop a filter program to reject those corrupted programs
✅ Task Three: Replace whatever necessary
Sensory Input Controller
In high school, you have studied that the five sensory organs responsible for making our experiences with the outer world.
The sensory input controller is responsible for the following four basic tasks with the five sensory inputs;
✅ 1. Sending sensory information to the memory bank
✅ 2. Polling sensory inputs when you are engaged state of mind
✅ 3. Providing feedback for thought generation
✅ 4. Providing feedback for feeling generation
The sensory information can be of image, sound, sensation, smell. Out of these four types of inputs that you gather through five sensory organs, you can think only in form of images and sound, nobody can think sensation or smell, it can be felt on real-time.
Thought Generator
Thought can be structured or unstructured. When you think knowingly it is called structured thinking, and when unknowingly, it is unstructured.
The thought generator takes information from the memory bank and sensory input controller with the help of autopilot storage to produce and resultant thought.
Memory Bank
As I mentioned already, it is a real-time phenomenon that takes input from the sensory organs to produce feelings. Sometimes feelings are combined with thoughts to produce a mixture out of it.
Functions of the Subconscious Mind
The basic functions of the subconscious mind are:
Recording Events
Subconscious mind is always is recording mode. Whatever gets your attention, the subconscious mind put the information into its memory bank. However, everything recorded in the subconscious mind can’t be remembered for long.
I have already mentioned that subconscious mind can remember extreme emotions and divergent information easily. In the state of extreme emotion and getting divergent information through sensors, you let many parts of your mind & body to engage, and that inclusiveness let the subconscious mind remember easily.
The subconscious mind also remembers through rehearsal or repeated actions. Human memory is like capacitive memory of a digital computer. When you repeat something for long, you refresh the circuits for that particular information and get remembered.
In remembering relational information for long period, the subconscious mind refreshes the memory cells of the related information and it becomes easier to remember.
Producing Thoughts or Emotions
Thoughts or emotions are produced through combinations and permutations of the memories within the subconscious. The subconscious mind produces thoughts and emotions in response to events. Events may of external sensory inputs or your psychological state.
Suppose, you have already memorized the thought “fear of dogs” in subconscious mind. Whenever you see a dog through sensory eye, your thought “fear of dogs” evokes, it passes the boundary of the conscious mind and loads into the processing unit. When the thought loads into the processing unit, the processing unit asks the subconscious mind to return the emotion of fear to it, and you experience fear.
Controlling Habits
Through repetition, you have developed many habits in your life. The habits are passed to the processing unit without much intervention of the conscious mind. Habits run on autopilot within your mind.
Suppose, when you drive a car, you don’t need to tell the leg to push brake whenever required. Similarly, we can read the English letters & words without much intervention of pattern recognition.
Conclusion
The subconscious mind has unlimited storage. Habits are the most effective tool to unfold the power of the subconscious mind.
Did you know, “Successful people have a habit to make habits”?
However, your intelligence depends upon what you provide & practice throughout life. If you practice distraction & provide unwanted thoughts to the subconscious mind willingly or unwillingly; you may live a life full of distraction.
Read Next: How to Understand Your Mind
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.
Amaka Unamba
19 Apr 2023This is such an excellent post. Your use of computer terms to explain the subconscious mind makes it easy to understand and relatable. I appreciate the effort and dedication to creating these blog posts. God bless you!
Ashim Sarmah
19 Apr 2023Thank you!
Frimpong Ernest
20 Dec 2022Thanks so much. I have come to know why I’m easily distracted.
But I’ve been like this for so long how do I get over it?
Ashim Sarmah
20 Dec 2022Pls email at ashim@techzizz.com