To Understand Mind, we can broadly categorize it into two main faculties’ viz.:

  1. Conscious Mind
  2. Sub-Conscious Mind. It is also known as Unconscious Mind.

Both have different functions.

Conscious Mind

The Conscious Mind is believed to be of around 5 – 10% size of our mind. It is logical and analytical.

It helps us to review, analyze and take decisions which are good for us. It is connected to the sense organs and gets data from them. What we see from our eyes; or what we hear from our ears; or what we taste from our tongue; or what we feel from our skin; or what we smell through our nose – all this data goes to our conscious mind. The conscious mind processes/ analyses the data and decides what is good for us.

Analysis by Conscious Mind

The analysis by Conscious mind is generally done by asking 1H + 8W (How, What, When, Why, Which, Where, Who, Whom, Whose). You can also remember it by One Husband having Eight Wives.

Let us take an example. If someone says that if you jump from the top of a high-rise building, you will surely become successful in our life.

Will you jump?

Absolutely not, because you know for sure that there is absolutely no correlation between “jumping from high-rise building” and “becoming Successful in life”. This very understanding that there is no correlation comes from our Conscious mind. With this input, your conscious mind will take a decision to ignore this message because it is not good for you.

Characteristics of Conscious mind

 

  1. It is like Head of an Organization or the Leader of a team.
  2. Since it is very small in size (only around 5%) hence it has very limited abilities.
  3. Like the head of an organization, it is logical, analytical and is a decision maker. It takes all the decisions which are good for us.
  4. It is like a serial processor. It can only handle one thing at a time. It is our common experience that we can only focus on one thing at a time. Remember when you were learning car driving, it was difficult to keep focus on clutch, accelerator, gear, steering wheel and the traffic simultaneously.
  5. It has a short term memory. The data which it validates to be correct and beneficial for us, sends to the sub-conscious mind for permanent storage. We will know more about our Sub-Conscious mind in the next topic.
  6. It is the creature of a habit. If we need to change any habit, we first need to be logically convinced by the benefits of the new habit and understand it properly. It is like the leader has to be convinced if any decision is to be implemented by the team. Only then the habit formation is possible. This logical convincing and understanding is done by our Conscious mind.

Sub-Conscious Mind

After doing the adequate analysis of the data received through our sense organs, when our Conscious Minds finds that the information is good and relevant for us, it allows sending that information to our Subconscious mind. All the information is stored in Subconscious mind in the form of Holographic Images.

Subconscious mind is like Storehouse

The Subconscious mind is a storehouse of all our memories, emotions, conditioning and experiences. It is believed to be of around 90-95% of the size. All our fears, phobias and traumas etc. are also stored in our subconscious mind. All our habits are part of subconscious mind. All non voluntary functions of our body like respiration, digestion, blood circulation, healing etc are also controlled by our subconscious mind.

Characteristics of Sub-Conscious Mind

If we assume our Conscious Mind to be like a Head of an Organization, then the Subconscious mind can be assumed to be like all the employees of the organization. There are various departments each having many employees working together.

For example, after the policies and procedures of the organization are set and approved by the Head of the Organization, the finance department will work parallel on its own, purchase department will work parallel on its own, and marketing will also work parallel and so on.

Now with this understanding, we can list down the characteristics of the Sub Conscious Mind.

  1. It is like the entire team of an organization.
  2. It is very powerful as it is very big. Around 95% of the size.
  3. As a team of employees, it reacts to the commands of the Conscious Mind.
  4. It is like a parallel processor. It can do many things at the same time. We have experienced that we can walk to our home, sing a song and enjoy the weather – all at the same time. Because in none of these activities, we need to focus. They all are part of our habit.
  5. It acts very quickly.
  6. It is emotional.
  7. It does not have any logic. Therefore, it does not understand humor or sarcasm.
  8. The language of subconscious mind is images/ pictures.

Summary

We can summarize that our Mind has two faculties:

1. Conscious Mind — It is our thinking ability. All the thoughts  are there.

2. Sub-Conscious Mind — All our feelings are there.

I hope you would have had a fair understanding and clarity about our mind. We would be coming up with more blogs on the topic.

If you have any queries or doubts, you may write to us.

Dr. Pankaj Gupta

CEO, Conquer The Success

+91 99537 99435

+91 97738 52831