How to Delegate to Your Subconscious Mind

Hey, what’s up? This is Leo here for Acualized.org and right now since I’m standing in this deep chasm I want to talk about the chasm of your sub-conscious mind and how you can structure the things that you’re trying to master, the skill sets that you’re trying to master in your life, the areas in your life that you’re trying to master, how to take that and delegate it from your conscious mind into your subconscious mind so you get much better results and you’re much less stressed about it.

The Illusion

All right, so what am I really talking about here? I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this topic of the subconscious mind and I’ve been contemplating and meditating on this idea that in fact I do have a subconscious mind and also a conscious mind and that the two work in tandem. As I thought more and more about this, I started to realize that there’s really an illusion at play here. The illusion is that everything that we do is very conscious and is self-directed and is willed when in fact most of the stuff that happens in your life, most of the stuff that you are the cause of is really stemming from your sub-conscious mind which has been programmed and conditioned through years and years of repetition and experience.

It’s that repetition that is the mechanism by which you get stuff from the conscious to the subconscious. This is a very brute force type of process. There’s not much thinking that needs to go into it. Really anything that you repeat over and over and over again will bubble down from your conscious into your subconscious and it will become habitual, become instinctual, become easy for you.

The reason I also started thinking about it is because I was thinking about my public speaking skills. Right now I’m trying to work on that, trying to get honed down, trying to work on my vocal tonality, trying to make sure that when I’m talking I’m talking without any filler material like words like “ums” and “ands” and “you knows” and “kind ofs”. I’ve been working a lot on that and I’ve been doing that by going to Toast Masters.

As I’m doing that every week and I’m slowly seeing that my skills are improving and improving and improving, and what I’m also noticing is there’s a baseline level of stuff that I do when I speak that’s just there. This is the stuff that’s stemming from the sub-conscious so for example the hand gestures that I tend to use, the types of language that I try to use, certain expressions, my vocal tonality, the emotion that I put into things, just the way I even stand and carry myself, the way I move around stage, the types things I like to talk about… A lot of these are subconscious so this is like the base of my public speaking skills.

If someone just calls out of random to go and speak and I don’t have a lot of time to prepare, there’s going to be that baseline level. On top of that though there’s that extra conscious level. This is the intent that you have so when you’re going up to speak this is the stuff you want to be getting on and the stuff you want to get across. Maybe when you’re speaking you want to make sure that this time as you’re giving your speech you’re using a lot of different vocal tonality. You have pauses, you have quiet expressions, you have loud expressions, you have emotions. Maybe that’s something you’re working on so you bring that conscious intention into the delivery of your speech.

The thing that I’ve noticed is I’ve been putting a lot of emphasis on this idea that everything I do is really conscious and that I’m putting a lot of effort into it so it’s like, “If I don’t get it done, it won’t get done.” That kind of thinking. So I’ll prepare a lot for the speech. When I go up there I have all these different points in my mind that I want to hit, things that I want to work on.

What’s The Trick?

I want to work on the vocal tonality and I also want to work on my body language and I also want to work on moving across stage and I’m also working on the content that I’m delivering… all these different things. What it tends to do is it tends to make your mind go crazy because your conscious mind can only handle so much. What I found with public speaking is that what you’ve got to do and getting good at something like public speaking is really a process of bringing conscious ideas down into the subconscious. That’s how you get good at it and you do that by repetition.

Maybe you go out and you give ten speeches in a row and all those ten speeches focus on vocal tonality. As you do that, what’s going to happen is you’re going to put a lot of intention into your vocal tonality. You’re going to actually be monitoring. As you’re speaking you’re going to be thinking to yourself, “Oh, I used such a tone there, I used such a tone here.”

After the speech you’re going to be analyzing. You’re going to be doing a conscious analysis and as you do that, as you think about it and you keep doing it over and over and over again, what’s going to happen is you’re going to start to engrain and internalize that stuff so that ten weeks later, after you give ten speeches if you’re giving one per week, what’s going to happen is you’re just going to come up on stage and naturally you’re going to start to get the tonality correct because what’s happened is you don’t need to think about it anymore. It’s bubbled down. You’ve just repeated it so much. This is an example with public speaking, but I think this applies to almost any skill or any part of your life that you want to master whether it’s the gym or your career, or a business that you’re starting or anything else.

What is the trick here? The trick is, I think, and the point that I’m trying to make is that it’s okay to delegate stuff to your subconscious. You don’t need to think that you hold everything up in here. You have ideas of where you want to go these are your conscious intentions. These are maybe your goals, your vision for yourself, that’s great, but then also have trust that ultimately stuff is going to bubble down. Of course it’s not just going to bubble down automatically. It’s only going to bubble down if you repeat it.

Many People Overlook It

It’s repetition, that’s the mechanism of how to get stuff from your conscious into your subconscious. It’s such a simple point. There’s not much to it, but a lot of people I think overlook this. I have a tendency to overlook this as well. Anything that you want to get good at, what I’ve discovered from thinking about this is repetition, repetition, repetition.

Anything you want to get good at ask yourself, “Am I doing it repeatedly? Am I doing it every single day? Am I doing it every single week? Am I doing it every single month?”

Depending on what it is there might be a different amount of repetition that you need to do, but it’s just like memory. If you want to memorize something you’ve got to drill it into your head again and again and again and again and eventually it will become unconsciously easy to recall and you have no problem. It’s like your phone number, you just know it. Your phone number is in your subconscious. It’s not in your conscious mind any more.

Or the multiplication table. If I ask you what’s two times ten you know what it is. You’re not doing some sort of mental arithmetic, you’re not calculating anything, you’re not doing some kind of proof. It doesn’t even have to be true, you were just drilled in grade school that two times ten is twenty and you just know it. You know that seven times seven is forty nine. It’s been drilled into you. But what is thirteen times thirteen? You don’t know probably because we’ve only been drilled up to twelve times twelve.

Do It Over And Over Consistently

This is an example of the power of your unconscious mind. The epiphany that I really had is everything I want to be good at, I want to be good at public speaking, I want to be more confident, I want to be a better socializer in social situations that are not necessarily business related, I want to be better at coaching, I want to be better at shooting these videos… all of this stuff, I realized that if I want to get really good at it, if I want to master it, I just have to make sure that I’m repeating it over and over again on a consistent basis. If I’m doing that then I can take the pressure off of myself and say, “Okay, great. I’m doing it I just trust that it’ll get bubbled down into the unconscious” because it will.

If you do something long enough it will happen. On the other if you’re not doing these repetitious types of practices with whatever you’re trying to get good at then you’re going to struggle, because what’s going to happen is you’re going to try to keep that stuff in your conscious mind and that’s not going to give you the performance that you want. Think about an athlete. Think about an Olympic athlete. It’s sometimes awe-inspiring to look at them.

Maybe you look at a world-class football player or baseball player, or a world-class gymnast or a tennis player or an Olympic lifter, any one of these, or a snowboarder, you look at them and you see the kind of ability that they have. What’s interesting is that ability that’s so amazing to us as laymen because we don’t do it, we don’t have that ability to do that quadruple back flip off some half pipe with a wooden board screwed to our feet if we’re snowboarders, we can’t do that, but on the other hand these people that have practiced this consistently over and over and over again are able to do it.

Not only that, but they’re able to do it effortlessly. In fact they’re best at executing that stuff when they’re in the flow and they’re completely in the moment and they’re not thinking about it. When they think about it their performance actually decreases. That’s why a lot of times athletes stress the importance of getting in the flow, getting in the zone.

Thousands Of Drills

How does this work? It works again because it’s drilled into their subconscious. The way that they do that it through massive, massive repetition. If you know anything about how athletes become world-class or how Olympic gymnasts train or how snowboarders train or how world class tennis champions train it’s insane the drills that they go through. They just drill again and again and again and again.

They drill thousands upon thousands of times until they’re mind just relents and it’s no longer conscious, it’s all sub-conscious. It all bubbles down and it’s so automatic, so instinctual, so effortless for them that they’re able to go out there. They’re executing, they’re having fun doing it because they’re not struggling with it consciously and they’re also getting this amazing performance that’s top class.

I think that this principle of just drilling and repetition can be applied to ordinary life. Most of us are not Olympic athletes and we don’t care to be, but we want to be better in our business, we want to be better in our career, we want to better in our fitness, whatever it is you probably have some skills that you’re working on maybe public speaking or whatever. The trick there is to start thinking about delegating to your unconscious mind. Be grateful for the fact that most of the stuff that’s happening right now in your body is being handled for you. How freaking cool is that?

Right now I’m standing here, my heart is beating, my lungs are pumping in oxygen while I’m talking to you delivering this content. I’m delivering the content on the fly. I haven’t prepared any of this stuff so it’s just coming out. My hands are moving, my body is balanced and my body knows how to balance itself so I don’t fall down. At one point all of this stuff was really tricky when I was a couple of years old I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t balance, I couldn’t talk, the language that I’m spouting at you right now I didn’t understand, and now all of that is just completely effortless.

You Control Very Little Of Yourself

Where’s it all coming from? It’s all coming from the subconscious and it’s pretty interesting when you think about this stuff. It can get a little spooky because you start to realize how little of yourself and your behaviors in your life you actually control. A lot of it, so much of it is delegated. You’re like the CEO of this massive organization of trillions of cells that are in your body doing all this stuff and on one hand it’s kind of spooky that all this stuff is happening without your attention being put on it. On the other hand it’s kind of cool because it gives you the freedom to now take that conscious awareness and focus on the stuff that you want to focus it on.

I think that’s the trick to being successful in life also and be really good at personal development is figuring out where are you going to put that conscious focus that you’ve got. Those resources that you have, where are you going to put those? Are you going to spend that on worrying about potential problems? Are you going to spend that on fear? Are going to spend that on anxiety?

Are you going to spend that on gossip that’s going round the office? Are you going to spend it on frivolous, shallow, pointless, negative kind of thoughts or are you going to focus that on creativity and basically creating the kind of life that you want? On creating the kind of business or career or fitness or whatever it is that you want to improve and focusing on that and feeding your mind with valuable information that it can use to then produce the kind of results that you want? Ultimately when you do it enough it all bubbles down to the subconscious and you become awesome.

That’s something that nobody can come take away from you because the conscious stuff, if you’re nervous, if you’re scared, that’s something that when you’re performing, if you’re trying to keep a couple of points in mind there’s only a couple that you can keep in there. You can’t give a good performance when you’re trying to keep it all there consciously, but if you train and train and train and train, you can go out there and effortlessly give an amazing performance unconsciously, be in the flow, enjoy it and people are going to be really satisfied with the kind of results that you deliver.

Wrap Up

Anyways, that’s it. This is the topic of how to delegate from your conscious to the subconscious. Trust that the delegation process will happen if you use repetition to drill it into your mind.