Over the last handful of years, I’ve come to appreciate that most human behavior is not decided at a conscious level, but at an unconscious one. To borrow from Robert Cialdini, we operate according to unconscious scripts, often without realizing what we’re doing. It’s classic, animalistic stimulus and response. “click, whirrrr….” It’s instinct. It’s emotion.
And really, our capacity for human consciousness, accompanied by language, clear thinking, and reasoned decision making is a pretty new thing evolutionarily (they don’t call it the neo-cortex for nothing). So, most of how we operate is not so different the way that animals do. And why not? We have an incredibly powerful processing machine in our subconscious. It’s incredibly efficient, if a bit irrational at times, and often lets us operate at a much higher level than we could if we had to consciously think through each of our mundane actions.
And that’s what gets us into trouble. Although the unconscious mind is linked to peak-performance, conviction, and energy, it frequently defies conscious control. Indeed, we often “wake up” in the middle of an action, or at the end, without a clear recollection of what led us there or even our decision to start. We take for granted the idea that such impulses are simply, “who we are,” immutable. But that’s where things get interesting.
As Brad Pendergraft told me in our conversation, we have the ability to interrupt and redirect these scripts. Interruptions, or “waking up” in the middle of such scripts ought to be praised and celebrated, and thereby encouraged to reocurr. We can recode our unconscious mind to deliver behaviors that are beneficial for us over the long term, even if the initial temptation is to pursue short-term reward without thought to consequences.
While Brad recommends celebrating every time you “wake up” in the middle or at the end of an undesirable script, there are many other ways of training the subconscious. One is through affirmations, where you write out 10-15 times a day, some goal you want to orient your unconscious mind towards. Another is through “the law of attraction,” advocated by Napoleon Hill in his book, “Think and Grow Rich,” where you religiously follow a series of steps in order to cultivate a burning desire and “magnetize” your mind to attract all the necessary resources for its fulfillment. Other people might recommend prayer or meditation. You might even post key words or phrases around your environment to train your mind to incorporate them. Lastly, therapy and hypnosis seem to be effective, as do any forms of reflection where you make conscious your unconscious scripts, edit them, and return them to your subconscious.
My working model for human behavior goes something like this: Emotions influence our actions, actions influence our thoughts, and thoughts influence our emotions. The only level we can consciously intervene at, though, is the level of our conscious thoughts. Everything else is decided by the unconscious mind.
It’s an interesting thing that we can choose how to feel (in advance, or after the fact, though rarely in the moment) with the understanding that our emotions will predispose us to act in certain ways down the road. And often, we can strip our emotions of their impulsive power by elevating them to the level of conscious thought, by understanding WHY we feel the way we feel.
The stories we tell ourselves also give instructions to our minds for which emotions to experience. Conscious gratitude practices lead us to feel luckier, happier, and abundant. Gratitude highlights the multitude of wonderful opportunities all around us. Conversely, we can always find reasons to feel bitter, cheated, and persecuted. Focusing on these things may actually lead us to dangerously seek out experiences that confirm our beliefs. Confirmation, after all, gives us a little dopamine treat. We love being right.
Essentially, our unconscious mind is like that of any other animal. It can be trained with proper incentives and rewards, but left to its own devices will grow lazy and feral. Treat your unconscious as you would treat a dog. Assume it sees behavior and reward in the same, immediate fashion. Stimulus, response. Stimulus, response. That’s the way it interacts with the world. So you have to create your own rewards sometimes. Tell yourself, “Good dog! Nice work!” for tasks that are desirable, but which lack their own immediate, intrinsic reward. Likewise, when you fall short, praise yourself for all the good things you did, because punishing yourself for critical reflection will prevent you from doing more of the same in the future.
I’ll leave it at this, as I learned in my conversation with Brad, if your dog runs away, you don’t beat it when it finally comes back to you. You reward it for coming back so it will come back again and again.