Episode 5 - How our Mind Works & Role of the Conscious and the Unconscious Mind

In this podcast, executive coaches Kylie Roberts and Mel Wombwell delve into the importance of understanding the conscious and unconscious mind for effective coaching and leadership.  

They emphasise how today's volatile world demands different, more meaningful definitions of success and the need for purpose-driven leaders. They explore the role of the conscious and unconscious mind in decision making, change and behavior and they delve deeply into their foundational concept, the 'Prime Directives of the Unconscious Mind', portraying it as a powerful tool that stores all memories, controls emotions and behavior, maintains instincts and generates habits amongst others.  

The podcast underlines how the unconscious mind responds to symbols, stories, metaphors, and pictures, and notes the importance of positive language as the unconscious mind does not process negatives and takes everything personally. 

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00:00 Introduction to SHIFT unlimited and the Podcast Series 

00:10 The New Normal and the Need for Change 

01:20 Exploring the Conscious and Unconscious Mind 

01:46 The Role of the Unconscious Mind in Decision Making 

04:30 Understanding the Prime Directives of the Unconscious Mind 

05:01 The Conscious and Unconscious Minds: A Deeper Dive 

07:15 The Power of the Unconscious Mind in Change and Learning 

08:27 The Unconscious Mind and Emotions 

09:45 The Unconscious Mind and Memory Organization 

10:27 The Unconscious Mind and Repressed Memories 

12:16 The Unconscious Mind and Body Control 

14:00 The Unconscious Mind and Moral Code 

18:37 The Unconscious Mind and Habit Formation 

23:20 The Unconscious Mind and Symbolic Interpretation 

25:43 The Unconscious Mind and Negative Processing 

27:38 Conclusion and Recap 

 Please find all images mentioned in this episode available HERE

Transcript

0:00

Hi, I'm Kylie Roberts and I'm Mel Womwell, and we are Shift Unlimited. We are both qualified executive coaches, coach supervisors, and trainers of NLP and coaching. The world is a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous place. Every day we wake up to a new surprise. Uncertainty is chronic. Instability is permanent. And disruption is common. This is the new normal. The game has changed. It's time to rip up the old rulebook. It's time to define success differently. A shift is happening. The shift is unlimited. We need leaders to live more purposeful lives and to lead more impactful businesses. In this podcast series, we will be doing a deeper dive into many facets of living and leading in this modern world from founder to scale up right through to leaders of global established organizations. We will explore how we can be more holistic and authentic as we connect more deeply with ourselves, our relationships with others, and the wider world. In this podcast series, we'll engage in conversation together on topics that support the modern leader. We have one wild, precious life to make change for good. And whilst change is daunting, so is staying the same. Let's begin.

kylie_4_01-22-2024_115248: 1:27

Hello everybody. Welcome to this episode. This episode explores our mind. We're going to delve into the role of the conscious and the unconscious mind and what happens when the two of those are out of rapport with each other. will also investigate much more thoroughly the prime directives of the unconscious mind. How they're valuable in coaching and leading. So we're going to focus a lot on understanding way the mind works. Mel, would you like to kick us off with taking a moment to explain why is this so relevant to us in coaching and leadership today?

Track 1: 2:08

Yes. Of. Think of ourselves as conscious and logical beings a lot of the time. And yet, research shows that generally we make most decisions based on our feelings, our core beliefs, our values, and these reside in the area of our unconscious mind. Also, as coaches, we are working with Clients or other people in our organization to help them to make the changes they want to get, the learnings they need and to maybe work on their behavior in certain situations, whether it's presenting or in conflict, and all learning behavior and change happens at an unconscious level. So our unconscious mind is responsible for change, behavior, and learning. We can think about change, but change only happens when we're really embodied it, when it's part of who we are. Our unconscious mind also creates the habits and patterns, the things we do on autopilot. And we do actually spend quite a bit of our lives on autopilot. So knowing and getting a good understanding of the unconscious minds just means we know what we're working with and we are more able to help people to understand why they may or may not be changing, why they may or may not be behaving the way they're did. You wanna add to this Kylie?

kylie_4_01-22-2024_115248: 3:33

I mean, you and I have spent a lot of years getting to know the unconscious mind and this is a great, topic for us. The unconscious mind. It controls our behavior. As you just said, Mel, like all learning behavior and change happens at an unconscious level often we will respond to a situation before we even consciously know what is what is going on. Like if you take, for example, your arm, it takes a lot of muscles for you to raise your arm from being beside your body to being straight in front of you. our unconscious mind that is moving our body. It's giving the instructions and making the movement. It's impossible for us to consciously engage one individual muscle at a time then consciously pull our arm up into that position. So when we understand that the unconscious mind is so powerful. It can be really powerful for us then to see what the directions, the unconscious mind is following. And these directions are what we call the prime directives of the unconscious mind. We're gonna talk a little bit about those. In this episode. Most decisions that we make are made at an unconscious level, and the more we understand how our unconscious mind works, the more we can understand how we make decisions. But also in coaching, we can coach others to understand how they make decisions and how they make transformation happen in their own lives. The two minds, the conscious and the unconscious are really quite different in how they function. So let's share a little bit more about the conscious and the unconscious minds and dig in a little bit more into this neuroscience. Mel, do you wanna pick up from there?

Track 1: 5:27

Absolutely, I'd love to. So the conscious mind is what we. Where the unconscious mind is more what we feel with we mentioned already in another episode. The conscious mind can pay attention to seven plus or minus two bits of information at any one time. The unconscious mind can pay attention to an an infinite number of things going on all at the same time. The conscious mind is narrow and laser-like in its focus, whereas the unconscious mind pay attention to everything all of the time. The conscious mind is also always asking questions and wants to know why. Where the unconscious mind knows why. It's kind of all knowing mentioned already. It's the conscious mind is very rational and logical, sensible, where the unconscious mind works more on gut feel and intuition and instinct. Few more things, then the conscious mind pays attention to the now. Whereas the unconscious mind stores all our memories. The conscious mind likes to give instruction. Actually, the unconscious mind loves to follow instruction. One to definitely be careful of, and the conscious mind uses linear sequential thinking, where the unconscious mind uses simultaneous multi-processing thinking all of the time. Or thinking of feeling, I should say. We mentioned already Milton Erickson, who was one of the people that Bandler and gda were researching, seeking to understand how they were so transformational. And he said once that the reason his patients suffered was because often their conscious mind was. So, for example, their conscious mind would be saying to do one thing and yet it would be doing something else. And so sending miscommunication to the unconscious mind and causing chaos. Did you wanna talk a bit more about the prime directives that you mentioned a moment ago? Kylie?

kylie_4_01-22-2024_115248: 7:27

so the prime directives are the directions that our unconscious mind follows. It's how our unconscious mind works naturally and automatically when we work with the unconscious mind. If we work in alignment with the prime directives, we can get the greatest results in the least amount of time and effort. And if we get really deep insight into the prime directives, it's like having an instruction manual for our mind, which is super cool. the first prime directive of the unconscious mind is that the unconscious mind stores all of our memories. In the 1950s, there was a neurosurgeon called Penfold who stimulated surgery patients during their surgery, so stimulated their brain whilst they were having surgery, and when he. this and the patients then came out of surgery, it was quite astonishing just that the patients could recall all of their lives in detail. So when we're in the right state, our memories become available to us. So the unconscious mind, the first prime directive is the unconscious mind does store all of our memories. The second one is that the unconscious mind is also the domain of our emotions. Mel just mentioned before, that this is the place of feeling. We are, we are feeling beings, so the unconscious mind is the domain of our emotions. We really love breaking down of the word emotion, that is energy in motion. So whenever we feel an emotion, it is our unconscious mind at play, and we should really learn to pay attention to the emotion we are experiencing, whether that be sadness or happiness or something else in between. So we can just become a lot more curious about the breadth and depth of the emotions that we have available to us.

Track 1: 9:23

Just picking up on that Kylie. An example of the conscious and the unconscious mind being outta rapport is when we are talking with clients and we say, how do you feel? How do you really feel? And sometimes clients will say, you know, I don't know. I cut off my feelings a long time ago. It's kind of like a severing of the connection between the conscious mind and unconscious. How that can affect us in a way that can make us unresourceful or less able to be empathetic or use our emotional intelligence. The third prime directive is that the unconscious mind organizes all of our memories. Some people, it organizes them sequentially. People can, where their memories organized sequentially. It's almost like they can recall very specific events and also what order those events happened in. My husband is a classic. He, he remembers so much more when we talk about things that have happened and I have a kind of cloud of a memory about it. I vaguely remember something about it. So the other way, our mind stores memories in what we call a gestalt, where it kind of clusters memories that are similar together and stores them in a file together. The fourth one is our unconscious mind represses memories with unresolved negative emotions. Why Represses means almost like puts it out of our mind, puts it in a box and closes the lid on it. It's unresolved because maybe we didn't have the resources to deal with the emotion that occurred in that part instance from our. It's something to know that it's always there and it will sometimes pop up as well. It represses it, but then sometimes decides now might be a good time to bring that unresolved negative emotion up to see whether they're ready to deal with it yet. So have you ever had those, those occasions where things pop up and you think, I'm not ready for you, that's an example of your unconscious mind deciding to show you a repressed memory.

kylie_4_01-22-2024_115248: 11:23

Yeah, so that is the next prime directive. So from time to time, your unconscious mind will represent a memory it to be resolved. So it will do that when it believes you're ready. Or when it wants you to resolve an emotion, take the learnings, letting go. it's not serving you anymore. So it wants you to let go of that unresolved memory, it doesn't always present it at the perfect time and the time that you want it to present it, it could come when you are least prepared. So that is something to be aware of, that the unconscious mind will just do that when consciously you might not feel prepared, but it's time this memory to be resolved. The sixth prime directive is that the unconscious mind keeps memories repressed to protect us. So imagine if all of your unresolved memories were open and present, we'd just be a complete mess. so it does keep them repressed at times purpose of protection and protecting us. The unconscious mind also runs our body, like we talked about before, raising an arm. Involves a lot of muscles. But the unconscious body the unconscious mind runs our body so that, you know, it keeps our heart beating. We don't consciously make our heart beat. That that happens. That's our unconscious mind. It's allowing us to breathe our lungs are breathing. We can consciously choose to inhale and exhale. When we're sleeping, not a conscious choice. And for most people, breathing is not something that they consciously do all day long, either. That is an unconsciously run process, We don't really have to stand. We are lucky enough actually as able, able-bodied humans to be able to just get up and walk without consciously thinking about it. So the unconscious mind is running our body. It's got a blueprint of our body in totally perfect health.

Track 1: 13:25

So the eighth prime directive is that the unconscious mind preserves your body. Kylie just said it has a blueprint for what your body should be like at all your various different ages. And so it's looking after your body. It's preserving it, it's doing everything it can to keep it safe. It's running your immune system and everything to fight off illnesses or to fight off infections that come to keep our bodies safe and well, it will. That's also the reason why it will repress emotions to keep our bodies safe and to keep emotional baggage from building up too much and causing injuries or causing us to have really tight shoulders. It also on the number nine, prime directive. Number nine is that it follows a moral code, and that's the moral code that you were taught and accepted as you were growing up. So between the age of zero and about seven, all we have is our unconscious mind. And so any beliefs or instructions that the people around us give us on what's right, what's wrong, how we should live our lives, how we shouldn't live our lives, we accept unconditionally because we can't filter it at that point, and then manual that our unconscious mind uses as our compass. On the straight and narrow, there's the expression, there's, there's amongst thieves. That's an example of the moral code that we

kylie_4_01-22-2024_115248: 14:56

Yeah, the piece that we just talked about there around, up until age seven, our unconscious mind absorbs everything. And that's much more at play than our con conscious mind has been really great to believe parenting young children, you know. Just being aware that they're taking in everything. They're absorbing absolutely everything around them. Just the tiny little things that maybe aren't so important to us. They are absorbing. You know, I've watched other, other children, not mine, become bilingual by the age of seven. There's all the unconscious mind because they're not consciously applying two different languages. It's just an unconscious learning process. Number 10 is that the unconscious mind wants to serve. It wants to follow instructions. Like Mel said at the beginning of this episode, it is the part of us that follows instructions. It's listening. And sometimes we don't consciously get what we want because we are inconsistent with the instructions that we're giving our unconscious mind. So Mel mentioned before that somebody might say they're fine, but shake their head no. So we might say some, we might have an answer for. Someone's like, would you like to do this? And we say, yes. shake our head, no. The unconscious mind is doing the shaking of the head no. it's following that in that instruction. So we need to be quite careful of the things the words that we say to ourselves and the messages that we're picking up on, and even the social media and the things that we're reading. the unconscious mind is always listening and it is ready to follow an instruction. The unconscious mind also receives. It's information from the five sensors, sensors, and it filters it and passes the remaining bits to the conscious mind, just like we saw in the NLP and coaching communications model. So all of the filters, distortions, and generalizations that Mel was talking about earlier, all of that in our unconscious mind. Number 12, Mel.

Track 1: 17:08

Yeah. I always smile when we talk about. The prime directive number 11. I remember someone talking to me once about a reticular activation system, which is almost like you tell your unconscious mind what you want it to pay attention to. And an example of of that was when you decide you wanna get a new car, for example, and you decide what model of car it is, and then suddenly you start seeing them everywhere. Or you decide you need a new fridge or a new product, and suddenly there's adverts for them everywhere. It's like your unconscious mind has said, oh, okay, so that's what I need to be feeding to the conscious mind. Prime Director number 12, responsible for the energy in your body. So it stores and redistributes energy where it's needed around your body. And it's, it is also depending on what energy it has available, is connected into. The resourceful state, unresourceful state. So if we haven't had a lot of sleep, for example, and there hasn't been much chance for the body to recharge, there's not a lot to distribute. So, which is why some mornings we can wake up and have lots of energy and other mornings if we haven't slept very well or we are jet, we can find that we're feeling lethargic. So when we do look after our body and we give it. All the resources it needs through sleep, good food, hydration using exercise to get rid of stress that's building up in our body. We give our unconscious mind so much more to work with, so much more energy in the reserve for it to distribute around. The Prime directive number 30 is also that it maintains our instincts and generates our habits. So when we are really connected into our body, and as Kylie said, yoga's brilliant for helping us to really connect into our body, when we really connect into our body, we suddenly notice that our instincts are much more available to us. I dunno if you found this as well, Kylie. When I started to do yoga suddenly it's like a, a whole new avenue of information had opened up to me and I could feel it when suddenly I sense something was wrong or I sense someone was looking at me and I turn around and someone would be there trying to get hold of my attention or something. So it's the domain of our instincts and also of. So if we want to lose a bad habit or generate a new good habit, we need to work with our unconscious mind and we'll talk about different ways that we can do that, so that we can build habits at that unconscious level. Did you wanna share Prime directive number 14? And we are getting nearly close to the end of our prime directives

kylie_4_01-22-2024_115248: 19:55

There is a lot of them. Prime directive number

Track 1: 19:58

Indeed.

kylie_4_01-22-2024_115248: 19:59

that the unconscious mind requires repetition for a new habit to be installed so we can visualize something happening. Actually something actually happening requires us to act as we talked about previously. So visualization is great. But practice is absolutely necessary for a new habit to be installed in our behaviors. For example, driving a car. If you think about it, we start off quite consciously learning to drive a car. I started off driving manual cars. There's three pedals. I've got two feet. I've got all these mirrors I need to look in and hands on the steering wheel. And so there's consciously, that was a lot for me to pay attention to, but I don't even think about it now. When I change a gear in the car, it's an unconscious habit around learning to drive a car. I mean, obviously I'm consciously looking in my mirrors and I'm consciously driving, but the act of all the pedals and the hands in the mirrors, that's now a, a habit that is definitely installed. So Mel and I were talking about this one the other day and we were reminding ourselves of the competence ladder. So you may remember the competence ladder. The competence ladder is where you've got down the bottom and the first step of of the competence ladder is unconscious incompetence. So we actually don't know that we're not very good at it. And then somebody gives us feedback. It says, actually you could be doing that better. And the next step up is that we are now consciously incompetent. So we're aware that we're not doing it as great as we could do. And then to make change happen, we have to consciously apply ourselves. And so that can feel quite clunky when our conscious mind is involved. It actually takes a lot of effort. And so the next step on the competence ladder is. competent. So we're consciously paying attention to doing things in a different way. But the more we do things consciously in that way, the more it becomes unconsciously competent, which is the final step on the competence ladder and the unconsciously competent is it's just happening now. It's a habit. It's fully installed. We don't even need to consciously think about it. Our unconscious mind has got it under control. So this is, this again, is. Practice is progress, which is a phrase that we absolutely love. Me and I, number 15, is that the unconscious li mind is a learning machine. It's continually seeking more and more wanting to learn. It's always striving, and that's just very empowering for us to believe and know as coaches and leaders. And number 16 is the unconscious mind works best as a whole integrated unit. So in life, sometimes things will occur where the mind and the body can become fragmented. So tra in trauma that can happen. we even say things like, I, I shut down, or lost myself. Or we might even say, a part of me this, a part of me that. With the unconscious mind, it works best as one whole integrated unit, and so when it is in rapport, it is a whole integrated unit. Number 17, Mel.

Track 1: 23:32

Yes. Number 17 is that our unconscious mind uses and responds well to symbols, stories, metaphors, and pictures. We said before that. The conscious mind is the domain of logic, which will probably respond well to data on words. The unconscious mind loves stories, symbols, and pictures. And so when we want to connect to a whole person, when we use stories, symbols, color, then we can really connect to the whole person, not just to, we can really engage and get interest with the unconscious mind and a connection with it. And that's why when we dream, when our conscious mind is switched off and it's our unconscious mind that's running the body and fully present, when we dream, we tend to dream in stories or images or video type form. Because that's the way our unconscious mind processes data and information. It also, number 18, takes everything personally. So whatever we think or say and a suggestion that we make it take. The way we talk about other people, it thinks we're talking about it. So we should be careful about saying negative things to other people because our unconscious mind is taking it very personally. If we say, I'm not very good at that, our unconscious mind says, oh, okay. That's an instruction not to be very good at something or any instruction like that. We. We the power of positive language and how when we say things positively, in fact, I'm not gonna go too much into, comes in a moment. Number 19 is the unconscious mind follows the path of least resistance. So it's always really important to give it very explicit instructions of what you want. So if you were to say something like, for example, if you set a goal, it's really important to put the date by when you want to achieve it because if if it's following the path of least resistance, we say, for example, I want to leave, lose two kilos. You'll say, oh, I can get round to that tomorrow. If we say I want to lose two kilos in the next eight weeks, then that's a bit more explicit. And it's giving a timeline to when something needs to be achieved by. Did you wanna talk about the the last one? We are at number 20, which is the final prime directive.

kylie_4_01-22-2024_115248: 25:59

prime directive of the unconscious mind is that the unconscious mind doesn't process negatives. I love this one. We play around with it at home as a family quite a lot, on the weekend we even play with it. It was like. Don't laugh, don't laugh. boys just started laughing because the unconscious mind cannot process the don't. all the unconscious mind heard was laugh and the boys started laughing. So likewise, if we were to ask you now to don't think of chocolate cake. In order to not think of chocolate cake, you have to think of chocolate cake, first of all, to then not to be able to think of it. Don't think of a blue tree. A blue tree comes into your mind first in order to then be able to take it out. Don't drop the plates. Mel, you've got an example of when Spencer was younger, one of your children was younger on this one.

Track 1: 27:03

Yes. Not one I'm proud of. Kylie. We'd been out as a family cycling and we'd been out for a long cycle ride and I was in the front, the, the children were in the middle and my husband was at the back and we were getting to a really windy bit of the road, and I, I said to the kids. Be careful, careful. There's a really windy bit of the road coming up. Don't fall off. And as I said it, I thought, oh, what have I just said behind me? I heard this crash and poor old Spencer who had heard the instruction had literally wobbled and fallen off at that precise moment.

kylie_4_01-22-2024_115248: 27:42

so the unconscious mind doesn't process negatives and will take the path of least resistance as well. So they are the 20 prime directives of the unconscious mind. And one of the key things to take away from this is that your every single cell in your body is eavesdropping. Your unconscious mind is listening, so always be sure to yourself well. Sometimes people will refer to the unconscious mind as the subconscious mind and in coaching, and NLP Mel and I will always refer to conscious mind and the unconscious mind, so they're the terminologies that we will use. We'll see you in the next episode.