Have you ever started a new healthy eating plan on Monday morning to find yourself on Tuesday afternoon mentally agreeing that next week would actually be a better week to start?  Of course this enlightenment comes after you’ve devoured half your refrigerator while simultaneously attempting to ‘willpower’ yourself to walk away.  You then justify it was a bad day and you deserved a treat. What really caused your best laid plan fail? Welcome to the power of the subconscious mind.

Neuroscientist Dr. Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. found that “the subconscious mind processes some 20,000,000 stimuli per second while the conscious mind process 40 per second”.  This research and other scientific data asserts that only 1%-5% of our actions are driven by our conscious mind while 95%-99% of our actions are directed by our subconscious.  Guess which part of the brain willpower comes from?  Yep, the conscious mind that guides less than 5% of our actions.  It’s time to shed some light on one of the reasons you feel defeated at the end of a long day fighting the Goliath in your head, the overpowering subconscious mind.

If one considers the story of David and Goliath, it is assumed David will easily be defeated by the towering force of Goliath. This assumption is predicated on a traditional power fight using sword and armor, which undoubtedly would lead to David’s demise.  That is no different than expecting a person to successfully use willpower on a diet if the real reason they overeat is driven by the subconscious.  Willpower only has a 5% game in the fight, about the size of David against Goliath. The massive 95% subconscious bellows as a giant and says “I may not be hungry, but I am sad and the one thing that will make me feel better is cookies, because eating cookies with mom always made me feel better. So I win, because we’re now eating the cookies”.    What we don’t see in the subconscious/conscious battle is what the actual sword and armor is of the subconscious mind. That sword is called a habitual pattern and all it needs is a trigger to engage a fight. Yet, since we don’t consciously recognize the pattern in the moment, we can’t engage the right tools to fight and we justify that tomorrow is a better day to try.  Subconscious-1, Conscious-0.

Just as David couldn’t walk up to Goliath and slay him with brute force, we can’t expect the conscious mind to willpower its way over the subconscious mind.  David had to use unique skills and faith in a different approach to help him master the giant, just as we need unique skills to unlock the subconscious and correct any negative habitual patterns that are thwarting our own efforts to success.  Every person and leader has habitual subconscious patterns; the real challenge is knowing how to overcome the negative ones to unlock maximum potential success. At 6th Power™ we utilize the proven proprietary MindKinetics™ coaching techniques of CLI’s PCMK™ methodologies to do the following:

• Identify negative patterns and underlying root cause
• Release these patterns and establish a new personal belief system
• Embed the belief system into the subconscious to instill healthy new patterns
• Define a clear action plan to sustain the new belief system for ongoing success

These processes work for someone trying to succeed on a diet or for an executive leader trying to successfully overcome a fear of failure. Habitual patterns impact everyone. The negative patterns hold back our success if we can’t change them.

I am not just a coach of these techniques, but also a student.  I have helped clients unlock their own negative patterns but have also seen the power of these techniques personally in my life.  I’d love to help you slay your own Goliath and live your best life now.