A Subconscious Life is NOT Worth Living

Thoughts generate emotions and emotion further fuels the thought patterns that caused them in the first place. With dysfunctional and unrealistic beliefs about your ‘self,’ this circulating vortex is often difficult to disengage, because we live through and for emotion and without emotion we would be nothing more than robotic automatons ruled exclusively by cognition (thought) alone. We wish to engage specific emotions, such as pleasure, love, satisfaction, contentment, etc. These are the emotions through which we measure happiness. 

Hence, we seek to avoid negative painful emotions as this is contrary to our goals of happiness or experiencing only pleasurable emotions. Such avoidance only reinforces the chronicity and reinforcement of painful emotions and your continually growing desire to avoid. This can become a circular hell.

All emotion is based in thought and thought is always a direct result of belief. Thought content which you do not believe, you do not think about except to consider as unbelievable or absurd. Belief directs your preferences and values because it is what you find important in life and worth having or achieving. It also filters your interpretations of the world, others and your ‘self.’

Yet, negative dysfunctional beliefs, pressed down into the subconscious, can obstruct from emotions of happiness. You were indoctrinated into many of these belief systems through childhood.

For instance, if you were taught by your father, whom you loved and respected, that all women were poor drivers, if not reinterpreted later this could influence your interaction with women. If you were to witness an auto accident involving both a man and woman driver, you might report to the police the woman was at fault. Even if this were not actually the case, your belief system would effectively filter our realistic actualities, which simply would not be processed by the mind. Beliefs influence thoughts and thoughts tailor our perceptions and interpretations of reality. In fact, our interpretations and perceptions ARE thoughts.

If you were taught in childhood that in many ways you simply were “not smart enough,” if not eventually seen as irrational and unrealistic, this evaluative belief about yourself might automatically tailor how you interact with others and the world. You might avoid those you evaluate as smart or you might avoid accepting jobs that required thinking abilities you considered beyond your childhood indoctrinated self-assessment. You might avoid reading books or engaging in any activities that involved more complicated thought processes, because you considered yourself "not smart enough." You might avoid seeking higher education or starting a business, because you believed you were "not smart enough." You might even find yourself resenting others from an interpretation that they are smarter than you and this could even result in outward conflict with others. You might find yourself always asserting that you are right as a means of compensating for your belief of “not being smart enough,” resulting in frequent unnecessary arguments and conflict with those you care for. You might find yourself avoiding mistakes at all costs, thereby, increasing psychological stress levels, in order that others not see that you’re “not smart enough” and every mistake made merely binds you further to your irrational belief about yourself.

From any one unrealistic self-evaluative belief numerous other beliefs and actions are hinged and originate. These kinds of core beliefs, which evolve over many years, no longer remain in consciousness, but quietly settle into the subconscious mind from where it wreaks havoc on conscious thought processes. You do not need to be conscious of a belief, such as “I am not smart enough” for it to impair your life seemingly from the sidelines. Yet, in order to change that belief it must be brought into consciousness and seen as irrational and maladaptive.

In this way our beliefs literally construct our world by filtering out data that would demonstrate the utter irrationality of many of our maladaptive behaviors which stem from dysfunctional thoughts based on unrealistic belief systems. Human egos are repetitive in functioning and repetition is always a product of core beliefs about your ‘self,’ others and the world.

Examine the patterns of your life for the subconscious material they represent. Recognize the dysfunctional nature of old worn out self-evaluations and replace with new more realistic beliefs. It will take time to replace dysfunctional core beliefs, but surprisingly less time than it took to construct them in the first place.