The mechanics of the human mind

Here we have a normal human being, going through life as usual.

In every moment of our lives, external events are happening and in each event, information reaches us through our 5 senses.

What we SEE, HEAR, FEEL, TASTE, and SMELL.

For example, you could be walking in a bakery and your 5 senses would pick up an immense amount of information. Everything that you can see, the different smells, sounds coming from the people, cashier, A/C or traffic outside, feeling the weight of your backpack on your shoulder, your heartbeat etc…

Now, what’s very important is that we receive way too much information for us to be able to process it consciously. 
We receive about 2 million bits of information from our 5 senses every moment. That is a gigantic number, considering that we can only consciously process only about 126bits of information at a time.

So here is what happens: we FILTER this huge amount of information from our 5 senses and it gets shrunk to about 126bits- what we can consciously process-.

This process of filtering is not happening randomly, and this is where it gets very interesting.

What our subconscious mind does is that it DELETE, DISTORT AND GENERALISE the 2 million bits of information based on our ‘conditioning’.

By conditioning, I mean everything that has contributed to making you who you are today. Your past experiences and memories, your self-image(how you see yourself), your beliefs about the world -people, money, sex.. -, what you value in life, and so on...

After all, we are a product of our environment. Where and how you grew up, where you went to school, what you went through, the teacher and friends you had, all contribute to who we have become today.

And this is when the magic happens. Based on those filters, we dramatically cut down the information that we consciously keep, and we create our ‘ internal representations ( the thoughts/the meaning)’ of the event that is happening.

And this is WHY we perceive those events differently than other people.

That’s the reason that a person can enter in that bakery and be like a kid on Xmas, while another person might barely show any enthusiasm at all.

We do not see the world as it is, but we see the world as we are.

The unconscious projection that we have polluted our conscious mind, however, we always have the ability at any moment to step back and become the observer of what is, and reframe the situation. ( more on that in a later post).

The process is not over yet.

As you can see on the far left of the diagram, there is 3 interlinked component.

On top, we have the ‘ Internal representations’ — the meaning of the outside event that we create, in other words, what we focus on, the thoughts that we have….

At the bottom, we have ‘ Physiology’ which refers to how we use our body at that moment — how we move, our posture, breathing, facial expression and so on.

And in the middle we have ‘ State’ — which refers to our emotional state- how you FEEL- happy, sad, depressed, excited, bored, freaking out, stressed…..

If you look carefully at the diagram above, you can see that BOTH, our ‘ internal representation ‘ and our ‘ physiology’- together combined- they create our ‘ emotional STATE’

In other words, if you either change your focus or your physiology it will directly affect how you FEEL.

And this is very important, because how you feel DRIVES your behaviour, how you act! ( last arrow ).

Every behaviour that you have is preceded by an emotion.

It’s no secret that when you are in a lousy state — such as sad, angry, frustrated, stressed — you act very differently than if you are in a beautiful state — happy, forgiving, compassionate….-.

This means that by changing how you FEEL you can change how you ACT. And to change how you feel, we can either change your focus(internal representation ) or your physiology.

And this is WHY we do what we do. How you act is based on a combination of those 3 elements.

If you change your emotional state by either changing your ‘Internal representation’ or your ‘ Physiology ‘ you will change the way you naturally act.

For now, I’d you to invite you to become aware of how you feel in your everyday life. Notice what emotions were there when you act in ways that you don’t like. 
Likewise, notice how you act when you are in a more empowered state. To become conscious of where you live emotionally is the first step to lasting change.

I truly hope that this post has helped you remove the clouds behind how your mind creates its reality and how it affects how you feel and what you do.

Until my next article be well.