"Our brain and mind pre-judge all of our new experiences based on our past experience
with similar things. We're all prejudiced; by virtue of the way our subconscious
mind works we're all guilty of profiling."
"It's a blessing because it means we do not have to reconfigure our data base every
morning when we wake up."
"The tendency to generalize from one experience to a new one causes and reinforces
every kind of habit."
Key Life Experiences
Affect the Subconscious
We gradually grow up and have all kinds of life experiences. Some of our life experiences
end up being key life experiences, or, "formative experiences." Even though everything
that happens to us probably has some influence on our development, some events stand
out much more strongly than others. They may be positive or negative. Many of them
we remember. Many others slip into the subconscious and may never surface again,
though their influence lives on.
These key experiences form clusters in the subconscious based on how closely they
resemble each other. In time, the mind begins mistaking them for each other, to
the point where one of them-or a composite of them-can come to stand for, symbolize,
or represent in the mind all the ones that are similar to it. The resulting "profile"-or
generalization-is then applied by the subconscious to subsequent experiences in
order to save you the trouble of assessing each situation one at a time. The intention
is to make your life easier by preventing unnecessary work and conflict and to protect
your well-being and ensure your survival. Our brain and mind pre-judge all of our
new experiences based on our past experience with similar things. We're all prejudiced;
by virtue of the way our subconscious mind works we're all guilty of profiling.
Though very useful in making sense of our world, profiling can get out of hand.
Remember that the subconscious is apt to confuse similar with same. The mind generalizes
from the particular to the universal. That's very useful; if you can drive one car
you can drive other cars. But when the mind over generalizes it can be a serious
problem. Many people's minds, for example, have learned to react to all men the
same way, just as if all men were in fact their father. Another person's mind may
have learned to react in exactly the same way to all dogs, as if all dogs were the
same dog that bit him when he was six. Still others react as if every storm is the
one that destroyed their house. This can be a major impediment in life.
Habits Keep Us in
Our Comfort
Zone
The tendency to generalize from one experience to a new one causes and reinforces
every kind of habit. We see from the foregoing that it can be a curse, but it can
also be a blessing. It's a blessing because, for one thing, it means we do not have
to reconfigure our data base every morning when we wake up. Fortunately we just
have to reboot.
While every morning is definitely not the same one, still it is helpful that our
mind reacts in important ways as if it were. For many of us the morning routine
is virtually identical anyway-at least on weekdays. When we awaken, our hard drive,
thankfully, has not been purged of all its data during the night while we were off
line. All our data, files, folders, programs and other software were not deleted
in our sleep. On the morning of each bright new day we have learned to trust that
the way our world works today will be the same as it was yesterday. We are lulled
and comforted by the trance of this predictable homogeneity. It soothes the subconscious.
It is no accident. It happens by design.
We have each learned to gravitate toward a personalized "comfort zone" of predictability,
wherein the highly protective subconscious mind can be reassured that we are safe
within our own personal "green zone." The subconscious is always looking after what
it understands to be our best interests. Each similar task-from the time we put
on our bunny slippers, make our coffee, shower and shave, remove the wet bunny slippers,
inhale breakfast, and drive to work in a trance-looks like the same one to the subconscious
mind. For many the work day is like that too. Our mind has learned how to perform
all the functions necessary for getting us up and off to work each day-and so much
more. These are some of our many habits. Our habits endeavor always to keep us in
our comfort zone. The mind likes that.
 | THINK RESPONSIBLY! |
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