Dr. James Surrell, Journal columnist

For many decades, psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical scientists have described two separate components of the human mind. These are referred to as the conscious and the subconscious mind. These two functions of the mind were first described by Dr. Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939). He often used the example of an iceberg to describe these two major aspects of the human mind. The tip of the iceberg that extends above the water represents the conscious mind. With this example, the conscious mind is just the “tip of the iceberg”, and beneath the water is the much larger functional part of the mind, the subconscious mind. Scientists agree that our subconscious mind does indeed have a very major influence on all aspects of our day to day living.

The conscious mind is what we use during our waking hours to properly function and make our personal decisions all day long. The conscious mind is our reasoning mind that responds to all that we receive every day from our senses, including what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. The conscious mind represents our state of awareness at any given point in time. When we go to sleep, it is only our conscious mind that goes to sleep. Be aware that our subconscious mind never sleeps.

Our conscious mind is what allows us to properly function every day. For example, we are driving down the road and we see a stop sign. Our conscious mind now tells our body to take our foot off the gas pedal, apply the brakes, stop the car, and look both ways before you continue. Of course, we are all exposed to many more complex situations every day. Our conscious mind evaluates every situation with regard to safety, potential positive or negative impact on ourselves and others, our desires, our previous experience, and then our conscious mind directs our body to take action.

Now, what is the role of our subconscious mind in our day to day living? It is very important to know that our subconscious mind accepts, without question, whatever the conscious mind gives to it. To illustrate this, we should think of our mind as a garden. The conscious mind is the gardener, and our conscious thoughts are the seeds of thought that we plant into our subconscious mind all day long. Like a garden, what we plant is what we will grow in the rich soil of our subconscious mind! We should not plant seeds of fear, uncertainties, doubts, and negative thoughts because our subconscious mind will go to great lengths to make all our seeds of thought come to pass. Therefore, we should always plant seeds of a positive attitude, peace, happiness, right actions, good will, and success. When we learn to give only positive thoughts to our subconscious mind, we will absolutely achieve positive results.

In my judgment, one of the greatest books ever written on this subject is entitled, “The Power of Your Subconscious Mind”, by Dr. Joseph Murphy. It contains a wealth of profound wisdom on how we can use our subconscious mind to very positively influence our day to day living. I highly recommend this book to make us all very aware of the power that each of us have to give only positive thoughts to our subconscious mind. This will absolutely lead to positive results and personal success.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Jim Surrell is the author of “The ABC’s For Success In All We Do” and the “SOS (Stop Only Sugar) Diet” books. Contact Dr. Surrell by email at sosdietdoc@gmail.com.