How to Reprogram Your Subconscious Mind

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. If you're out there and you love this podcast, just do me a favor, share it with someone that you know. Reason why is because if every single person share this with someone that they knew today, it would then double the size of the podcast, it would double the impact, and hopefully double the change that we're making in the world. So if you enjoy this podcast, I'm sure you know someone else who would enjoy it as well.

0:35Today, I'm gonna be talking about how to reprogram your subconscious mind. and our minds work in very similar ways to sophisticated computers. Our minds and computers operate basically on a set of programs. If you go into Best Buy today and you buy a computer, you usually buy a computer with very few programs in it. You get the hardware, but then usually you have to decide what software you want to download. Same thing happens with your phone, right? Like if you wanna use your phone, you might have a phone, you go into Apple, you buy your phone, but then you've got to download Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp and whatever else you might want to use.

1:14And so if you look at a computer, the computer needs programs to work. If you want to do PowerPoint, that's a program. If you want to play music, you need Spotify. Everything that you use on your computer is some sort of different program. And our brains work exactly the same way. Our brains are extremely complex, probably a million times more complex the computers and far more advanced than any man-made computers that have ever existed. But the way that they operate is very similar principles. So like a computer, our brain requires the programming to function really well or effectively in this world.

1:56And so, you know, when you buy a computer, it doesn't really perform the stuff that you want to straight out of the out of the box. And so you need to download those things. And when you're born into this world, you don't really function in this world exactly as an adult would. The human brain, especially in early childhood development stages, requires installation of a lot of programs. Like one of the things that was really, really odd to me, and I'd even know this, and I don't think most people do until they have the first child, is that children will come out and they obviously need to breastfeed to stay alive.

2:30And a majority of children, like babies, actually need to be taught how to latch so that they can breastfeed. That was something I never thought of. That's like the very first app that we need to install into a human, into a baby, is this is how you latch so that you can breastfeed. And so it starts that way, and then it goes and there's millions and millions and millions of programs that we kind of download into our children and were downloaded it into us in childhood. And they really change the way that we interact with the world and what happens. And so, you know, for me, I think it's really cool because for years I've been studying early childhood development and humans.

3:10And I talk to adults that tell me what their childhood was like. And I start to see how patterns exist and where, oh, I see why you're acting this way because your mom treated you this way when you were a kid. And it's cool for me because when my son got here, he was basically like a computer with no programs built into him. He was just a full-on clean slate. Most of his programs that are going to go into him in the very beginning stage of his life are directly from my wife and myself and how we're going to interact with him. But it's also going to be how he sees us doing things and how we interact with the world, are going to install new programs.

3:49You know, it's interesting that we taught him to blow kisses one time. Like this is blow kiss. Boom. Now he just blows kisses to everybody, right? And so it's like, oh, we installed that program. I remember one time my wife was off to the left and he was staring at me and I was trying to get him to point it. I was trying to get him to look at her. So I'm pointing to the left and I'm pointing with my finger and he's staring at me because he has no idea what the hell that means. And I'm like, oh my God, even the program of pointing and turning your head to know what pointing is has not been installed yet.

4:21And so kids will not always, they'll do what they're taught, but they'll also become who you are and what they see in you as well, which makes you realize that we became who we are by millions of things that our parents taught us and millions of things that we saw our parents do. You know, And so then he went from breastfeeding to eating solid food to walking and moving and trying to start talking, all of these things. And he's also going to learn how to treat himself through us. He's going to learn how to speak through us. He's going to learn how to act when he is challenged through us. Every single program that determines his thoughts, his behaviors, ultimately where his life ends up are probably going to come from myself and my wife.

5:06Oh, that's stressful, right? What a big undertaking. but it makes you realize how you became who you are as well. You know, from zero to seven years old is where we were the most programmable and where children the most programmable. It's a point in time where our brains are in what's called theta state. And theta state is basically very similar to the state of hypnosis. Easily, easily, easily programmable. It blows my mind how fast he can pick things up. And so what are your programs? Have you ever thought about that for a second? You've got millions of programs that you learned before. And these things that are so, the interesting part about these types of programs is they're not even just stored in your memory.

5:44They're stored in your implicit memory, which makes you believe that they are absolute truth, like the foundation of the universe. And so we have these things like, you've probably heard from your parents, like money's hard to come by. Children are meant to be seen, not heard. In order to get rich, you have to screw people over. Money doesn't grow on trees. Do you realize that you're not worthy or not lovable or not good enough in some sort of way? And the hard thing about your programs is that, like I said, they basically run unconsciously. So we don't even need to think about them. And so sometimes they're kind of hard to find because the reason why it's called subconscious, it's running under the conscious mind.

6:24Unless we consciously take a step back and intentionally look at our lives and decide to self-assess. The first thing we need to do to really understand this and I need to teach is the difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. So I've got to dive into the two of these. So the conscious mind is located in your prefrontal cortex just behind your forehead. It's about 5 % of your brain and your thinking throughout the day. It's responsible for creative thinking, for decision making, for reasoning. It's the driver of your thoughts. It's basically, you know, using your desires and your goals to in your programs to navigate through life in some sort of way.

7:03But it's very, very limited and it can only focus on one thing at a time. And so that's 5 % of your brain, your conscious mind. That's the one that says, I want to build a multi-million dollar business. And then you have your subconscious mind that's like, yeah, but money, you have to screw people over. You're not good enough. You're not smart enough. And it kind of sabotages you. It's where self-sabotage comes from. It's your conscious mind battling your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind now is approximately 95 % of your brain. It stores all your habits, your memories, your acquired behaviors.

7:35These are basically your quote unquote programs. You ever do something and you're like, oh my God, that was basically my mom. That was a program right there. That was a program that was just built in. It functions on autopilot. That's how the subconscious works. It takes over routines and tasks when the conscious mind is preoccupied in some sort of way. Autopilot mode, basically what the subconscious does, allows us to perform like really complex actions like driving a car without having to consciously think about every single step that's involved in driving the car. You know, you ever like drive home from work and then you get home from work and you're like, I don't even really remember driving home.

8:16Yeah, because your subconscious completely took over. You were your conscious mind was too busy thinking about work or something else. You ever blow up on someone and you think, oh, shit, I shouldn't have said that. Subconscious mind. That's an autopilot moment as well. So when we're not actively focusing on the present moment, like right here, right now, our subconscious mind tends to take over and it runs these pre-installed programs. And you could be the interesting thing about it. And I've been thinking this a lot lately is you could be a completely different person for the rest of your life in this moment if you could bring 100 % of your presence to every single moment.

8:51Because you're bringing 100 % of your brain power, your conscious mind to this moment and not allowing any programs to run. It's too heavy of a cognitive task to do that. And you know, you think about it, if you were to just sit there and think and be able to take a different action, a different thought, a different behavior to head a different direction, the direction that you want to in your life, then you could be a completely different person. Otherwise, what happens? The autopilot, the programs are going to take over. Now we think change takes a lot of time. Change doesn't really take any time.

9:25It happens immediately, but it requires full conscious, really present attention to do so. And so when you look at these programs, why do we create these programs? Subconscious programs are automatic. It allows our brain basically just to conserve tons of energy. Our brain, even though it's only about 2 % of our body weight, it consumes about 20 % of our energy throughout the entire day. And so our brain creates habits and programs to conserve lots of energy for us. Conscious thought requires a ton of energy. And so when we build these programs, it's really more than anything else. It's a way of conserving energy so that we don't have to waste all of our energy just on really complex thinking in the moment.

10:07And so, you know, many of these programs that we have, they're ingrained in us in early childhood and they tend to be, they can be, some of them are really good. I don't want you to think that they're not like, some of you guys had really great loving parents and you learn how to love and how to have compassion and how to be nice to people and how to have empathy. Those are all really good things. But some of them, some of them are self-sabotaging. Some of them are disempowering. Some of them have limiting beliefs. Some of them have some fears that are very unreasonable. Some of the thoughts are I'm not good enough or smart enough or lovable or I don't deserve happiness or I don't deserve success or I'm afraid of failure or I don't deserve love.

10:43And so, you know, there are so many different subconscious programmings that keep us stuck in place. And you can consciously want a better life with 5 % of your mind. You can consciously want to make more money, more success, more happiness, more love, more joy. But if you have subconscious programmings that are in the way that you're not actively trying to work through, they're going to stop you completely. You have no chance unless you're consciously trying to be different whenever you're getting across those. If you notice the programming, you're like, I'm going to change now. Here's the programming.

11:16I'm going to change now. I'm going to programming. I'm going to change now. If you don't notice them, the subconscious is going to hold you back every single time. You can consciously want to be happy. 5%. 95%, you don't deserve happiness. You're a bad person. whatever it might be that comes from your childhood. Everything's your fault. I've seen so many different flavors of fears or limiting beliefs that hold people back. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. The reason why I'm going through all this because it's really hard to change and reprogram yourself if you don't understand how it works.

11:48It's really hard to program a computer or get a virus out of a computer if you don't understand how the computer works in the first place. And so what I want to talk about is recognizing and then also changing your subconscious programs. You know, given that many of our most fundamental programs are established before we're ever even conscious of them, recognizing and altering them can be challenging. Like this is a lifelong pursuit, if I'm being honest with you. It's not something you're just going to do in the next week, next four hours. It's a lifelong pursuit. and the example I love to give of like what I think of when I think of subconscious programming or patterns is the story of like the two younger fish that are swimming through the water and the older fish is passing them and coming from a different direction he looks the older fish looks at the two younger fish and he says wow the water's really nice today isn't it and keeps swimming and then the two younger fish a little bit later on go look at each other and they go what's water it's like that's how it is like it's so present and it's been so present it's it's stored so deeply in your implicit memory that you don't even know that you're in water.

12:54You don't even know that you're in subconscious programmings. So that's why it's really a lifelong pursuit of putting a mirror in front of yourself and starting to learn who you are and trying to change yourself. But if you're going to change, you have to really bring, like you really got to do the work to become more aware of your programs that are holding you back and how to actually change them. So let's talk about now that you understand how the whole thing works, and I hope I've given you a good description so that you can understand it. Now let me teach you how to actually the step-by-step process to reprogram yourself.

13:24Okay. The first thing, which I think is the most important thing, I think is probably, yeah, I would say probably the most important thing that a human can do is self-observation. Like watch yourself as if you're just somebody from the outside looking in, you know, pay attention to patterns, start looking for patterns that you do. When somebody says this to me, I act this way. You know, why is it, why is it that I get mad every time somebody says something that makes me feel like I'm stupid? Well, why do I feel like I'm stupid? Well, I don't feel like I can do things. Why do I feel like I can't do things?

13:56Well, I remember when I was younger and I used to do my math problems. My mom used to come in and do my math problems for me. And that made me feel like I was stupid. So that was the very first time that I felt like I wasn't able to do something. So now whenever somebody talks down to me, it makes me feel triggered, brings me back to that moment when I was a child. And now, oh, that's why I'm triggered in that moment. Not because of this person, but because of the relationship of my mom doing things for me and overstepping her boundaries when I was trying to paint or trying to do my math problems, whatever it might have been.

14:24And it's like, you start to notice, and this isn't something that you get really good at right away, but you start to notice patterns and then you start to make connections. But it comes down to more than anything else, self-observation. These patterns will start to reveal unconscious patterns, like unconscious programs, these ways that you're triggered, like triggering, being triggered is one of the most important moments of your life of changing yourself because you can notice where you're getting stuck. If you're triggered somewhere, you're stuck at some point in time in your past. You know, you start noticing your automatic thoughts.

14:57You start noticing your automatic feelings and movements and all of that. And then so what you do is you start to really go through it and you have self-observation. The second thing that you do is you start to identify these limiting beliefs and you start to identify these fears that are a story running in the back of your head. I always say that it's like ice cream, but everybody's got different flavors. What I mean by that is I've never met somebody whose core feeling in their life is I'm not enough. Never, not once. 15 years of talking about this and working through this, it always comes back to some feeling of I'm not enough.

15:42But and that's like the ice cream, but it's all these different flavors. I'm not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough. I don't deserve love. I don't deserve success. I'll never be rich, whatever it might be. There's so many different flavors of this. So it's like, oh, that person has ice cream. That person's flavor is chocolate. That person's flavor is strawberry. That person's favor is rocky road. And so you've got to start to identify your limiting beliefs because the only thing that's holding you back in your entire life is your belief of yourself. And so what you want to do is as you start to have this self-observation, is you start to find areas of your life where you feel stuck or you struggle.

16:19These are often indicators of limiting beliefs at play. And then what I want you to do is as you start to become aware of your limiting beliefs, I want you to realize that if you become aware of a limiting belief, it's basically like you've been on one side of the debate your entire life. What I want you to do is debate yourself out loud, on paper, whatever it is you need to do, where if you find like I'm unlovable is your core wound, the core story that's running in the back of your head. I want you to go to the other side of the debate table and I want you to debate yourself of why you are lovable.

16:54I don't deserve success, might be it. Okay, well, I want you to write down why you deserve success. I don't trust myself. Well, I want you to write down and debate everything that you've done in your life that has shown you how you're trustworthy in some sort of way. What you're doing is, in cognitive behavioral therapy, it's called questioning the validity of your thoughts. You're literally sitting down and trying to prove that your thoughts are not valid so that they can start, the limiting beliefs can start to dissolve themselves. Majority of the time, your thoughts are not correct. Oh my God, what?

17:28I'm not right all the time. No, you just think they are because you've been thinking them for so long. And for so long you've been thinking them that you believe they're actual fact. And so that's the second thing is you need to actually start identifying those limiting beliefs. The third thing is you need to reframe those negative thoughts or those limiting beliefs. In psychology, this is called cognitive restructuring. You want to challenge and reframe your negative thoughts and beliefs and replace them with the empowering ones that you want. Or if you say, I'm not worthy of success. Well, I want you to challenge that thought.

18:05I want you to reframe that thought. And I want you to start repeating affirmations to yourself that are the exact opposite of that thought. Because that thought, once again, it's just something that you've been thinking for so long that you think that it's true. Well, then if that's the case, well, then I want to play a different song in my head so much that eventually I start to think that it's true. And the way you do that is through step number four, which is affirmations. Affirmations are just basically you saying something to yourself where you're trying to brainwash yourself. Like you're brainwashed, we're all brainwashed in many different ways.

18:36You're brainwashed to believe your fears and your limiting beliefs. You want to brainwash yourself to believing something completely different, you know? And what you really want to do is think about this. Like if you, There's a really important thing that I think is that people really need to understand is that a belief is just a thought that's repeated so many times that you believe it. And so if I have this old limiting belief, it's just a thought that I've had so many times that I've just been repeating it that now I think that it's true. Well, that's the case. What if I just repeated something different, a different thought, eventually, if I did it long enough, I'd start believing it.

19:15And so that's what affirmations come down to. And the number five is I want you to set clear intentions, like define clear specific goals and intentions of what you're trying to do here. Like visualize achieving the goal of feeling like you're finally worthy, finally successful, and what it would look like to get to the point of success or get to the point of being lovable or get to the point of, you know, if you think that you're unlovable, get to the point of getting married and having somebody love you as much as you want to be loved and be able to love them as much as you want. And when you visualize these types of things, you start to align your subconscious mind to your conscious desires.

19:58And so you're brainwashing yourself basically by what you say to yourself through your affirmations and you're brainwashing yourself at the same time by what you're visualizing in your mind at every single moment. That's really what it comes down to. And if you do this enough and it requires, I'm telling you, it's not going to happen overnight. It's not going to happen next couple weeks. It's not going to happen in the next year fully. It's as a, you know, it's over the course of your life, but you start to dissolve all of your old limiting fears and beliefs as you work through them. And so really what it comes down to is, okay, we're all brainwashed in some sort of way, not good or bad.

20:32We've just been brainwashed by everything that we've seen our parents do, how they've spoken to us, what we've seen in the world. Now I am, let's say you're 35 years old. Now I'm 35 years old. I hope I live for another 60 years. I hope you live till you're 95 years old. And if you do, you've got 60 more years. How do I want to brainwash myself from this moment forward to be a different person completely for the next 60 years? And you do that and you start to brainwash yourself. And over time, what you do is you reprogram your subconscious mind completely. So that's what I got for you for today's episode.

21:04If you love this episode, once again, please share it somewhere. Put on your Instagram stories. tag me at Rob Dahl Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you love this type of stuff, I actually have an entire course that dives deep into this, how to deprogram and reprogram yourself, how to set habits, how to set intentions, how to achieve your goals, how to set up dopamine reward systems so that you can deprogram yourself, reprogram yourself, and create the life that you want. If you'll learn more about it, go to coachwithrob.com. Once again, coachwithrob.com. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode.

21:34Make it your mission to somebody else's day better i appreciate you and i hope that you have an amazing day