Where do your thoughts come from? Why do you think the way you do?
Can you change your thoughts? And, if so, what could this do for your life?
It’s no secret that our dominant thinking habits significantly impact our lives.1
Yet, most people are woefully unaware of how deep this impact runs and the potential benefits of changing their thinking habits.
We think our way into just about every scenario in our lives. Before you do almost anything, you think about it first.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a small daily task, like eating lunch (“I’m hungry…I’m going to eat lunch”) or a big life decision (“I’m going to accept this job offer”). Whether we’re aware of it or not, we think our way into pretty much everything.
People love to complain and blame others for how their lives turn out, but if you were to trace the exact path that got them into those circumstances, you would see that it was their own thinking that put them there.
They made a series of decisions that put them in that circumstance. Each of those decisions was preceded by a thought produced in their mind.
As my mom likes to say, “When you point a finger at others, there’s three pointing back at you.”
People blame others for circumstances they got themselves into. They just have no clue it was the power of their own thinking that put them there, and it’s the power of changing their thinking that can help them get where they want to go.
I’ve been reading about (and putting into practice) the power of thought since I got into personal development in 2011. I’ve experimented with countless techniques to change my thinking. Some of them worked well. Others didn’t.
After years of experimentation working on my thinking habits, I developed a simple concept that can help anyone understand how their thoughts work and how to change them.
It’s called The Tree of Thought.
Here’s the core concept:
By changing the roots, you can change the fruits. By changing your thinking habits, you can change your life experience.
The Tree of Thought is a simple framework to help you understand how this process works and what to do. You can use it to uplift any area of your life.
In this article, you will learn:
- What The Tree of Thought is and how it works.
- Where your thoughts come from.
- How your thoughts impact your life.
- And how to change your thinking habits to uplift yourself and your life.
I’ve also created a simple exercise at the end so you can put everything you learn into practice.
Let’s dive in.
Table of Contents
What Is The Tree of Thought?
I want you to imagine a tree for a moment.
When most people visualize a tree, this is what they see. They see the trunk, the branches, and the leaves – everything above the surface.
We’re prone to focus on what we can perceive with our five physical senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch). Yet, what’s happening beneath the surface affects everything we see above it.
What we see above the surface is a reflection of what’s happening underneath.
Beneath the surface of the earth are the tree’s roots. The roots take in nutrients from the earth to nourish the tree. The roots then become the trunk, the trunk becomes the branches, and the branches become the leaves.
The leaves are the end result of everything else going on in the tree.
The healthier the roots, the healthier the trunk. The healthier the trunk, the healthier the branches. And the healthier the branches, the healthier the leaves. It’s its own ecosystem.
Now, what if the tree’s roots weren’t so strong? What if they were weak? What would happen to the tree?
No matter how much sunlight, water, and nutrients the tree had available, if the roots were weak, the rest of the tree would weaken as well.
It all comes down to the roots – to what’s happening beneath the surface. What’s happening beneath the surface affects everything above it.
Our thoughts (and our lives) work the same way.
The Tree of Thought has four parts (the same as a physical tree). They are:
- The Roots.
- The Trunk.
- The Branches.
- The Leaves.
Each of these parts represents a different aspect of our thoughts, where they come from, and how they impact our lives.
The Roots are our subconscious conditioning.
The Trunk is our dominant thought patterns (which come from our subconscious conditioning).
The Branches are our conscious thoughts (which are influenced by our dominant thought patterns and subconscious conditioning).
The Leaves are the result of our conscious thinking (how our thoughts impact our lives).
When most people look at their lives, they focus on The Leaves. They focus on the results they can see.
Since they don’t understand that what they can’t see is impacting what they can, they try to change The Leaves themselves.
When they struggle to do this (because you can’t change The Leaves by changing The Leaves), they start blaming other people, thinking that their results in life were determined by someone else.
They blame their parents, their bosses, their spouse, their friends, their kids, the government, the media, the teacher who yelled at them in 2nd grade – anyone besides themselves.
You cannot change The Leaves by blaming other trees, no matter how much you think they stole your light or overshadowed you.
If you want a tree to be healthy and happy, it starts with the roots.
With strong roots, the tree can thrive. With weak roots, it doesn’t matter what you do to the leaves, the tree will struggle.
To change the results of your thinking, you must change the roots of it. You must get to the source of that thinking, let go of what isn’t helping you, and nurture new roots with a stronger foundation.
No matter how overshadowed you may feel by other trees, if you strengthen your roots, you will eventually grow so tall that no other tree could ever overshadow you again.
You have the power to change your roots, your fruits, and your life.
Where Our Thoughts Come From
Despite some scientists estimating that we think thousands of thoughts per day, thoughts are incredibly enigmatic.2
What are they? Where do they come from? Like the roots of a tree beneath the surface of the earth, we cannot see, smell, hear, taste, or touch them.
Yet, we experience thousands of them each day. Surely, we should understand something eight billion of us experience constantly…
However, the science behind the origin of our thoughts is still hotly debated.3
Do our thoughts originate in the brain? What about the neural networks in other parts of the body? How does telepathy work? Do we sometimes pick up on the thoughts of others? What about intuition? Collective consciousness?
I won’t attempt to draw any definitive scientific conclusions here, but I will tell you what I’ve learned from my own research and experience.
Conscious and Subconscious: The Two Parts of The Mind
Our minds essentially have two parts – the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.
The conscious mind is where all of our conscious thinking happens. It’s also the seat of our conscious awareness.
For example, as long as you are not zoned out right now, you’re using your conscious mind to read this. You are consciously aware that you are reading this article. That’s your conscious mind in action.
When you realize that you’re hungry and decide to eat lunch, you’re using your conscious mind. When you’re trying to solve a problem, you’re also using your conscious mind.
On the other hand, the subconscious mind is where all of our emotions, past experiences, memories, beliefs, and habits are stored.
Your emotional reactions to life come from programming in your subconscious mind. When something pisses you off and you react, that reaction comes from your subconscious programming. When you calm yourself down and choose to respond more harmoniously, that decision comes from your conscious mind.
When you suddenly remember something funny from your childhood and decide to tell your friends about it, that memory is stored in your subconscious mind.
Trauma from the past is also stored in the subconscious mind, along with all of our beliefs about life, ourselves, and the universe (whether those beliefs are true, helpful to us, or not).
All of the things we do without thinking are also stored in the subconscious mind.
Our daily habits, like brushing our teeth, are programmed into the subconscious mind so we can use our conscious mind to focus on more important things (like who to start in fantasy football this week).
Both parts of our minds – conscious and subconscious – serve important functions. But what’s most important to understand is how much each part directs our lives as a whole.
How Our Thoughts Impact Our Lives
Here are a few questions for you:
Do you believe your life is mostly directed by your conscious thoughts, your subconscious programming, or both equally?
Are you consciously directing your life most of the time? Or are you acting primarily based on habits, emotions, and past experiences?
Neuroscientists estimate that somewhere between 80-95% of our lives are directed by our subconscious conditioning. This means that 80-95% of how our lives turn out is based on our habitual programming.4 5
Most of us think we’re going around making conscious decisions about everything. Yet, most of those conscious decisions are made from subconscious conditioning that the vast majority of us are completely unaware of.
Most people have no clue that the reason they consciously chose their career is because they subconsciously feared their parents’ disapproval growing up and remained programmed to act in alignment with that approval as an adult.
Most people have no clue that the reason they have so many negative health habits is because of past traumas still programmed into their subconscious mind that they haven’t dealt with yet.
Most people have no clue that the reason they’re insecure and needy in their dating life is because they’re subconsciously programmed not to value themselves highly enough (this was me before I got into personal development in college and started working on my subconscious programming).
Just about every persistent problem in a person’s life can be traced back to some type of subconscious conditioning. The same goes for persistent positive experiences a person has.
The better someone’s life is, the more harmonious their subconscious conditioning is.
You know those people who just breeze through life? Everything comes easily to them in part because their subconscious conditioning allows for it. They don’t have a bunch of mental and emotional blocks that would otherwise get in the way.
You probably have things that come easily to you and things that don’t. There are probably parts of your life that are harmonious and healthy and parts that are not.
The parts of your life that are harmonious and healthy come from the parts of your subconscious mind that reflect that. Your emotions, habits, memories, and beliefs related to that area of life are harmonious, so that area of your life is too.
The parts of your life that aren’t so harmonious and healthy come from the parts of your subconscious mind that reflect that, as well. Your emotions, habits, memories, and beliefs related to that area of life aren’t so harmonious, so that area of your life isn’t either.
Once again, the roots create the fruits. What you cannot see (your subconscious conditioning) has a deep impact on what you can see (the results in your life).
How Conscious Thought Directs Our Lives
But what about the 5-20% of conscious thought that directs our lives? How does that work?
I believe that those who are at a lower level of overall consciousness use less conscious thought to direct their lives and are more influenced by their subconscious programming.
While those who are at a higher level of consciousness use more conscious thought to direct their lives and are less influenced by their subconscious programming.
Here’s what I mean:
People who are at a lower level of consciousness direct their lives using their conscious minds perhaps only 5-10% of the time. The rest of the time, they act based purely on their emotions, habits, and pre-programmed beliefs.
These people are the easily influenced masses – the people who are easy to rile up, easy to induce fear into, easy to predict, easy to manipulate.
They fight when they’re told to fight. They hate who they’re told to hate. They love who they’re told to love.
They buy what they’re told to buy. They care about what they’re told to care about. They do what their religion tells them to do.
They believe what the media tells them to believe. They do what their friends and family do. They do not think for themselves.
They are reactionary.
People who are at a higher level of consciousness direct their lives using their conscious minds maybe 10-20% of the time.
These are the people who think for themselves. They educate themselves before believing something blindly. They question common narratives and try to see both sides of an argument.
They seek truth rather than conformity. They make decisions that are authentic and aligned with what they want in life, regardless of whether other people approve of them or not.
They question their own beliefs and make conscious decisions to change their beliefs if they’re not supportive anymore. They’re aware of their subconscious conditioning and take steps to change it if need be.
Their personalities are fluid and flexible, and they feel empowered and in control of their lives regardless of what the outside world may suggest.
As you can see, there is a big difference – a potentially life-changing difference.
If you’re someone who’s at a lower level of consciousness (you use your conscious mind less), you may still lead a wonderful and harmonious life if your subconscious conditioning is also wonderful and harmonious.
But if you’re someone who’s at a lower level of consciousness, and your subconscious conditioning is not harmonious, you will probably lead a difficult life, you will have no clue why, and you will have no clue how to change it, which will lead you to complain and blame others for everything.
If you’re someone who’s at a higher level of consciousness (you use your conscious mind more), and your subconscious programming is harmonious, you will probably lead a wonderful life and be fully aware of it.
Finally, if you’re someone who’s at a higher level of consciousness, and your subconscious conditioning is not harmonious, you’ll be able to do something about it, change your conditioning, and bring your life into harmony.
(In case you were wondering what level of consciousness you’re at, the fact that you chose to read this article indicates you’re probably at a higher level of consciousness and are in the process of raising it further.)
Is this an easy task? Most of the time, changing your subconscious conditioning is not easy or quick, but it’s necessary.
You cannot fight your subconscious conditioning. You cannot force new conditioning into it, either. Trust me, I tried.
You must work with your subconscious conditioning, train it gradually, and teach it over time.
This is personal growth in a nutshell.
A Real-Life Example of The Tree of Thought
Now that we’ve covered the foundation, let’s circle things back around.
The roots create the fruits. Our subconscious conditioning leads to most of our results in life, whether we’re at a high level of consciousness or not.
Our subconscious conditioning becomes our dominant thought patterns. Our dominant thought patterns lead to our conscious thoughts. And the combination of those has a significant impact on how our lives turn out.
The roots become the trunk, the trunk becomes the branches, and the branches become the leaves.
So to change the fruits (The Leaves), we need to work on the roots.
It does us no good trying to change the results by working on the results themselves. That’s like injecting nutrients into the fruit of a dying apple tree.
If the roots are dehydrated and malnourished, it doesn’t matter how many nutrients you inject into the fruits, the tree will die. But if you revitalize the roots, the tree will recover and thrive.
When it comes to our thinking habits, the roots are our subconscious conditioning. Our subconscious conditioning is a combination of our programmed emotions, beliefs, memories, and habits about ourselves, others, and life itself.
When you change your subconscious conditioning, you change everything else.
Changes in your subconscious conditioning cause changes in your dominant thought patterns, which change your conscious thoughts and how your life unfolds.
You feel different emotions, think different thoughts, make different decisions, and take different actions – all of which create different results in the area(s) of life related to that subconscious conditioning.
Here’s a real example from my life:
Since I was a senior in college, I wanted to be a professional blogger writing about personal development (one of my top passions in life).
I saw people like Mark Manson and, later, James Clear making careers as pro bloggers writing about what they were most passionate about, and I wanted to do the same thing.
But right from the beginning after graduating college and starting my first online business, I thought I had to make money doing other things first before doing what I really wanted to do.
I thought that making a living as a blogger might take me a long time and that other options would be faster. When I was making enough money doing something else, I would write for my blog until I was making enough money from it to stop doing those other things and do what I wanted to do full-time.
Because of these thoughts – these beliefs – I started a business as a freelance writer writing articles for marketing agencies. The work was draining and boring – nothing like writing for my own blog would’ve been.
The article topics were low-quality content designed to help my clients’ clients rank in Google. I didn’t care about this stuff at all and it felt like a waste of my writing talent.
I was making some money, but I quickly burned out.
So I decided to start offering digital marketing services instead. I got some results for a website I’d put together, created a case study, pitched a bunch of marketing agencies, and got my first clients.
I worked with digital marketing clients for the next 4 years, always thinking that once I was making enough money, I would start my blog and do what I really wanted to do.
But for most of that time, I never felt like I was making enough money. Even when I reached a point where I was, I was so tired from my work that I didn’t have the energy to start my blog.
Four years after graduating, I still hadn’t started doing what I really wanted to do. However, after that fourth year, I managed to achieve one of my biggest goals and dreams up to that point.
One of the reasons I decided to start an online business was because I wanted to live the digital nomad lifestyle traveling around the world, and the first place I wanted to go was Thailand.
In August of 2018, I flew to Thailand and lived and traveled around Southeast Asia for ten months. It was a dream come true, but I was still trying to figure my work stuff out.
I stopped working with digital marketing clients because I was tired of it, I was doing a little bit of freelance writing to make money, and I was working on an affiliate blog about drones that I planned to get ranked in Google and earn passive/recurring income from.
Then, once that blog was making enough, I would start my personal development blog and have enough time and energy to make it successful while my drone blog helped me cover my expenses in the meantime.
I’m sure you can guess where this is headed…
I worked on that blog for years. It took a year and a half to get to a point where it was making consistent income, which would have given me the time/energy to do what I really wanted to do. But, as timing would have it, that moment coincided with the beginning of my healing journey.
This healing journey took over my life. I didn’t have the energy to work on that blog anymore. Gradually, the income from it declined and disappeared.
When I made it far enough in my healing journey and had the energy to work again, I was essentially back at square one – six years after graduating college.
And you know what I did? Did I start my personal development blog, finally, after six years of my plan to “do other things first” didn’t work?
Nope! I started day trading the foreign exchange markets!
Because, once again, I felt like I had to make money doing something else first before doing what I really wanted to do.
Did forex trading work out? No, it did not.
After this, I finally threw my hands up, fed up and exasperated from years of trying to make things work with minimal success and never really doing what I wanted to do most.
Finally, I asked myself and the universe…
“If this isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing, what is it? What is my actual purpose?!”
Shortly afterward, I sat down and asked myself some important questions about what I felt I was really meant to do, what I loved, what I was best at, and how I wanted to serve the world.
Immediately, I came back to the thing that had been with me all along – writing.
Not freelance writing for BS marketing agency clients. Not writing about drones – which I couldn’t care less about – just to make passive income so I can do what I really wanted to do.
But writing about what I care about most and what I love. Writing from my heart and starting the blog I’d been dreaming of since I was a senior in college.
The blog you are reading right now.
Did I start writing consistently after I had that revelation? Nope, once again, I didn’t.
I was concerned about how I would make money (noticing a subconscious pattern here?). So I wrote a few articles, but then I diverted my attention to creating a course and writing a book so I would have products to sell.
Once again, even after the course was finished, I felt writing would take too long to attract students, so I tried running ads instead.
Then I felt like the course wasn’t the right approach, so I created a membership site and tried to sell that.
Then I felt like the course was the right approach again and revamped it with 10 more hours of content and made it much better, which took about 9 months. And, for most of that time, I stopped writing.
Again and again and again and again, I put things ahead of doing what I wanted to do most because I thought I had to do other things first to succeed.
Again and again and again and again, those other things either didn’t work or I got so tired and burned out from them that I didn’t have the energy to start my blog anyway.
Years after graduating college, and after much self-reflection, I finally realized all of these things consciously.
I realized that one of the main reasons I hadn’t done what I wanted to do for so long was because of this single piece of subconscious programming – believing that I needed to do other things to make money first, instead of doing what I really wanted to do.
My subconscious programming was: “What I want to do will take a long time, so I need to do other things first to make money. Then I’ll do what I really want to do.”
This subconscious programming led to dominant thought patterns about putting off what I wanted to do. I constantly imagined it as something in the future instead of the present.
These dominant thought patterns led to conscious thoughts of me looking for other ways to make money that I thought would be faster.
But either I didn’t get to a place where I felt like I was making enough money from these other avenues to justify starting my blog, or I was too drained from doing this other unsatisfying and unfulfilling work to start it.
So I didn’t do what I really wanted to do for 10 years.
Even now, as I write this article, I can feel that old programming come up. I can feel those old feelings that I felt 10 years ago. I can feel that urge within me to do something else first to make money before devoting time and energy to doing what I really want to do.
But I’m not the same person I was back then. I’m not at the same level of consciousness I was at back then.
I am aware that those roots – that old subconscious conditioning – does not help me. It has not helped me from the very beginning. In fact, this conditioning postponed my dream for far too long, and I’m not letting it do that any longer.
Using my conscious mind, I choose to ignore that subconscious conditioning and introduce new programming.
I choose to write anyway, despite those old thoughts and feelings. I choose to believe that I can succeed quickly at what makes me happy and what I believe I’m meant to do in life.
I choose to write about what I love, what makes me the happiest, and create the impact I believe I’m meant to make on the world.
I choose new thoughts, new feelings, new actions, and new results.
I choose new roots to create the fruits I wanted all along.
Related: How to Be a Life-Changing Force: 10 Tips to Change The World
The Fallacy of The Logical Path
Most people would have agreed that I chose the more logical approach when I first got started.
To make money quickly from something like freelance writing or digital marketing services. Then, once those are going, focus my efforts on the thing I really wanted to do, which might take longer to turn into sustainable income.
That makes logical sense.
The thing is, 10 years later, this didn’t happen. This logic did not pan out.
And, maybe, if I’d just done what I really wanted to do and stuck with it, it probably would have taken much less than 10 years to succeed at it.
This seemingly “illogical” path might have been the most logical one from the beginning. My subconscious conditioning was inaccurate – disconnected from reality – despite seeming to be the most logical route.
Here’s the lesson I learned from this:
It’s often the illogical path, the one that runs counter to our subconscious conditioning, the one that most people would not understand, that is probably the fastest and most direct route to the dream.
Perhaps this is the reason so few act on their most heartfelt dreams and desires. The paths toward them don’t seem logical, but when it comes to living your happiest, most fulfilling life, the illogical path is usually the most direct.
Can you fail at what makes you happy? Of course. But you can fail at what doesn’t make you happy, as well.
You can succeed at what doesn’t make you happy, and you can succeed at what does.
So…what’s the conclusion?
What I’ve learned is that you might as well do what makes you happy, no matter how illogical it may seem at first, because it’s probably the most direct path to fulfilling your heart’s desires.
And whether you act on those desires or not comes down to what you think about the choices you have and how they might turn out.
So let’s start learning how to change and improve your thinking habits so you can think, feel, and act in alignment with what you want most in life.
Related: The Action Formula
How to Change Your Thinking Habits
The intention here is not to try to become a perfect thinker right away. The intention is to empower yourself to become a better thinker and improve over time.
Our focus is on the roots – your subconscious conditioning. Once you change that, everything else changes.
You don’t need to worry about your dominant thought patterns, conscious thoughts, or results. All of that will change by changing your subconscious conditioning.
I’ve used what I’m about to teach you to become a confident person, to love myself more, to reduce and eliminate social anxiety, to harmonize my relationships with others, to improve my self-image, to overcome my fears, to take action on my goals and dreams, and much more.
Almost every aspect of my personal growth over the last 10+ years has involved some type of subconscious reprogramming. It’s one of the first things I learned in personal development, and I still use it to this day.
There are many ways to reprogram your subconscious conditioning. People have developed interesting techniques that claim to help you reprogram your subconscious mind quickly and effectively.
I’ve tried many of these techniques and most of them did not work well for me, even for the deeper programming.
So while other people may recommend them, I cannot. If you’re curious (because they might work for you), here is a short list to start with:
- Tapping/EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)
- NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming)
- Hypnotherapy
- PSYCH-K
- The Silva Method
Feel free to research any that interest you.
However, what I’m going to teach you is the slow and gradual method of changing your subconscious conditioning. This is the one that worked for me from the beginning with no side effects.
It’s simply a gradual process of becoming aware of your unwanted conditioning, letting go of it, and introducing new programming.
Here’s the process:
Three Steps to Change Your Subconscious Conditioning
- Become aware of the subconscious conditioning that isn’t helping you.
- Let go of it.
- Choose new thoughts, perspectives, and actions.
Step 1: Become aware of the subconscious conditioning that isn’t helping you
To let go of the conditioning that isn’t helping you and replace it with new programming, first, you need to become aware of it. You cannot let go of what you are not aware of.
Part of the reason why it took me so long to start writing for this blog is because it took me a long time to become aware of the conditioning that was blocking this action.
Once I became aware of it, I was able to act despite it from a higher place of consciousness and start changing that programming.
The subconscious conditioning I’ve been able to change quickly over the years are the parts I became aware of quickly.
For example, early in my journey, I became aware of how I was putting girls on a pedestal and how this was messing up my dating life. I became aware of this programming quickly, I started working on it, and, in a relatively short time, my dating life improved dramatically.
To become aware of the subconscious conditioning that isn’t helping you, I recommend practicing and training your metacognition.
Metacognition is a psychological term for becoming aware of and understanding your own thought processes.
Essentially, it means paying attention to what you are thinking on a regular basis.
We think thousands of thoughts per day, so no one expects you to pay attention to all of them.
However, one of the easiest ways to practice metacognition is to pay attention to how you are feeling on a regular basis. How you feel is connected to the thoughts you’re thinking.
If you don’t feel good, it’s probably because you’re thinking thoughts that don’t make you feel good. If you feel good, it’s probably because you’re thinking thoughts that make you feel good.
So when you feel an emotion, immediately pay attention to the thoughts you’re thinking in that moment. Then ask yourself, “Why am I thinking these thoughts?”
For example, when I was working on my dating life, sometimes I would feel insecure. Then I would pause and ask myself, “Why am I feeling insecure right now?”
Often, it was because I was undervaluing myself. I wasn’t thinking confident thoughts about myself. I wasn’t thinking self-loving thoughts. I was thinking that I was “less than,” which made me feel less confident and more insecure.
Becoming aware of my insecure feelings and the thoughts that led to them helped me start shifting those thoughts.
Over time, this changed how I felt, how I acted, and the entire nature of my dating life. In fact, it changed my whole social life for the better.
So step 1 is to pay attention to your feelings and the thoughts that produce them. You can even write them down in a journal once per day.
Then identify the thoughts that aren’t serving you – the thoughts that aren’t helping you be who you want to be and experience what you want to experience in life.
These thoughts will be a combination of subconscious beliefs, habits, memories, and emotions related to the area of life you’re working on.
Step 2: Let go of the subconscious conditioning that isn’t helping you
Next, it’s time to start letting go of that unwanted conditioning.
Sometimes, all you need to do is shed light on it and it will start to fade away naturally. Simply becoming aware of the thoughts that aren’t helping you will start the letting-go process.
However, sometimes that conditioning runs too deep to be let go of quickly. That’s okay. You can let go of it over time.
To let go of unwanted conditioning, you must become aware of it when it comes up either in the moment or shortly after. Then, consciously affirm to yourself that you are letting go of that old programming.
Thinking something like this can do wonders:
“I am letting go of this old programming because it’s not serving me anymore. I’m letting go of this way of thinking and being. This is part of the old me. This is not the new me I’m becoming.”
This gives your subconscious mind an instruction to start letting go of this unwanted conditioning and make space for new conditioning to replace it.
Do this every time you become aware of unwanted conditioning when it comes up.
Again, a journaling practice is one of the most effective ways to become fully aware of your unwanted subconscious conditioning and start letting it go.
Step 3: Choose new thoughts, perspectives, and actions
Similar to a bad habit, if you let go of unwanted conditioning but do not replace it with something better, it may come back or get replaced by new unwanted conditioning.
That’s why the last step is to introduce new conditioning to replace the old.
“New conditioning” just means new thoughts, perspectives, and actions that will empower you and align with what you want.
For example, let’s say every time I feel like I should be doing something else instead of writing, and I become aware of that feeling, I close my eyes for a second and affirm to myself that I’m letting go of that old programming because it’s not serving me.
I affirm that it’s part of the old me and not the new me I’m becoming.
Then, I introduce new thoughts and perspectives to replace the old programming. I may affirm something like this:
“I can succeed quickly at what I love and what I want to do most. I trust that writing is part of the path of my highest happiness and fulfillment. I trust that doing what I want to do is the most direct path to getting where I want to go. This is part of the new me I’m becoming.”
Immediately, I feel those old feelings fade away. They get replaced with new feelings of confidence and empowerment, and I start to feel better.
Then, I act in alignment with those new feelings by doing what I want to do – I write.
This new action helps solidify the new programming because it’s congruent with it. If I were to try to introduce new programming but keep taking the old action, that incongruence might create a block.
Taking new actions that are aligned with your new programming creates congruence in your subconscious mind. This helps your new programming enter much more harmoniously and easily.
If you do this every time you feel that old programming come up, you will recondition your subconscious mind.
Whether this happens quickly or not depends on the nature of the programming and how deep it is. Some programming also changes slowly because the process is part of a larger spiritual or personal growth journey.
No matter how quickly your programming changes, these three steps are simple and they work over time with no potentially adverse effects (in my experience).
However, the really deep stuff, like deep traumas, can require more than this. Therapy, coaching, or one of the techniques I mentioned earlier might be more effective.
But the majority of unwanted programming can be reprogrammed using this simple process of becoming aware of it, consciously letting it go, and introducing new programming.
No matter what you do, I recommend doing your research, don’t rush it, and don’t try to force it. I’ve tried to force new programming in before and it can backfire.
Reprogram your subconsious mind in a harmonious way – gradually, over time – and you will reap the rewards.
The Tree of Thought Exercise (Put This Into Practice)
Here’s an exercise to help you put everything you’ve learned in this article into practice:
First, create a note on your phone or get a physical journal you can carry with you.
Then, once a day, write down your answers to these question prompts:
- How did I feel today (or yesterday)?
- Why did I feel that way?
- What thoughts led to the way I felt?
- What subconscious conditioning may have influenced these thoughts?
- Is this subconscious conditioning helping me?
- If not, how could I start letting it go?
- What new, supportive subconscious conditioning could I introduce?
- What is an affirmation I could say to myself to let go of the old conditioning that isn’t helping me and introduce the new conditioning that will?
Then simply practice your metacognition (becoming aware of your thought patterns), and whenever the old conditioning comes up, pause and say your new affirmation to let go of it and introduce new programming.
Do this consistently over time, and that is the whole process in a nutshell.
The roots become the trunk. The trunk becomes the branches. And the branches become the leaves.
Change your roots, and you will change your fruits and your life experience one leaf at a time.
Footnotes
- Stanford researchers explore how the human mind shapes reality – Stanford Report
- How Many Thoughts Do You Have Each Day? And Other Things to Think About – Healthline
- How the brain builds new thoughts – The Harvard Gazette
- The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton
- Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza
