I want to start off by telling you some things about your brain that you might not currently know.
There’s this experiment, where lab mice where conditioned in a certain way. A bell would ring, then the mice would get an electrical shock. I know, a lot of you right now are thinking that this is unethical, and I agree with you, the experiment is not very recent, but stay with me for just a minute here.
The shock experiment was conducted on the lab mice for a period of time until they gave birth to newborn mice. Those newborn mice were also exposed to the electrical shock experiment. Same thing happened again, they kept receiving electrical shocks after a bell rings until this second generation of lab mice gave birth to a third generation of lab mice. The third generation of mice had the same experiment conducted on them as well until they gave birth to the fourth generation of lab mice. Here’s where it gets interesting. The fourth generation of lab mice were not exposed to the electrical shock treatment. They never heard the bell, and they never get electrical shocks. However, when they heard the bell rings, they flinched. Let that sink in for a second. How is that even possible?
This experiment shed the light on a fascinating scientific concept called epigenetic memory. A huge part of our memory is encoded in our genes throughout our lives. When we pass on those genes by the act of procreation, we pass on the epigenetic memory print that we have. You hold within you, the memory of all your previous ancestors, and you have access to it as well.
Let’s me tell you a little bit more here…
Our conscious brain processes information at around 120 bits of information a second. So on an average basis, this is our processing capacity. However, research have found, that our processing capacity, as limited as it seems, can go up to 11,000,000 bits of information a second. Ben Stewart gave a metaphor for us to really see the difference saying: “ Just imagine the difference between winning 120$ and winning 11 million dollars, that’s the difference we’re talking about.”
Let me give you one more mind blowing fact.
There are some individuals, who had serious brain injuries, they had one entire hemisphere of their brain removed. So we’re talking about almost half of their brain that’s still operating. Those people, with half a brain, were able to live a normal life. They went to school, they graduated, they worked, they dated, they loved, as if nothing happened. This is all thanks to a neurological process called neuroplasticity.
Now that you fundamentally understand the true potential of the human brain, let’s dive into our question: Do we only use 10% of our brain capacity?
We need first off to distinguish the conscious brain from the subconscious brain.
Prakhar Verma, in his article on negative thinking, mentioned that according to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive thoughts.
Eva Gutierrez, in another blog post mentioned that: In Bruce Lipton’s book, The Biology of Belief, he talks about how the first six years of a child’s life program their subconscious mind. After those first six years, children use their subconscious mind to live their everyday life. They learn not to run into the street, to hold their parents hand in crowds and to listen when their parent says no. Another major point of Lipton’s book was that adults are acting from their subconscious mind 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time our conscious mind is helping us navigate through our day. This means that we are spending 95% of our time acting from the beliefs we acquired as children.
I want you to read the previous paragraph again, and let that sink in.
In your daily life, 95% of all your thoughts, beliefs, habits, actions, thought patterns, emotions, and feelings you experience are guided by your subconscious brain. What’s even worse, is that we are not aware of this subconscious guidance because our conscious brain is constantly focused on creating the perceptual image of the world we live in.
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Let me give you an example of how your subconscious brain can be influencing your present state. We all have thoughts programmed in our subconscious brain related to the concepts of personal wealth, income, and money. In a study done on lottery winners, researchers found that lottery winners are more likely to declare bankruptcy within three to five years. But how is that even possible? If you were to receive 1 million dollars right now, do you think that you might lose all of that money within 3 to 5 years? Right now, most of you are probably thinking that there is no way you would lose all that money in 3 to 5 years, however, your subconscious brain thinks otherwise. If you were conditioned to believe that in order for you to live an abundant life, you don’t need more than 4000$ a month, your subconscious brain will guide you and steer you in a way to earn 4000$ a month, even if you make more than that, your subconscious brain will steer you and guide you towards spending whatever extra income you got, to go back to the 4000$ a month.
When we talk about the conscious mind, we talk about the creative mind. When we talk about the subconscious mind, we talk about the habit mind.
Dr. Joe Dispenza in his series, Rewired, gives a very interesting metaphor to help us understand our brains better. Imagine you have a computer, and this computer of course has certain specifications when it comes to memory space, functioning speed, and utility capacity. If you were to download a professional video editing software on that computer, that surpasses its functioning capacity, what’s going to happen is that as soon as you open the software, it’s going to take a while for it to launch, and as you use it, it’s going to glitch, and run slowly, and you’ll have a very hard time working on it. Eventually, you end up closing the program, and deleting it, as you can’t operate on it using your current computer. Instead, you decide to download a basic software that your computer can actually handle, and you can finally edit your video, but it’s nowhere near as good as what you could’ve done if you were editing on the professional software.
The computer is the subconscious brain, and the creative video editing aspect, is your conscious brain. Just like your computer has a fixed capacity, your subconscious brain also has a capacity.
Now what created this capacity? Your thoughts, social influences, experiences, environment, beliefs…etc Are all factors that shaped the capacity of your subconscious brain.
Now if you have a goal, where you want to make 200,000$ in one year, the only thing standing between the goal setting process, and the goal achievement, is simply, your subconscious brain. If your computer is programmed to operate on a level where you can only make 50,000$ a year, it would be impossible to try and make 200,000$ a year. Your subconscious brain will create obstacles, doubt, negative thoughts, and detrimental behaviors to make sure that you don’t exceed that 50,000$. Why? Because your subconscious brain is your habit brain, and it is very hard to try and break a habit. Your subconscious brain will fight for its survival, whenever you set a goal that seems out of reach when it comes to your processing capacity, you will not be functioning properly.
This is exactly what happens when we set new year resolutions. Why is it, that more than 90% of the people who set new year resolutions would end up dropping them and quitting by January 14th? It’s because they were operating on a conscious level, and your conscious brain has a limited capacity. This is the first part of the answer. Yes, your conscious brain is indeed limited in its capacity, hence the myth that says we only use 10% of our brain capacity. When you set a goal and try to achieve it, what happens is that for the first 2–3 days, you are excited and motivated to achieve it. Even when you feel lazy, or tired, you gather the motivation you have and you keep working on achieving your goal. Nonetheless, your willpower is like a battery, and it gets drained. That’s why when people decide to go on a diet, they are way more likely to eat a large pizza at night in opposed to the healthy salad they had in the morning. It’s because when you wake up in the morning, your willpower’s battery is well charged, and ready to help you overcome temptation. But at night, when you used your willpower throughout the entire day, it gets drained, and your conscious brain can’t help you anymore.
This is where your subconscious brain would step in and throw you off the right track, into your old habits. However, if your subconscious brain was also wired based on a healthy diet, when your conscious brain fails to operate, your subconscious brain steps in, and takes care of the job.
You always use your brain’s capacity to its fullest, but what happens is, when there’s a contradiction between what you consciously want and what you subconsciously believe, then your brain capacity starts to become limited, as you are going through a fight with yourself.
If you want to use your brain’s capacity to its fullest, you need to make sure that your subconscious brain is working with you, not against you.