I don’t know how much any of you are familiar with computer coding. To do anything on the computer, there are pages & pages & pages of intricately detailed code, required for even the simplest of operations. One comma out of place, one forgotten bracket & it doesn’t work. Computer code is extremely specific, extremely fragile & is based on a series of IF/THEN conditional statements (or conditional logic). All done to offer you a glitch free experience.
If the code isn’t working we get a run error. Code perfection is often a case of trial & error. If an error is found, the code can be rewritten OR a work around can be added to address specific conditional situations. Once it runs glitch free it must be safely stored to run automatically & untouchable by the general public. Can you imagine the amount of effort that would be required if the entire code had to be rewritten everyday? Or if just anyone could come in & tinker with the code? An unmanageable nightmare resulting in the absolute uselessness of the object it’s trying to run.
Well your subconscious mind is exactly like that computer code. Do you have to remember every day how to walk? Eat? Not fall out of bed? For most of us the answer will be no. Those are processes that our subconscious has perfected & safely stored for us, out of reach.
Let me give you an example.
From the time my daughter was aged 3, until the time she was 9, we woke up every morning at 6:30am to get to school on time. One morning, my iPhone ran out of battery, we missed the alarm and – you guessed it – we were late. When she got there, her classmates were all astonished, because she’s usually error-free in everything (or at least that’s how they perceive her). They made such a big deal about it that she registered this situation as a massive system run error. Despite that for 2,190 days we were consistent in getting out the door on time – a percentage error of 0.0005% – her brain archived this moment as a system failure.
Two conclusions were drawn: first I was no longer reliable. For the next 6 months my daughter reminded me EVERY single night to set the alarm & charge the phone. Of course this met with my confusion – and frustration (as obviously this situation fed into a conditioned response of mine around failure). The second was that the fear of such a public visibility of her failures was not allowed. At home she “messes up” & doesn’t care. But when there is the possibility of it being observed by others she goes to tremendous lengths to avoid.
So this one system error ended up contaminating numerous areas of her life: she’s still obsessive about alarm clocks, but also obsessive about studying lest she not get the grade she believes others will expect, she asks to avoid recitals if she thinks she’s going to mess up her part, she avoids school dances if she thinks people will be surprised to see her. Her brain created an enormous blanket “IF I do that THEN I will receive unwanted feedback” workaround. This then leads to the creation of a core belief about ourselves – in this case – I must stick to the script of who people think I am – which affects so many of our daily behaviors.
We all have numerous of these situations. The founding incident would have occurred at a moment in our childhood where any possibility of objective reasoning would have been impossible. Meaning that there is/was no way to avoid this happening. Let’s call it a tool of evolution trying to make sure that the operational code for humans is always updated. But think about it…this is a seemingly insignificant event that lead to a system wide conclusion. But what if I did forget the alarm every night? Her conclusion that I was unreliable would be founded. How would that potentially affect the rest of her behavior?
But the mind does this also with emotional situations. It remembers an incident, what happened, whether the result was pleasant or not pleasant & draws an IF/THEN conclusion to store for the next time it presents itself. Can you imagine the kind of impact a single significant emotional trauma could potentially have? There are far greater ways we have conditioned our behavior, on a day to day basis, according to if/then conclusions drawn, without our conscious knowledge, which are outdated &, in certain cases, just plain false.
Next we’ll take a look how some of our behavioral conditioning leads back to even before we were born.
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