It’s not what you are that holds you back; it is what you think you are not.
– Denis Waitley
It’s important to understand that low self-worth isn’t just a feeling, it creates an entire mental atmosphere in which we live, and it defines the possibilities for our thoughts, and limits the solutions and actions that appear to be available to us. The difference between the wide perspective of love and the narrow point of view of worthlessness can be the difference between success and failure, and more importantly, the difference between joy and despair.
The first step to learning how to rehabilitate our relationship with ourselves is to understand how our beliefs work with our conscious and
subconscious minds. Broadly, there is a division in our minds between the conscious and the subconscious. The conscious mind is the seat of our awareness. It is the aspect of our minds that is “awake:” it is where we entertain all of our thoughts, opinions, and where we make our decisions. It also holds and has quick access to our short-term memory. When we remember to pick up milk on the way home from work, this is the conscious mind at work. When we decide we need or want to do something, it’s our conscious mind that controls and directs our movements. So when we need to call our friend, it’s the conscious mind that remembers and picks up the phone.
The subconscious, on the other hand, contains everything we are not currently aware of. It holds the memories that are more deeply ingrained than our short-term mental memos. The subconscious holds our oldest and most emotionally charged memories. It also contains all the memories and feelings we have repressed. These are the memories and emotions the conscious mind would find disruptive or too painful to face so they are
pushed into the subconscious mind where they lay dormant. This helps us function on a day-to- day basis without being constantly crippled by our old wounds, but as long as they remain unhealed, they are volatile and prone to creating defensive reactions and behaviors.
Language vs Emotion
The conscious mind is not directly aware of what’s in the subconscious mind. Partially, this is because the conscious mind is the domain of language: its thoughts are made of concrete words and images. The subconscious mind understands language, but it’s far less sophisticated linguistically than the conscious mind. It does not understand the abstract, symbolic potential of language, a and instead, takes our words literally. Neither does the subconscious mind perceive time in the same way as the conscious mind. For the subconscious, there is only the present moment. It has no concept of the past or the future: every thought and memory is happening now. This is because emotions are the language of the subconscious, so when you dwell on an old memory or daydream about something you’re
excited about, the subconscious reacts to your thoughts as if they are real and happening in the moment. Emotions are a strictly present phenomena. You may think about the past, but any emotion you experience is only felt right now.
We speak to the subconscious through our feelings, and its messages to the conscious mind are likewise often emotional. In addition, the subconscious hides a labyrinth of associations and emotional links: I’m sure you’ve had the experience of a certain smell conjuring a strangely specific, long forgotten memory, or an apparently random sound triggering a strong emotional reaction. This is how the subconscious mind makes itself known to us: through our instinctive reactions, emotions, and associations.
This is not to say we always understand the messages of the subconscious, but the subconscious does deeply affect us. When something in our lives brushes up against a memory, feeling, or belief buried deep within us, a rush of information becomes conscious, although we may not fully understand it. We