“Alright,” we may say, “Now that I know what hypnosis is and I’m in it, what good is it?!” The ways in which the mind operates in its subconscious mode provide the answer.

It is instructive to note that our autonomic system is in the subconscious. That’s the system which tells our hearts to beat and our lungs to breathe. It is because of this we don’t have to think (conscious mind), “Oops! Gotta take a breath now!” or “Time for another heart beat!” Fortunately this is all taken care of by our subconscious—– automatically. Everything that is done for our benefit, originates here. Therefore should a hypnotist make an inappropriate suggestion of any kind, it would be rejected by the client.

A colleague of mine explains to his clients that if he should ask them in hypnosis to rob every bank in town and bring the money back to him, they wouldn’t do it. He points out that if this would work, he’d be a very wealthy hypnotherepist! Which he isn’t! Our subconscious always has our best interest as its main concern.

It does other things for us, too. We are bombarded by 60,000 stimuli per second every minute of our lives. In one minute we receive 3,600,000! One can only speculate what would happen if they would flood our consciousness! Especially when we know that our conscious mind can only be aware of five to seven pieces of information or “clumps” of information at a time. When it works with one of them that’s all it can handle-one thing at a time.

Emotions and the imagination reside in the subconscious. In an emotional state, we are motivated to proceed in the direction of what we are imagining. Emotion is the fuel of the subconscious while imagination is the language.

Habits by definition are those repetitive behaviors that you do “without thinking.” Thinking is a function of the conscious; everything else is in the subconscious. A habit is usually eliminated by replacing it with another. Some habits are easier to eliminate than others and if they are firmly held in the subconscious may require finding the causes and remove them.

The subconscious doesn’t “think” in the usual way; it reacts. And it can’t distinguish between reality and unreality; it absorbs all the information received through the senses as true – as real.

Generally speaking, if two or more emotions are in conflict, the dominate one wins out over the weaker; imagination wins out over will power; emotions win out over logic; the subconscious wins out over the conscious.

The subconscious can be your master or your greatest ally in your quest for success and self-improvement.