How to Regain Control of Your Subconscious Steering Wheel
Most people are completely unaware of how much of the time their subconscious is driving the car each day…
It’s like giving the car keys to an 8 year old child. Now you may be thinking, “that’s ridiculous, I would never do that,” yet we do it constantly, oblivious to how asleep at the wheel we can be throughout each day. There is a part of ourselves that is tricking us into thinking we are alert and aware, but little clues reveal that we are not.
How many times have you been listening to the radio and missed a turn, or were talking on the phone and drove somewhere other than your destination, or looked down and were speeding because of an activating conversation you were in, or were making a shopping list in your head, or were thinking of other tasks or issues and weren’t focusing on the road? Maybe a disagreement with someone had you fixated on re-living that conversation, and you definitely were not paying attention to your surroundings? You were on auto-pilot, whether aware of it or not. This is called looping, and many people do it almost all of the time. They became fixated on something, obsessing on it, and that stopped all productivity and forward movement in their life. At that point they were headed for potential disaster.
When you look at it like that, it makes driving a car seem a lot more dangerous, doesn’t it? This is when accidents happen, in the blink of an eye. What we don’t realize is that we can apply these same scenarios to our personal world. When we are looping, fixated or checked out from any situation, bad things can happen. Our subconscious is taking us on a ride we are completely unaware of. We suddenly wake up to a mess in our lives and wonder how we got there.
As we become more conscious of our subconscious, we begin to understand how this happened. The more we have been operating out of our subconscious, the more difficult this realization can be. It is a trick of our Ego, because it makes us believe that we are fully aware. Those little clues we are getting are like feathers being dropped in front of us on our path, trying to get our attention. They are trying to tell us that something is off. Many of us, of course, are too oblivious to notice. And so, the feathers get bigger, the clues get more extreme and suddenly we are in a metaphorical or a real-life car crash.
The good news is that you can wake up to those subconscious clues and regain conscious control of your own steering wheel.
If you’re not sure how, start by quieting your mind for 5 minutes each day. If it is difficult to sit in silence for that amount of time, you know you have some work to do. I talk about this in my book, “Being Called to Change.” Do not be discouraged if you find this difficult to do at first, you will get better at it each time you do it. As a matter of fact, if you commit to this daily for 30 days, you will be surprised at the results. As you grow better at this simple yet powerful five-minute practice, you will find that you are operating out of your conscious mind more often and you will be better able to stay present throughout your day. With this exercise, your meditation practice will become stronger, as you will find yourself able to stay present and go deeper within yourself. Your driving skills will also improve since you won’t be on auto-pilot any longer!
Becoming conscious of our subconscious is imperative to a successful and more fulfilling life. Regaining control of the mind will stop surprises from popping up and overwhelming us. Remember that those overwhelming moments are tricks of the Ego, to not only keep us distracted, but to hold us back from progressing toward getting our power back.
You can have a successful and productive life, and an excellent driving record… the power is within you!
– Dale Halaway
DALE HALAWAY
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