Imagine you’re standing at the grocery store in front of all the plant milks. You want to buy some non-dairy milk, and maybe also a non-dairy coffee creamer. You’re looking at the marketing on the packages and maybe reading some labels. You might even have some criteria that you’re applying to your choice, such as a low amount of sugar per serving. You finally select one and put it in your shopping cart.

Was that a conscious decision or an unconscious one?

Most likely, unconscious.

We know from neuroscience that a healthy human brain can process 400 billion bits of information per second. However, we are only conscious of about 2,000 of those 400 billion bits.

Most of what you experience is processed by your unconscious mind first and after that you “feel” like you are making a decision. 

Neuroscientists have numerous studies to test this: What they do is set up experiments where subjects make “decisions” based on what they think are random urges or even choices. It’s seen in the brain scans that the electrical activity was built up in the brain well before someone could detect the urge or “choice.”

In other words, any action we decide to take has already been pre-decided in advance of when we consciously experience intending to do something. Our unconscious appears to rule all actions we ever take!

The main reason why your subconscious mind processes most of the information first is that your conscious mind isn’t powerful enough to process all the information of reality or fact.

If your conscious mind tried to process billions of bits of information at once, you’d see or experience things that would make your life very chaotic!

This is why your subconscious mind translates most of the information. It can filter out unnecessary things allowing you to experience life in a way that makes more sense to you.

As we navigate the labyrinth of choices in our daily lives, acknowledging the influence of the unconscious mind prompts a deeper reflection on the nature of our decisions and invites a deep dive into techniques such as energy medicine to help us navigate our lives in a more conscious way.