In order for you to consciously understand how to get the best performance from yourself on an unconscious level, you need to know what you’re driven by.

Your unconscious mind is driven by clear objectives that fit into three categories: Memories, Emotions, and Processes.

Memories

Like an amazing, self-organising document management system, your unconscious mind stores your memories. Most often your memories are stored in a timeline manner, that is you have a relationship to the memory based on when it occurred. Some memories have no relationship to time though so your unconscious mind applies an atemporal filing process. For example, the memory of holding your keys, but not when so you cannot remember where you left them.

The power of its ability to self-organise means that it will instantly categorise memories. If the memory presents with highly negative emotions attached it will automatically repress that memory to protect your conscious mind from further harm. That said if the conscious mind has the resources to manage a new problem, then your unconscious mind will be driven to bring a repressed memory to the conscious mind’s attention in order to resolve it.

I find this happens often with my Emotional Well Being work. Clients will present with one particular problem they want to solve and then return to me with a new problem. This is what happens when you combine resources, tools and techniques with a driver for the unconscious mind, you’ll always have things to work on and you’ll always get stronger at resolving them.

Emotions

Your unconscious mind manages all of your emotions, whether good, bad or meh. Anything you feel comes from this part of your mind. Your unconscious mind is driven by how it feels and will automatically generate a feeling based on what you’re consciously experiencing.

Like memories, your unconscious mind is driven to keep certain emotions repressed for your protection. It may be that you can recall a particularly bad event from your childhood but you cannot feel the fear or pain like you did then. This is normal. It’s for your protection. Your conscious mind cannot handle the overwhelm of being associated with major negative emotions like anger, sadness, fear, hurt, or guilt for long periods of time.

Part of what differentiates Time Line Therapy® from standard psychotherapy is the lack of association to the emotions felt when recalling a significant emotional event. It is possible to resolve a trauma while remaining disassociated. This is powerful because you’re able to create new and positive learnings about the event/s and ask your unconscious mind to store them as a resource for your use in the future. What was once highly emotional, negative and weakening becomes a tool that strengthens you.

Processes

The drivers of Processes can be thought of as two separate sides of the same room: one side supports the processes of the conscious mind, the other supports the processes of the body’s functionality.

Supporting the Conscious Mind

Driven to make associations and to learn quickly, your inner mentor will look first to past experiences before creating a new way to process. In the post, The NLP Communication Model, I went into this in detail, in particular how your mind will filter information it receives every second of the day. In this way, your unconscious mind controls and maintains your perceptions to literally take everything personally because what you experience now is entirely based on your meta programs, values, beliefs and attitudes.

Your unconscious mind is highly moral, this is, however, only in accordance with your model of the world and your experiences. It is based on what you were taught and what you accepted to be true. Your unconscious mind maintains your instincts, it generates your habits and to do so needs repetition until the habit is successfully installed.

Your unconscious mind is driven to learn. It is programmed to continually seek more information. But this must be curated consciously because your unconscious mind cannot differentiate between value and junk from TV and social media. This is because it is driven by the principle of least effort and will find put its attention where the conscious mind directs it.

Supporting the Body’s Functionality

In supporting the automatic functionality of the body, your unconscious mind has a blueprint of your body now, and another of its perfect health. Your unconscious mind runs and preserves your body. It knows your DNA, it knows your ancestral history and genealogical predispositions so it knows exactly what you need to be your ultimate health. Counter to modern medicine theories it is absolutely possible for your unconscious mind to heal you from a dis-ease (not a typo).

Your unconscious mind also supports the body by generating, storing, distributing and transmitting ‘energy’. Not to get too woo-woo on you but we are made up of energy like a house is lit by electricity. This energy is generated internally and exuded externally, which is how you can get the sense someone is behind you when you can’t see them, you feel their energy. When you hug someone you exchange energy. I hug on the left to ensure I connect with the recipient’s heart because I consciously wish to connect the energy of our hearts.

The final driver of your unconscious mind is that it functions best as an integrated whole unit. This is usually demonstrated with limiting beliefs we’ve created about ourselves. If you’re conflicted by something you will have a part of you that believes one thing and another part that believes the opposite.

For example, I used to believe that I didn’t deserve to have financial prosperity, but another part of me knew that I was worthy. At some point in my upbringing, I had made a decision that I wasn’t worthy of financial prosperity. This limiting belief prevented me from creating the prosperity I believed I could have. With the support of a NLP coach, we did a technique that brought awareness and learning to make a new decision about financial prosperity.

Knowing what drives your unconscious mind to work at its optimum performance isn’t enough. You also need to apply this knowledge consciously to your actions.

Results come first through self-awareness because when we know ourselves we know our impact. From awareness comes regulation and motivation to continually apply new knowledge and simply give it a go.

All this begins with knowing what drives your unconscious mind to be the best you can be.