Every 2 days we create a quantity of information equal to the volume of information created between the dawn of civilization all the way to 2003. WOW.
But even the largest data warehouse can’t match the biggest data in our world. That data is happening right there inside you. It’s called your unconscious mind.
- In a single day the average person is exposed to the same amount of information as a person in the 15th century was exposed to in a lifetime.
- In the first day of life, a baby receives a volume of information equivalent to 70 times the information housed in the Library of Congress.
- Every second, you receive and process over 11M bits of data from your five senses.
- Your mind stores that data in your neuro connectors around your body. Now get this. There are over (10 to the 10th power) to the 11th power neuro connectors in your body. How’s that for storage!
What Do We Do With ALL that Data?
Your unconscious mind processes and stores the data inputs you receive using the processes of deletion, distortion and generalization to filter our data inputs. Note, I said your unconscious mind, not your conscious mind. Your unconscious mind is guided by meta-programs in its data management processes. This is where individual perception comes into play.
Meta programs determine whether we perceive a situation as scary or exciting, as threatening our exploratory, as supportive or competitive. Our meta programs form our internal representations (aka perceptions and memories) and direct our behavior and beliefs. Each of our meta programs and filters evolve differently, based on the experiences in our lives and our responses to those experiences. This explains why three different observers of an event will have three different perspectives on the event itself.
Our Unconscious Meets Quantum Theory
In alignment with Quantum Theory, our unconscious minds select to focus on only a fragment of the information available to us, based on what we expect and what matches our programs. We delete all the rest of the information, including the options and choices that are associated with that information.
- We Delete information that we deem unnecessary or irrelevant. Which means we delete options and choices – selecting only the information that matches our programming and expectations. That’s how we choose to experience a specific option out of all of the choices and options offered by the information we receive.
- We Distort information to make it match our programs, to mold it into the familiar. We therefore see what we expect to see, not what’s necessarily the reality in the data or representative of all our available choices.
- We Generalize information to make it fit into our known buckets. Even when it doesn’t really belong there. What we already know to be true becomes a self fulfilling prophecy as we shove round pegs in square holes to make the information fit into something comfortable for our minds.
Out of a gargantuan array of optional realities, we select the experience a) we expect b) that’s familiar and c) that’s comfortable out of all the options available to us.
The Bottom Line
Our unconscious minds decide what specific data we will see and respond to within our world, based on our past experiences and resulting meta programs. When we change our meta programs, we can shift the way we analyze, filter, respond to and store all of our experiences in our world.
Thanks to neuroscience, we can empower ourselves with more choices and options in the way we view and respond to life. We can change the way we process all of the available data in our world….and change our lives as a result. How? By evolving the programs in our unconscious mind.
How cool is that?
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On Friday we’ll chat about our perceptions and how we can choose to expand our choices.
