Sandpoint Chamber: Rewiring your subconscious for better business
Olivia Caso
Did you know that the majority of decisions that human beings make are 95% subconscious decisions? The subconscious is, as described by Merriam Webster, “the mental activities just below the threshold of consciousness.” In the field of psychology, it is believed that our subconscious develops from birth to around the age of 10.
The human brain has between 12,000-60,000 thoughts per day, with the bulk of those thoughts being repetitive. If the input from our early childhood caused distress or trauma, the stories we may tell ourselves as an adult can often reaffirm those beliefs without us knowing. Becoming aware of these subconscious thought patterns can assist our bodies in getting out of fight, flight, or freeze — primal, biological threat responses. By getting out of our natural threat response, we can enhance our quality of life and engage the critical parts of our brains necessary for decision-making, creativity, and focus.
If we show up better in our own lives, we show up better in business. Allowing ourselves to be curious about the thought patterns we’ve been in for most of our lives makes us better leaders. Rewiring our subconscious allows us to step into curiosity instead of confrontation, empathy instead of assumption.
A beneficial starting point is learning about the concepts of grit, growth mindset, and language reformation. These concepts are wonderful practices for our personal lives, as well as in application with our teams.
Grit is the No. 1 determining success factor — entailing perseverance through hardship to achieve a long-term goal. Fostering grit in the workplace looks like encouraging and rewarding continuous education, promoting work-life balance, and pushing your team towards their passions.
Growth mindset entails focusing on progress rather than creating a definitive narrative. In application, this would look like complimenting one of your team members on their growth rather than saying they’re “smart” or “bad at something”. The idea is that definitive labels can pigeon-hole us and we start to base our identities around affirming labels assigned to us or that were self-assumed.
Language is closely related to a growth mindset. Language reformation is simply the art of noticing how we speak to ourselves and other people. By observing the language we use, we can become aware of our mental patterns and assess whether those are serving us and our mission. Language reformation also allows us to create higher satisfaction in interactions. Our language informs the recipient if the information they are receiving is positive or negative. This might look like replacing “I’m sorry” with “thank you for your patience”. A simple place to start is being very intentional with what we say and having an honest dialogue with ourselves about what our values are and how we’d like to come across.
Some other accessible means of rewiring your subconscious are:
EFT Tapping — EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) Tapping involves stimulating various acupressure points on the head, collar bones, and wrists while repeating a sentence about something you’d like to change, followed by a solution. All of these acupressure points can be found online, along with plenty of videos walking you through the process.
Meditation — Meditation allows our brains to promote neuroplasticity, which is the ability to create or change neural pathways. Meaning, this allows us to change our thought processes at a physiological level. Meditation also significantly reduces stress hormones.
Vagus Nerve Stimulation — The Vagus Nerve is a complex system, with one of the primary functions controlling the body's ability to regulate stress. A simple way to stimulate this is by humming, chanting, or even using an ice pack on the sides of your neck or sternum.
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Olivia Caso is the executive director of the Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce.
