Most people use the brain and the mind interchangeably. They are however very different things. A good way to imagine this is that the brain is the hardware of our body and the mind is the software inside the brain.

The mind is a product of the brain.

Firstly, the brain is tangible, it’s made up of neurons and blood vessels and occupies the space in your skull. It literally takes all the information available to us through our senses, organizes it and then sends that information throughout our body.

The interesting thing for me is how that information is organised. To some extent, the brain guesses and it’s based upon feelings and memory.

The brain stores all our memories. By the time you’re 21 your brain will have stored 100 times the entire content of the britannica encyclopedia. 

The way the brain processes feeling and memories is in the form of experience. All your past experiences then come together to make up your identity and this is your mind.

The brain stores feelings and memories but the mind feels them.

The brain regulates all physical functions of the body from movement and motor functions to automatic behaviour such as breathing, sleep and your heart rate.

Whereas the mind is much more about our mental thought processes and consciousness that arrive from the neurological activity of the brain.

It controls perception and our thought processes. It is not bound by the same physical laws of the brain.

It’s made up of three parts. Your conscious, your subconscious and your unconscious.

Conscious - the thoughts and feelings that you’re aware of having. The subconscious mind collects everything, it the conscious that decides what to keep. It thinks about the past and the future which is important for us to understand.

Subconscious - The part of the mind that is not in control of the conscious mind. It’s not logical. It’s the reason behind human emotions such as jealousy or love. Memories are felt here and habits are formed.

Unconscious - It handles all the information that doesn’t require immediate attention. There are so many processes happening at every moment within our body that we can’t be conscious of all of them. The unconscious mind has no relation with reality. It is irrational and emotional.

In understanding the power of the mind and brain we have to know about neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change, adapt and learn due to experience.

The neurons in our brains communicate with each other via the synapses which is the connection between them. We adjust and create these synaptic connections all the time. Everytime we experience or learn something, these incidents and choices shape us. Sometimes that learning becomes reinforced and therefore hard coded.

The more we practice something, the better we get and the more it becomes a habit.

Neurons that are used more frequently develop stronger connections. There’s a very famous saying that says ‘neurons that fire together, wire together’. These are the well trodden paths that we go down on a daily basis.

This is true whether it’s a positive thing or a negative thing

When we think, do, feel or act in a consistent way on a regular basis, it feels easy and simple, whether that’s supporting us with our goals and what we want or not.

By focusing on things in our life that are negative or aren’t going our way instead of focusing on the positive, we get into a vicious circle of negativity. Our world becomes negative and this world is one we’re creating with our own thoughts. The problem doesn’t come from having these different or negative thoughts though. The issue itself comes when we believe them to be true.

We don’t notice our thoughts the majority of the time though - they go on in the background. In fact 95% of brain activity is beyond conscious awareness.

Go off these well trodden paths - create change and how you think and feel about something can seem incredibly hard and uncomfortable as your subconscious mind, that 95% of your brains activity wants to keep you safe.

Why is any of this important?

Our brain doesn’t hear sound or see light. The brain itself doesn’t ‘feel’. What we perceive is the brain’s best guess as to what’s out there in the world. And the world we live in is one we actively generate through our conscious mind. Everybody’s actual reality is different. The element therefore of control over our ‘world’ is phenomenal. You can start to take steps to change your reality.

You can’t change brain function but mind skills and how to control it can be trained.

Neuroplasticity has shown that your brain can change and you can participate more actively within that process.

The subconscious mind wants to do what you tell it to and it will do it whether it’s good or bad. It will do whatever it takes to turn those commands into reality.

It can help you feel like you have a sense of control over your life which you do.

The realisation that If you know that you control your thoughts and when they’re negative, you can change them is powerful

I know it’s easier said than done so I want to show you how.

We’re going to look at three things

Firstly, you need to recognise what is holding you back from what you want to achieve. What is the thought that is stopping you?

To begin to break the cycle of negative thoughts about yourself, I would like you to keep a track of the negative thoughts and feelings you’re having about yourself. If it’s possible over the course of a week or two, note down whenever you hear yourself using negative talk. This might be something like, Oh, you’re such an idiot, why do you always let yourself down like that?
Is there something that triggers your negative thoughts? This might be when you speak to a particular relative. Is there a pattern? You’re going to have to be specific about this and very conscious of your thoughts.

Once you know there’s a pattern you can do something about it. One of my clients recognised she told herself she was useless at her job when she was working to a tight schedule so we looked at how she could be more organised around her time management in order to stop her negative talk.

Consciously, your intention might be that you want a promotion at work. Your subconscious intention however is telling you that it’s too much effort, life should be easy and you might fail. This is your road block. These are your negative thoughts

What’s happening is a stored memory of a past failure in your brain is being felt in your mind and your subconscious. By recognising these and writing them down, you’re then moving it to your conscious mind instead.

Once you know what the things you’re saying to yourself are, you have to let those limiting thoughts go.

This may be uncomfortable. I practice something called shadow work which helps with this but a more practical approach for you to take right now could be cognitive defusion.

It’s about changing your relationship with your thoughts by observing them rather than engaging with them. Seeing them as separate to you and not you.This is the process of loosening your grip of thinking on your actual identity and it creates a distance from your thoughts. Thoughts are not permanent.

You can start small. Take the negative thing you say the most and write it down on one side of a piece of paper. On the other side, write out an alternative, more positive one. Once you’re aware of the alternative, when you think the negative one, catch it and replace it with that.

Secondly, let’s focus on the positive.

As I mentioned, your conscious mind thinks about the future.

There’s this concept in neuroscience called selective attention. Whatever you focus on expands. So whatever we think about the most grows because we’re giving it energy. Just like a plant needs water, thoughts need energy.

Firstly, create an action plan. This is like a vision board but one that you can take action on.

Neuroscientist Dr Tara Swart explains: "Looking at images on a vision board primes the brain to grasp opportunities that may otherwise go unnoticed. That's because the brain has a process called 'value-tagging' which imprints important things onto your subconscious and filters out unnecessary information"

Studies using mri images show your brain cannot tell the difference between what’s real and imagined.

When you direct your brain to ‘daydream’ or visualise about the things you want to be, do, experience and have you direct your brain to proactively work for you; as opposed to having it haphazardly fall into negative patterns that don’t serve you.

And lastly, define what you want and make some simple habits to support you with a plan. Part of this plan can include the thoughts that you want to be telling yourself on a regular basis.

Back this up with habits. This is the evidence.

Have a new promotion at work on the board? What new habits will you have to do to get there? This may be attend more networking meetings so make a habit of attending these.

Now you know this information, what can you do to support change within your life?

It can help your mental health. It can help with your relationships. It can help with your future.

My ultimate hope for you is that over time repeating this, the positive cycle builds and builds and you can relax your conscious mind because you’ve fed the subconscious mind all it needs.

Hi, I'm Phil, I coach, train and speak on how you can harness the power of your mind to achieve what you want in life.

Want to find out about my new programme - the mind belief blueprint - click here for more info.