Become familiar with the structure of your mind, an article written by Hajar Aziz Zanjani
Three sections of mind according to Freud’s idea
The concept of three levels of mind is nothing new. Sigmund Freud created a useful model of the mind, which he separated into 3 sections – the conscious mind or ego, the subconscious mind, and the unconscious mind.
1: Conscious mind
Your conscious mind is your objective or thinking mind. It has no memory, and it can only hold one thought at a time. This mind has four essential functions: identifies, comparison, analysis and deciding.
The conscious mind communicates to the outside world and the inner-self through speech, pictures, writing, physical movement, and thought. The two functions that the capabilities of the conscious mind can address are:
- Its ability to direct your focus. This ability of your conscious mind to direct your attention and awareness is one of the most important powers you have, and to create change in your life you must learn to control what you consciously focus on. Some people find it quite easy and natural to direct their thoughts towards a more positive outlook on life and every situation.
- Its ability to imagine that which is not real. Your mind can literally imagine something that is totally new and unique – something you’ve never physically experienced before. By contrast, your subconscious mind can only offer versions of what memories it has stored of your past experiences.
It’s these two very important abilities that can change your life. By continuously being in charge of your own thoughts through directing your focus and using visualization, you can influence what programs the subconscious mind constantly runs.
2: Subconscious mind
Your subconscious mind is like a huge memory bank. Its capacity is virtually unlimited. It permanently stores everything that ever happens to you. Your subconscious mind does not think or reason independently; it merely obeys the commands it receives from your conscious mind. Just as your conscious mind can be thought of as the gardener, planting seeds, your subconscious mind can be thought of as the garden, or fertile soil, in which the seeds germinate and grow.
All your habits of thinking and acting are stored in your subconscious mind. It has memorized all your comfort zones and it works to keep you in them. Your subconscious mind causes you to feel emotionally and physically uncomfortable whenever you attempt to do anything new or different, or to change any of your established patterns of behavior. So, your subconscious mind is your partner in success.
Superior men and women are always stretching themselves, pushing themselves out of their comfort zones. They are very aware how quickly the comfort zone, in any area, becomes a rut. They know that complacency is the great enemy of creativity and future possibilities.
3: Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is where all of our memories and past experiences reside. These are those memories that have been repressed through trauma and those that have simply been consciously forgotten and no longer important to us (automatic thoughts). It’s from these memories and experiences that our beliefs, habits, and behaviors are formed.
Although the subconscious and unconscious has direct links to each other and deal with similar things, the unconscious mind is really the cellar, the underground library if you like, of all your memories, habits, and behaviors. It is the storehouse of all your deep seated emotions that have been programmed since birth.
