Your Thoughts are 95% the Same as Yesterday

Did you know that the thoughts you have today are 95% the same as the thoughts you had yesterday? In other words, 95% of who we are is a set of automatic subconscious patterns.

Does that stun you as much as it stunned me when listening to neuroscientist Dr. Joe Dispenza’s lecture this weekend?!

Life feels like Groundhog Day at times because mentally it very much is, and when that automatic subconscious pattern isn’t reflecting the life we want, we feel trapped within ourselves.

Here’s the Catch 22, when we’re thinking the same way as yesterday we make decisions the same as yesterday, which reinforces yesterday’s thinking and triggers more actions based on that, which again reinforces the same perspective until it becomes a deeply ingrained belief.

Yikes! Trust me, I know what it’s like to see a life pattern that isn’t serving me and yet keep repeating it, and it’s not fun. Why do we do that? Because our subconscious mind runs 95% of the show based on the memorised pattern and doesn’t have an alternative.

So how do we give the subconscious mind a different option?

Do something different!

It can be as easy as doing something different in very small ways and triggering the brain to fire in a new pattern.

For example, have you ever felt stuck on a issue and then someone/something distracted you, stopped you from going over the same thing again and again in the same way, and by stepping away suddenly a solution to the issue appeared simply because your perspective shifted?

New experiences wake us up. They make us alert and the brain fires into present moment awareness and out of autopilot. Something completely non-related to your pattern or issue can be the catalyst to get your out of the pattern simply because it stimulates the brain to fire in an alternative way.

Embrace the challenges that wake us up.

I think we stay in autopilot often because we feel safe there, in the comfort zone. But I’ve learned the comfort zone isn’t always so comfortable…in fact it can feel claustrophobic and like a prison.

The autopilot makes the mind dull whereas challenge or something new wakes it up, tells it to pay attention to what’s happening.

To really change our patterns we have to again and again step outside of the comfort zone and wake up to the present. Because when we’re paying attention our 5% consciousness steps up to run the show. Autopilot is turned off and we’re empowered to choose a new pattern.

Any body-breath-awareness practice makes us more present…and thus more empowered. In yoga class we often try crazy, challenging poses mostly because they wake us up and force us out of our automatic functioning. In that way we use the body to work with the mind.

So next time you try something challenging and it didn’t really turn out as graceful as you’d hoped, don’t worry! Realise the real benefit came from trying in the first place and asking the brain to fire differently, increasing your cognitive ability and empowering you through presence.

This week try doing lots of little things differently, like taking a different rout to work, changing the order you do things in, eating something new and embracing that challenging pose in yoga class you always avoid.

Let’s make it an experiment of it! Share with me how doing this impacted other parts of your life or perspective.