Lessons - Your Subconscious Mind Creates Your Reality (It's Ridiculously Powerful) | Scott Clary

You might not realize it, but something besides yourself is running the show, often without your permission. And if you don't understand it, it can really mess with your success. The subconscious mind works behind the scenes. It shapes your thoughts, your habits, your reactions, it's powerful and it's sneaky. So today I want to pull back the curtain to show what's really going on inside our heads. You're about to learn why your subconscious mind is the real boss of your actions. How it can sabotage your success without you even noticing. Why most self-help advice and mine hacks are total BS and what you can do to finally take control and make it work for you. Are you ready to take charge? Let's get into it. The first we have to ask, what is the subconscious mind? Well, have you ever driven somewhere then realized you don't remember the trip? That's your subconscious on autopilot. It takes over and lets you zone out while it handles all the details without bothering your conscious mind. You can imagine your subconscious mind as an iceberg. The small part above water is your conscious mind, the thoughts, the decisions you're aware of. But below the surface lies the massive unseen bulk, that's your subconscious. But it's more practical to think of your subconscious as your silent business partner. Sometimes it's super helpful and steers you in the right direction. Other times it messes things up and leaves you to deal with the fallout. Either way it's working behind the scenes 24-7. It controls your habits, your fears, your reactions. It stores all your past experiences, even the ones you don't consciously remember. It's pretty wild, right? Here's how it actually works. So you touch a hot stove as a kid. Your conscious mind thinks out, that hurts. But your subconscious mind goes to work and files away the experience. The next time you're near a stove, it sends a quick warning. Don't touch that. Now this can be great for survival. But what if your subconscious is filled with outdated, negative or just plain wrong beliefs? Then it can lead to subconscious behaviors like you flinch when someone raises their hand quickly, or you feel nervous when speaking in public, even though there's no reason to be. Or you bite your nails when you're stressed without thinking about it. These actions are driven by your subconscious mind, not your conscious choices. It's acting on autopilot, trying to protect you based on past experiences. Now you might not think flinching or biting your nails are serious issues, but if you want to start and run a business, your subconscious mind can seriously mess everything up. Your subconscious mind is powerful, but it's not perfect. It needs guidance and occasional updates to serve you better. And sure, it can work for you or against you. On the bright side, it helps you form good habits. Once you consciously decide to exercise, your subconscious starts to remind you to do it. It keeps you safe by reacting quickly to danger, often faster, and your conscious mind can process. But then there's a dark side. It can hold you back with limiting beliefs. If you fail that something before, your subconscious might tell you you'll always fail. It can make you react rationally. Those quick judgments and fears aren't always accurate, but they feel very real. Letting your subconscious habit drive your life is a very dangerous game. You might think you're in control, but often you're not. That can sabotage your success without you even noticing. Some examples include when you avoid taking risk because you fear failure, or when you doubt your abilities despite your past successes. Or when you procrastinate on important tasks and sabotage your progress. For example, let's say you hesitated to launch a new product because you feared it wouldn't sell. That's your subconscious playing tricks. The market might be ready, but your outdated beliefs are holding you back. So how do you make sure you don't fall into that trap? Well, most advice on how to program your subconscious is BS. Because there's no shortage of gurus dishing out advice on how to hack your mind. And while some of the advice will work for some people, I personally found much of it to be useless. I want to look at some of the most common examples I've seen when I was researching for this video. The first thing I see a lot of is positive affirmations and auto-suggestions. You've probably heard that positive affirmations are the key to success. Just tell yourself you're amazing and everything will fall into place. Sound simple, right? But the truth is that positive affirmations can mess you up, especially if you're struggling with anxiety or depression. Because why? Positive affirmations are supposed to work by getting you to focus on your strengths. They're meant to shift your mindset from, I can't to, I can't. But what if you don't really believe what you're saying? What if deep down those words feel like lies? If you're already feeling low, repeating phrases like, I am worthy of success can actually backfire. Instead of lifting you up, they can make you feel even worse. Now why? Because your brain knows when something doesn't match your reality. When you say I am confident, but you feel insecure, your mind starts arguing with itself. This internal conflict creates stress and tension. And if you're prone to anxiety or depression, it can trigger a self-defeating spiral. The second thing I see a lot of is hypnosis and some gliminal audio. Now you might have heard that hypnosis is a magical tool that can rewire your brain. But if you're a natural skeptic like me, it's not going to do a thing for you. That's because hypnosis doesn't work unless you believe in it. It's pure placebo. Let me give you an example. I was actually at a hypnosis seminar and the instructor was guiding everyone through the process. He told the group to relax their eyes so much that he couldn't open them no matter how hard they tried. Most people followed along, but one guy didn't. His eyes popped right open. Why? Because he didn't buy into it. He wasn't convinced so it didn't work. Here's the thing. Your mind is very powerful. If you're not on board with the idea of hypnosis, your brain will resist. It's like a mental barrier that says, you can't make me. That's especially true if you associate hypnosis with something negative like weakness or loss of control. It's not just hypnosis. The same goes for subliminal audio. Those recordings that claim to change your life while you sleep, they won't work unless you already believe they will. The third thing I see a lot of people recommending is to surround yourself with positivity. Surrounding yourself with positivity sounds great, right? But you're creating an echo chamber. When you only allow positive voices, you shut out critical thinking. Think about it. Critically, if everyone around you is constantly telling you how great you are, where is the room for growth? You need to hear the hard truths, not just fluffy affirmations. It isn't just me musing. Look at kids who are showered with participation trophies and praised for just showing up. Did they become confident winners? No. This positive environment just produces losers. George Carlin nailed it when he said, there are no losers anymore. Everybody wins. Everybody gets a trophy. But what happens when these kids grow up? They step into the real world and they hear something new. You lost Bobby, you're a loser. Imagine that moment. You've been told you're a winner your whole life, but suddenly reality hits. Your boss won't give you a trophy for just showing up. He'll tell you to clean out your desk if you don't perform. This false positivity doesn't prepare you for the real challenges of life. It sets you up for failure. And the fourth thing I see people recommend is positive visualization. Positive visualization is just wishful thinking. It's day dreaming about your ideal life instead of actually working towards it. Yeah, sure. It feels great to imagine yourself living that dream. You picture the perfect business, the freedom, the success, but here's the problem. Visualization without action is a trap. It tricks you into feeling like you've accomplished something when you haven't done anything. Now, you might tell yourself that visualizing success will attract it to you, but the truth is that no amount of mental imagery is going to replace hard work. Studies have shown that sharing your goals gives you a quick dopamine hit, but it also leads to complacency. You start to believe success is inevitable just because you've imagined it. That's very dangerous thinking. You need to be grounded in reality. Your business won't grow just because you spend a few minutes each morning imagining that it will. It grows because you make smart decisions and you put in the work every single day. Consider this. While you're sitting here day dreaming, someone else is out there grinding. They're making calls or closing deals or pushing their business forward. I know it sounds cliche, but dreams don't work unless you do. Now the last thing that I see people speak about online that teach over that can sort of help you get ahead in life is reframing challenges with euphemisms. Soft euphemistic language is just a way to avoid the truth. It doesn't change reality. It just hides it and hiding the truth is always a dangerous game. Let's pull out another George Carlin quote, poor people used to live in the slums. Now the quote unquote economically disadvantaged occupy substandard housing in the inner cities. And they're broke and they don't have a quote negative cash flow position. They're broke because a lot of them were fired. Management wanted to quote curtail redundancies in the human resources area. So many people are no longer quote viable members of the workforce. You get it. The point is obvious. When you dress up the truth with nice words, you're not helping anyone. Infemisms spare us the discomfort, but at the cost of clarity. If you're struggling with a failing product, don't call it market misalignment. Call it what it is. It's a flop. Drop the soft language, get real with yourself and your business. And it's the only way that you're going to make real progress. Now I know you're asking Scott, if all that is BS, what should you do instead? Great question. Glad you asked. I've torn down five of the most common pieces of advice you'll find. It's only fair. I equip you with five of my go-to methods. They're not as glamorous, but they also don't require you to believe in any woo-woo. The first thing you should always do is outwork yourself doubt. We all have moments of self doubt. That just makes us human. And it's in those moments you should remind yourself of your past wins. David Goggins calls it the cookie jar method. The cookie jar is a mental collection of your toughest wins. Sometimes when you push through pain and suffering and emerged victorious. When Dell creeps in, reach into the jar, pull out a memory and remind yourself of what you're capable of. But you're going to ask, well, what if I don't have enough or any past wins? Then you have to go out there and get them. As James Clear puts in his book, every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs. But as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. In other words, small actions repeated consistently build undeniable proof of who you are. This is the harsh truth about building confidence. You have to work for it. Alex Ramosi sums it up beautifully. Confidence without evidence is delusion. You don't become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are. Give yourself so much goddamn proof that you are the version of yourself you want to be, and you'll become them, outwork, yourself, doubt. So you put in the work day after day until the evidence of your success is undeniable. It's not about wishing or hoping, it's about proving. You must build that stack of undeniable proof to fill up your cookie jar until yourself doubt doesn't stand a chance. The second thing you have to do is to be process oriented instead of goal oriented, focusing on big goals can easily make you feel inadequate. The bigger the goal, the more overwhelming it seems. It's very easy to get lost in the sheer size of what you want to achieve, and you end up feeling like you're constantly falling short. But here's the thing. The magic doesn't happen in the goal itself. It happens in the process. Break down your massive goals into small manageable steps. Completing each of those small steps gives you the same dopamine boost as hitting a big milestone. Again, James Clear explains this perfectly. Making a goal only changes your life for the moment. That's the counter-attuitive thing about improvement. We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results. So let's say your goal is to build a million dollar business. That could be huge, right? But if you obsess over that number, you're going to feel like you're never making progress. Instead, you want to focus on the systems that will get you there. To daily tasks, the habits, the consistent actions, these are what will actually move the needle. Think of it this way. If you love the process, the results will follow. You're not chasing a finish line. You're committing to a cycle of continuous improvement. And that's where real long-term success comes from. The third thing I want you to do, negative visualization. Life isn't always rainbows and sunshine. Sometimes things go wrong. Really wrong. But you can prepare for it. Instead of pretending everything will be perfect, try to use negative visualization to imagine the worst case scenario. Why? Because it helps you practice indifference to the chaos that life can throw at you. I'm not telling you to be a pessimist, just be a realist. The stoics, some of the wisest thinkers in history, they mastered this technique. They would vividly picture their worst fears coming true. Not to scare themselves, but to prepare. By imagining the worst, they made it less terrifying. And when you do this, you realize that most of your fears are just that. They're fears. I want you to think of this as mental training. When the worst actually happens, you won't be caught off guard. You'll be ready. You'll be calm. You'll be in control. You'll find that your worst fears often aren't as bad as you imagined. And even if they are, you've already faced them in your mind. Negative visualization is your shield against anxiety. It's your tool to face whatever life throws your way without losing your cool. The fourth strategy I want you to adopt is mindfulness. Now you've probably experienced at some point in your life, your mind constantly racing. You're thinking about that missed opportunity from last week or stressing over tomorrow's big pitch. But here's the truth. Living in the past or future robs you of the present, which is all you truly have. You have to train your mind to focus on the present moment. This simple practice can reduce regret for the past and ease worry about the future. But most people don't do it because they're too busy being trapped in their thoughts. Eckhart toll explains it well in the power of now. All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. On ease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry, all forms of fear are caused by too much future and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non forgiveness are caused by too much past and not enough presence. When you're stuck in your head, you're not fully alive. You're either reliving what's already gone or you're worrying about what's yet to come. When you train your mind to say present, you regain control. You see things clearly. You make better decisions and you experience life fully. And the last thing I want you to do is to journal. Now maybe you're already keeping a journal, but if not, I really suggest you start one immediately. Every way to collect your thoughts and track your progress. But I've recently come up with a radical approach to journaling. I want you to start by keeping a rage journal. This is where you let loose. I want you to write down all your unfiltered negative thoughts, every frustration, every anger, every moment that makes you want to scream. Don't hold back. This is your space to get it all out without judgment. Why? Because bottling up those emotions doesn't make them disappear. It just lets them fester. By putting them on paper, you release that pent-up energy and you understand what's really bothering you. Now after you started a rage journal, add a gratitude journal. Here you do the opposite. Detail everything positive you enjoy about life no matter how small. Shift your focus to what's going right. Gratitude has actually been shown to boost your mood and increase overall happiness. So writing down what you're thankful for helps you appreciate the good things and it really keeps you grounded. Finally, compare the two journals. You'll often find that the negative thoughts in your rage journal are just fiction, blown out of proportion by stress or fear. The gratitude journal, on the other hand, reflects the reality of what's good in your life. The comparison gives you an accurate picture of your world. Remember, your subconscious mind is either your best friend or your worst enemy. It is time to take control with these five steps. It's time to stop letting it run the show. It's not easy, but it's worth it. After wrapping things up, here's what I need you to remember. Your subconscious can be a bull in a china shop if it's left unchecked. Most mind hacks just feel good fluff. Don't fall for them. True change comes from consistent action, not wishful thinking, and please stay grounded in reality. Face your fears, don't hide from them. You've got the tools, now it's up to you to use them. Take charge of your mind, don't let it take charge of you.