You Might Think

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how it was not conscious thought on my part to help a person manage their food tray. It got me thinking about conscious and unconscious thoughts and how they vary.

Unconscious and conscious thought have different characteristics, which, under different circumstances, makes each the preferred format. Simple issues are generally better handled by conscious thought; complex matters are better considered with unconscious thought. What do I mean by this? You have likely experienced giving up on trying to solve a problem and while not consciously thinking about the situation a solution comes to mind within moments courtesy of the power of unconscious thought.

In Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell brings us face to face with the role of unconscious decision making. The main focus is that decisions made rapidly can be every bit as good as decisions made slowly, cautiously and deliberately.

One of the main concepts is your mind is more efficient when you can move higher level thinking into the unconscious. What do I mean by that? Consider riding a bicycle. If you were like me, it took a lot of conscious attention and effort to coordinate balancing, steering and pedaling. Bicycling is no longer a daily item for me, but climbing on one does not require relearning the mechanics of riding a bike.

Driving a car, walking and using chopsticks are examples of other things you don't need to relearn. If you know how to waltz but haven't done it for a while, you may be a bit rusty, as you are relying on muscle memory, hidden away in the cerebellum, behind and underneath the brain, close to the brain stem, where physical coordination skills live without conscious thought. You get to commonly visited places without a lot of thought, what some refer to as being on auto-pilot. Do you even remember driving to work? I get there without issue, but remember almost nothing of the trip.

We are always taking in information, some of it consciously and some of it unconsciously. You don't have to know about the muscles around the eyes that only contract when a person has a true smile on their face to recognize the difference between a real smile and fake smile; this ability occurs at an unconscious level. Most people can't tell you how they know, but they know.

Our unconscious is a very powerful force. Call it what you will: instinct, gut reaction, intuition. What appears mystical or psychic is part of the function of our normal yet amazing brain.