YOUR MIND IS AN ICEBERG
by Fiorenza Rossini
E
fficient communication is a key skill that has to
be mastered, especially for entrepreneurs.
Why is it easier for one to communicate in one
way? For example, haven’t you ever had this person in
your life who would prefer to send you lengthy emails
instead of talking to you on the phone? (maybe this
person is you!)
Why do we struggle to improve on some specific aspects
of our communicative skills? For example, we learn
that storytelling is a great technique to engage with an
audience, yet it may be challenging.
Also, why does everyone communicate and perceive
differently a given situation? For example, how did you
feel at your last family event? Did everyone feel the
same?
Let’s take a step back, shall we?
Let’s imagine our mind is like an iceberg.
THE CONSCIOUS MIND
Freud described the conscious mind as all the mental
processes of which we are aware: the tip of the iceberg.
For example, hunger: one is fully aware of being hungry
and decides to get a snack.
The conscious mind is dominated by logic. The conscious mind relates to what is happening right now and
what you are fully aware of.
THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND
The unconscious mind is the part of the iceberg that
is immersed in the water, the large part of it that you
don’t see, around 80% of its total size in fact. Research
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has shown that the unconscious mind absorbs millions
of bits of sensory information through the nervous
system in any one second, without our consciousness
being aware of it. The unconscious mind has a complete knowledge of who you are: it knows all about your
experiences, past learnings and feelings.
The unconscious mind sets benchmarks to many emotions, based on your past experiences, and creates new
benchmarks whenever needed. Do you remember the
first time you experienced anger? Well, your unconscious mind does. On that particular day, it knew you
were experiencing something new, labeled it as anger
and created an anger drawer (I picture my unconscious
mind to be an enormous chest of drawers). Later on,
any ‘anger’ labeled situation you experienced were put
in the same drawer and the intensity of your feeling
of anger compared to the intensity of your first anger
experience.
The unconscious mind comprises mental processes that
ar e inaccessible to consciousness but that influence
one’s judgments, feelings, or behavior. For example, you
may have grown up within a family who implied you
had to be the best at school, the best at sports, or just
the best kid. Your family wasn’t necessarily explicitly
saying so (or maybe it was); however as a kid you may
have been over-rewarded for some things, which led
your unconscious mind to learn that you had to be the
best at everything you were doing. I had many clients
whom experienced this when they were children. They
don’t think about it (it is part of their unconscious
mind) however it is impacting their daily adult life.