The subconscious mind is the remaining 95 percent of the mind, and it operates very similarly to the right brain. It is the information center for the conscious mind. If the conscious mind is similar to the keyboard and monitor of a computer, then the subconscious would be the hard drive. It is your long-term memory and storage.

Your Hard Drive

The purpose for the subconscious mind is solely to collect information. It takes in every bit of input whether it is positive or negative. It does not make judgments over the information that it collects since that is the responsibility of the conscious mind. Every sight, sound, taste, smell, or anything you've experienced since the day that you were born is stored in your subconscious mind for future retrieval.

Once anything becomes a habit, it becomes part of the subconscious mind. If you take a few moments to think about it, you will see that there are many things that you do subconsciously. In fact, anything that you do repeatedly eventually becomes a habit and will become a subconscious activity.

Many people recite the alphabet subconsciously. If you were to recite the alphabet as quickly as possible, it would likely take about six to seven seconds. Now if you were to recite only half of the alphabet, it would seem to make sense that it should only take half the time that it took to recite the entire alphabet.

Try to do it now, but only recite every other letter. It takes longer, but why? When you recited the entire alphabet, you were able to do it quickly since it is a subconscious habit; it was something that you didn't even have to think about. However, when you recited half the alphabet, you now had to consciously think of each letter and vocally skip over every other one.

You compute simple math problems subconsciously. Here's an example: answer these questions to yourself very quickly. What is 2 × 2? What is 3 + 3? What is 5 × 2? What is the square root of 2,325? You'll find that the first three questions were most likely answered subconsciously (automatically) since you use them so often in life. However, the fourth one, if you were able to answer it at all, required conscious effort. You may have even had to refer to a math table or use a pencil and paper to figure it out.

There is much information stored within the subconscious mind. Many times if you are not sure exactly how things should be, your subconscious mind can do a scan of the information available and similar past experiences for the answer. It has the ability to fill in the blank or make a guesstimate of how things should be.

Here is an example of this remarkable feature of the mind. Read through the following paragraph and see if you are able to make sense of it.

Yuor mnid has a uqiue alibity to be albe to raed wdors eevn if tehy are not speleld coretcrly. Tihs is one of the mian resaons why you shulod not eidt yuor own wrok. As lnog as msot of the wrod is speleld coretcrly, scuh as the frsit and the lsat lteter, the sucbconsouis can usullay fugire out the rset on its own. The raseon for tihs is taht wehn you raed, you do not look at erevy lteter. You sacn thurogh the wrods and yuor mnid fugires out the rset. Ins't tihs a reamkrable alibity?

The Four-Year-Old Child

The subconscious mind is similar to a four-year-old child. It is innocent, naive, and wants to help you in any way it can but has no idea how. The subconscious mind will try to help, but it does not always make the best choices. Say you were in a severe car accident. The subconscious mind might try to protect you by giving you panic attacks any time you try to leave your house. Its logic may be that if you do not leave the house, you will not get in another car accident.