I’m sure you’ve heard of the subconscious mind, and if you haven’t, just ask the horse. It’s the space in your mind that some people think causes you to dream about missing that big exam, when you’ve gone to bed stressed out about work. The subconscious mind holds things you may not be aware of. It stores your knowledge and experiences which can influence your feelings and your actions. Your also contains repressed feelings and urges.
The subconscious mind processes and reviews all incoming sensations and only passes relevant information back to the conscious mind, scientists believe. If your subconscious didn’t filter some sensations out, your awake mind would be bombarded with torrents of incoming information and wouldn’t be able to handle it. Your mind would go into overload. So thank goodness we have the subconscious to store some our sensations.
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Shared subconsciousness
Not only do you have your own subconscious, Jung believed in the “collective unconscious” that holds the instincts and behaviors that we all share. All humans, Jung thought, have the same beliefs, patterns and experiences that can be found in different cultures and eras. And that collective unconscious can lead to cultural biases, unfortunately.
Where is the subconscious?
Although, the subconscious doesn’t have a physical location, there are therapeutic practices that believe emotions and past experiences are stored in specific places of the body after an injury or trauma. And some psychologists go even further to state that pain, diseases or tension in the body occur from experiences stored in the subconscious. So, subconscious feelings from a negative experience could manifest themselves as an illness, some psychologists believe.
The 5 Best Ted Talks on The Subconscious Mind
TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conferences began in 1984 and have expanded to cover almost every topic under the sun from Nasa research into former planet Pluto to bats and their positive attributes…nothing about vampires, however.
And a very popular topic discussed frequently in TED talks is the Subconscious Mind. Scientists and psychologists have been studying the subconscious mind for a couple of hundred years. They’ve look at it at many different angles, trying to figure out how to help people to stop procrastinating, how to teach people to be truthful and how to guide people in uncovering their true potential. It’s still a science we have a lot to learn about, though. There is still a lot of unproven guesswork. But, some great minds have given extremely popular talks on the nature of the subconscious mind. And TED talks on Subconscious Mind are fantastic tools on learning more about such a complicated subject.
We’ve curated a list of the most popular TED talks on different aspects of the subconscious mind. And, we found that Noah Zandan’s The Language of Lying is the best TED talk there is about the subconscious. See below as we tell you why!
And, read on as we give you an overview of all of the top five TED Talks focusing on the subconscious. These talks cover lying, dreaming, creating ideas, taste, and being honest to ourselves about serious subjects. TED talks inspire. They can help you find solutions to a problem. They can give you insight into yourself and the people around you. They’re engaging and smart. Read on to see for yourself.
The language of lying – Noah Zandan is the most-watched TED talk on the subconscious. And it’s clear why. Zandan’s animated talk, seen by 13,680,746 people, discusses the clues our subconscious gives off when we lie. Zandan says that people only control about 5% of the cognitive function. The rest is controlled behind the scenes and we are unaware that this is happening. But, linguistic text analysis can find those “tells” that our subconscious conceives and our conscious exhibits. For instance, one may talk in the third person when lying. Also, maybe you’ve noticed, but when someone is lying, they tend to speak more negatively, presumably because they feel guilty about lying. Also, liars employ complicated sentence structure and five-dollar words. Lastly, despite using confusing grammar, a liar’s explanations tend to be simplistic. They are not sophisticated.
What does this new science on lying mean for us? It means that lies are becoming easier to spot and our subconscious is going to have to start telling the truth! Watch the video and then see if you can discover any liars around you.
Zomorodi found that she was at her most productive in terms of ideas and planning as she walked miles and miles while pushing her newborn colicky daughter in her stroller. She was inspired. She felt more positive about her career and she had so much hope for her future. Zomorodi began multiple ventures and was quite confident of their success.
But, all of that inspiration, excitement and training the brain to be more positive came to a screeching halt when she began actually working on her projects. Zomorodi was busy on social media, working on her projects and striving to create more exciting ideas, everything dried up. No more creativity, no more exhilaration and the amount of work she was going to produce lagged. But why what Zomorodi so creative when she was bored, but couldn’t think of a single new idea when her brain was fully engaged with work?
It all had to do with her subconscious. Her subconscious had no time to rest and recharge. It was imputing all of the sensations Zomorodi was experiencing. Her mind, both the subconscious and the conscious were working overtime. They were so busy processing new information that her subconscious had no time to form any ideas. That of course led to negative feelings in Zomorodi because she became less productive.
But, as soon as Zomorodi learned to take it easy and let her mind take a rest, ideas began pouring out again. And, her positive attitude returned.
Zomorodi recruited listeners from her podcast to throw off the yoke of social media and learn to be bored again. And yes, it was difficult to distance themselves from social media at first, but as time went on and their addictions lessened, people immediately became more creative. Some people found it easier to exercise, when they weren’t thinking of checking Twitter or Facebook all the time.
Zomorodi’s listeners found themselves to be more productive, to sleep better and to even feel happier. She believes that when we are teaching children technology, we must also teach them to self-regulate the amount of technology they use. That too much technology will cause a lack of idea. She agrees that technology can help or even improve our lives, but we cannot let it take over our lives. We need a return to the boredom of the pre-Internet times, when people had to think hard of things to do.
Adkins’ animated talk is an insightful look into the world of dreams. Since ancient times, humans have tried to interpret their dreams. And, even though science and technology have advanced, scientists still aren’t sure why we dream. Freud believed that our dreams are a conscious manifestation of subconscious wishes. He believed that our subconscious holds are urges, desires and primitive thoughts. And those urges, desires and thoughts are symbolically represented through our dreams.
Contemporary researchers have found that test subjects perform better at 3-D mazes when they sleep and dream about the maze. This has sparked the idea that our brains have processes that only happen when the body is asleep. Also, scientists theorize, believe it or not, that we are training for danger or other situations in our sleep. If we dream about fighting off a rabid dog, well, that trains our mind to be ready in case of a real attack when we are awake. The science is still in its infancy, so there’s no telling if you could really come out on top of dangerous situation when your flight or fight instincts are activated because you’ve trained for it in your dreams. But, it would be interested to learn more!
Andersen explains how the brain decides what something tastes out. She discusses how we sense food. How our brain experiences the food in our mouth and categorizes it as salty, sour, bitter, sweet and umami. Subconsciously, neuroreceptors recognize the food before the conscious decides if you like the food or not. However, hidden biases can cause a person to incorrectly identify the food item.
We tell ourselves that a more expensive item, coffee for instance, tastes better. Tests subjects can be given two cups of the same exact coffee. But, if a researcher tells them beforehand that one cup is a high-end brand, the test subject will generally say that one tastes better, even though both cups of coffee are the same. Our experiences, stored in our subconscious, have taught us the bias that expensive items are better. So, our conscious brain, when it is trying to categorize the taste of the supposedly expensive coffee, says that it tastes better and that the supposedly cheaper coffee tastes worse. Andersen has found a way around this, however. Brain scans can pinpoint the areas that deal with taste and can assess if the taste is enjoyed. Further, the pupils change slightly and sweat can be seen when someone likes something. Ultimately, the brain may tell the mouth to say that the cheaper coffee tastes like swill due to bias, but brain scans, pupil change and sweat may tell another story! So, you may believe that a more expensive item is better, but you don’t even realize you are lying. Thankfully, we have the technology and know-how now to detect biases and work to eliminate them. It’s a fascinating talk. Check it out!
To learn more about the brain or even the three brains, check out that article!
Lally’s talk centers around money problems, specifically money shame. Our subconscious belief systems developed since childhood, can give us self-destructive money habits. We feel that our self-value is defined by how much money we have in the bank, and not the goodness in our heart.
But, by defining ourselves only by the type of car we have, our ZIP code and the school we send our kids to, we are giving in to those learned subconscious believes. And money shame can lead to suicide, especially in males.
In fact, Lally’s brother sadly took his own life due to depression caused by money problems. His shame of not having enough money was just too much for him. So, Lally speaks from her own family’s experiences. And she doesn’t want what happened to her family to happen to any other family.
Lally urges people to retrain their subconscious. Talk about money. Break the shame cycle. Store new beliefs in our subconscious that inform ourselves that money does not equal self-worth! Lally wants people to recognize their own wealth, and that wealth has nothing to do with money, but how good they are as people.
There an entire world behind our conscious. Our subconscious, as we’ve seen in the TED Talks, is pretty busy. It’s interpreting experiences and translating then into fantastical dreams. It’s training us for danger, and it’s making up convoluted lies. So we urge you to watch Noah Zandan’s The Language of Lying, because it is the best TED talk there is about the subconscious and the most watched!
But, our subconscious mind is not only busy thinking up dreams and falsehoods, it is also creating biases. It’s telling our conscious mind that an expensive cup of coffee tastes better than an inexpensive cup, even if they literally taste the same. Our subconscious has a hard time separating out biases from experience and sensation. Think about that the next time you buy an expensive item. Is it really any better than a less expensive but virtually identical item? Maybe learning these 3 steps to program the subconscious mind will help.
We hope you had a chance to go through and really study the TED Talks that we curated for you. TED offers discussions from every corner of the world on every topic you can imagine. But, the videos concerning the subconscious are eye-opening and helpful.
Researchers believe that with work, we can retrain our subconscious. We can rewire it to throw off those old biases, whether they’re about money, taste or opinion. We can transform our lives, by talking openly. By not hiding our feelings and pushing them down into our subconscious. Being honest to ourselves can help us from repressing memories. This will allow us to think and feel more authentically.
So, if you are interested in learning more about the subconscious mind and brain, take a look at these 5 Amazing Ted Talks on Brain Plasticity. You won’t be disappointed.
