How many times today, have you used phrases such as, "I don't know...," "I can't...," or a similar phrase for something for which there is no immediate answer. Have you given any thought as to how these types of phrases make you feel?

“Your beliefs don’t simply reflect your reality, they create your reality.”

It is well known that words do effect our emotions and self-esteem. The unconscious consists of processes in our mind that occur automatically and are seldom available to introspection. The unconscious include processes, memory, affect, and motivation. The words that we use, without thought, as a habit, often have a reverse impact on our behavior. In other words, while the words may come from a poor habit, they reflect back on our mind to cause us to behave in a negative manner.

There is empirical evidence to suggest that unconscious phenomena include repressed feelings, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions, thoughts, habits and automatic reactions, and possibly also complexes, hidden phobias and desires. When we use phrases such as "I don't know...," "I can't...," or similar phrases, they are sending a message to the listener that we may have some repressed feelings of negativity deep inside our mind. If we use these phrases often enough, they only tend to reinforce the negativity in our unconscious and indeed our mind as well.

Yes, we use these phrases without giving them a second thought through our unconscious mind. However, the usage of negative language is actually changing the limitations of our potential to happiness and ultimately keeping you from achieving peace, serenity and tranquility in your life.

The mind has two levels; the conscious and unconscious, which normally function in harmony. We want to believe that our conscious mind controls every factor of our life. We are slow to admit that we lack control over what we think, say, or do. However in reality the unconscious mind is hidden away inside our awareness and has unlimited potential. The majority of the information we store in our brain lies dormant in the unconscious mind, which accounts for approximately 2-billion times more than is stored in our conscious mind. And, much of what is there is unknown to the conscious mind. Really, how many times have you been unable to recall a fact and had to force your conscious mind to give up and go to the unconscious mind to pull up that memory? It happens all the time! We often humorously refer to our unconscious mind as the tip of our tongue.

Why is it that if your unconscious mind is so powerful and has all that information, why does it it let the smaller conscious mind speak most often. It is because the the unconscious mind only speaks out when something is really important, and that is why those rash decisions that we make consciously, never work out well. So how does the unconscious mind know what is important? It does so on the basis of the frequency that we tell it what is important. If we use negative phrases a lot, the unconscious mind believes that negativity must be important to us and thus it acts in a negative manner. Whoa, let's reiterate that. The conscious mind acts in an inappropriate manner and allows us to make errors in judgement, while the unconscious mind acts in a negative manner. Yes, and neither is good for us.

When our conscious mind continues to have the same thoughts over and over, or we speak the same phrases over and over the information gets fed into our unconscious mind as the two minds believe that since we have those thoughts and say those phrases a lot they must be important. Ceasing to have those negative thoughts and using those negative phrases can have a mind alter effect on our well-being, as the mind has a way of self-correcting, much the way a person can alter their belief system, cease dependency on alcohol or drugs, fall in love again, or any of other thousands of changes we make.

Let's consider the phrase, "I don't know..." as in "I don't know what I am going to do!" How many times have you told yourself that lie? Lie, you say? Well, yes, because you certainly know that you are going to do what you believe to be right for you, that won't bring you harm, or cast you in a poor light, right? Of course, you know what you are going to do! There is a huge difference between what you do know and believing that you do not know.

Think about that for a minute.... good you are back with me. See that was easy, right? Now stop using that negative phrase and start restoring your mind to think in positive terms. Look, I am not saying that you have to completely stop using the phrase, but if you really do know something, why lie and say that you don't as pure habit. If you had a despicable habit that you knew would be wrong for you, bring you harm, or cast you in a poor light, you would cease the habit, right? Well, "I don't know...." is one of those despicable habits that you need to lose.

From now on, every time you use the phrase, "I don't know..." when you really do, just remember that your unconscious mind is listening and will store that information, until one day we become an absolute idiot and incapable of knowing even what we once knew. You are directly feeding your mind with the knowledge that you truly do not have the ability to make a decision one way or another. You are telling the unconscious mind that you will never be able to learn a new skill, or even to know when you should go to the bathroom. What a terrible waste of the mind.

Yes, it is all too easy to simply say, "I don't know..." because it is easier than thinking, until you realize how damaging it is to your future happiness. And, that indecision is okay, even though it takes up the same amount of mental energy to admit the truth. In the end, we leave the decisions up in the air, and nothing gets done.

I am sure that every once in a while, we all get asked a question that believe we know the answer to, but we are afraid to answer because we fear that we may give the wrong answer. While no one actually wants to be wrong, we may say, "I don't know..." When we do that we are signaling the conscious and unconscious mind that we do not know the answer to that question. However based on past experiences, both minds do have what is the correct answer. But, now you are incorrectly telling that the answer that they have is the wrong answer and pretty soon even they begin to believe that is the wrong answer and feed that information back to you so that you are totally confused.

And if you think your mind is confused, what do you think your family, friends and lovers think when they keep hearing you say, "Gee, I don't know..." a dozen times a day? Do you believe that they have a tremendous amount of faith in you as a person? They are going to believe that you are not very intelligent, because you are telling them that you can't make a decision on the most simple choices. Pretty soon, they are going to stop asking you even the simplest questions, because they already know the answer - "I don't know...!" How much fun will that be for you, when people stop talking to you? No, being decisive is a strong character trait that people admire and respect. We each tend to trust and rely on those who are most decisive.

If you will remember back to elementary school when we first begin learning match, the teacher used the rote system to instill in our minds what 2 x 2 was. While I never thought this was a great teaching method, as I would prefer that children be taught to think in school, the teacher knew that if we repeated the same thing over and over, it would become habit. Our mind, both consciously and subconsciously works in just this manner. If we are habitually indecisive on even the simplest matters, what sort of help can we get from our mind when we must make important decisions?

The mind is an incredibly power tool. It pays attention to everything we think, say or do and it stores all that information away for future use. Why fill your mind with negativity that will only come back to make you miserable? Speak only positive words, think only positive thoughts, watch the right movies, read the right books or news stories that have positivity as their main theme. Remember that all that information is going to be fed back to you later.

Take advantage of your mind by allowing it to help you achieve the most positive goals and live the life that you truly want to live. My wish for you is that you will always be truly happy in all that you do!

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