What you see here is a perfect example of a conscious override.

I was not having fun.

Nope — I was absolutely and completely terrified.

Inside my body, I knew for sure this was not something I wanted to do. But there I was in these stunningly beautiful rice fields in the middle of Bali, with 20 of my friends and fellow seekers. Everything inside of me was screaming no, no, no! And everything externally facing was saying things like come on, you can do this, it’ll be amazing, you’ll be so proud of yourself… and think of the pics!

So I did it.

Every fiber of my being was trembling inside, holding onto that swing for my dear life, until I finally got coaxed to let go.

For the five minutes I was on the swing (or 2, or 20… who knows, because I was barely there inside my body), I was able to actually relax and enjoy the sensations of the wind in my face and the beauty spread out in front of me, for maybe 10 or 20 seconds.

When it was over, I was struck by three things:

➠ I could not stop shaking, and wondered what kind of provocation did this represent to my body? How often are the signals right there inside of us and we simply ignore them or, as I did in this case, override them?

➠ I honestly didn’t realize that I had been holding on to so much debilitating fear inside my body… For how long? For what purpose? And what would I need to do to release it? Would that be easier to do now that I brought it straight up to the surface?

The answer, it turns out, was yes. By the next night, I was perfectly prepared to (and did) release a very old attack on my body from when I was very young.

One of the Prime Directives of our unconscious mind is to sort and repress our memories until we’re ready to resolve them.

Turns out that the 6 months of prep I had participated in to be ready for this retreat (along with 2 years of progressively deeper releases) had prepared me PERFECTLY to see, feel, and know the pain of this repressed memory, and to finally release that pain in order to glean the learnings that had been there for me all along, lying dormant until I was ready.

➠ Finally, how much of our lives do we spend consciously overriding what we must sense deep inside is best for us? How much of what we allow the world to see is curated to satisfy the needs and expectations of others — over our own well-being?

These are just a few of the concepts we explore in The Mind Manual: Essential Tools & Practices for Unleashing Your Brilliance.

Just like a race car driver knows everything there is to know about their vehicle (so they can adjust on a dime, maximize their performance and create a competitive advantage), we deserve to know a heck of a lot more about how our internal operating system works.

Take the idea of Perception is Projection for example: What we see outside of ourselves is, at some level, a direct reflection of the complex system of thoughts, emotions and decisions inside our own mind. When we know this, we recognize that what we’re seeing / hearing / understanding about others is more about our own thoughts, emotions and judgments than theirs. This allows us to open the aperture to consider possibilities we hadn’t known existed before.

Or how about the simple fact that our conscious mind only processes 40-50 bits of the 11 million bits of information coming at us every single second??? By definition, this means two people cannot neurologically have the same memory or understanding of a shared experience. What???

And… did you know that our fundamental motivations are generally below our conscious awareness? That the very things that drive our behaviors, our decision-making, how we show up in the world are unknown to us? (This is why we repeat ineffective patterns over and over throughout our lives. And… once we identify these motivations, we can change them if they no longer serve us!)

What’s possible for you when you understand how your brain shapes your world?

And what if you could use that knowledge to create a competitive edge? What impact could these game-changing insights have on how you lead? How you communicate? How you perform? How might your relationships — at work and at home — transform when you understand, adjust and take responsibility for how you show up?

The possibilities are infinite. Learn more here.