It seems to me that our happiness ultimately rests on what is going on in our unconscious mind.

Our conscious thought can influence what makes our unconscious mind feel good, but it doesn’t get the deciding say.

Doing things that I know consciously are good for me gives me some satisfaction. If something isn’t rewarding, though, like cleaning the floors, my unconscious mind gets grumpy if I don’t do things to keep it happy. I tend to break up chores with breaks to keep my unconscious mind happy. I also listen to music to throw it a tidbit while the work is being done.

If I ignore my unconscious mind, the results are dismal. For example, if I try to do unpleasant work all day without taking breaks, I get cranky and become unproductive.

Knowing the right thing to do isn’t enough. To be successful, I need to know both the right thing to do AND a way to do it that will keep my unconscious mind happy.

From the reading that I have been doing, it seems that our minds do a lot of thinking that we aren’t conscious of.

I find our startle reflex interesting. To be startled, something unexpected has to happen. A bump upstairs can start your heart racing if you think you are the only one home. To catch the unexpected event like the thump, your unconscious mind has to process all the information that is flowing into it and check it to see if it fits what it expects. Your unconscious mind is identifying and analysing what is going on around you to the point where it can tell if something is amiss.

Think about word scramble puzzles like jumble. An example from today’s puzzle is IBARR. After some time staring at the letters, the word BRIAR pops into my head. Where does it come from? I don’t consciously think through all the possible arrangements of the letters. Somewhere down in the depths of my subconscious mind something is working through the problem. Even more interestingly, when I do the puzzles a lot, I get better at doing them. My subconscious mind seems to be learning.

Our brains are doing a lot of interesting and complex thinking that we aren’t aware of. To understand how we make decisions, I think we need to understand what is going on below the surface in our minds.