Sub-conciousness is Amazing

I was finally watching "Nobody" movie, which I was hyped for, for a long time. It was a nice movie, good for entertainment but very unrealistic (unlike John Wick). Don't worry I'm not reviewing the movie. I just wanted to share something extra ordinary that I experienced in the middle of the movie. 

Fun fact, I am terrible at recognising faces. I always struggle to recognise faces of different actresses in a movie, I always mix them up. And what's more interesting is I can't tell the difference between Russians and Americans. And in the movie the antagonists were Russians. At first when 4-5 of them faught the protagonist. I started guessing the plot that these guys will be beaten up and their "russian" friends and family will come to avenge. And it suddenly hit me after a while, how did I guess they were Russians? I can't identify them by face, I can't identify them by their accent, I can only identify British and American English accents. For me every non-american/British accents are equally strange and alike. And after a while it was confirmed they were Russians on American soil. I was confused as to how could I have guessed it right. 

After a while I've come to the conclusion that it was the doing of my sub-conscious mind. I can't tell the difference between russian and american, but my sub-conscious mind can. I've watched enough movies to feed my sub-conscious mind enough data to recognise different faces and accents, without me (my concious self) realising that I can, in fact, do it.

Our brain is designed to not bother us with unnecessary work. Once we have enough control over an activity, our brain makes our sub-conciousness incharge of it, which does all the work of processing things and gives you the result. The classic example to explain it is that when you are learning to ride a bike, you have to focus on everything, your leg, hands, balance, what's in front of you, and a lot more. But as you practice, and get better at it, you no more have to worry about it anymore, it all happens without any effort, it's all now in your auto pilot mode. That's because once you've fed your brain enough data as to how to ride a bike, it takes over that skill and gives it to your subconscious mind. So much that you can even travel from work to home without thinking about the route, or traffic signal, sub-conciousness takes care of it all. And now if you focus on all those activities during riding the bike you will most probably fall. Once the sub-conscious mind takes over an activity, it happens in the back of your mind, without you realising it's happening. All you realise is it's result, which in this case is that you can ride a bike.

Now that we're at it, let's talk about some other cool features of our sub-conciousness.

In the book "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, he mentions about a woman who worked for years as a paramedic aid. She once went to a family gathering where she met her father in law and immediately alerted him that "he doesn't look well", she couldn't tell why, but she felt it. She insisted for him to get a check up. It was then found that he had a blockage in his artery that could soon result into a heart attack. He immediately went through a surgey. She saved his life just because he "didn't look well". What actually happened was that years of being a paramedic aid had taught her brain to recognise a patient with a blocked artery by just observing the slight change in skin colour due to the blockage, which is invisible to her but visible to her sub-conciousness.

Do you know when a female ovulates, her skin smoothens slighlty, making her more attractive towards males (just another dirty trick pulled by evolution). But the interesting part is that the males can't tell the difference, but still finds her more attractive during the ovulation period. A male's brain is hardwired to identify that smoothness of skin which is not visible to our conscious mind but is visible to our subconscious mind.

Isn't it all interesting? The mazing human mind at work. There are so many such mind-blowing examples. But I'll spare those for some other time. Thanks for reading, if anyone read it at all. And you can subscribe to get mails whenever I publish another blog.

Thank you.