Three Laws of Change How to Influence Your Subconscious to

Manage the Energies of Your Heart

By Athena Staik, Ph.D.

As a mind game of sorts, defensiveness is deceptively destructive. It throws off the energy of
the body — and when your heart is off balance, so are you. In survival mode, fear rules the
body, and the brain shifts from learning mode to protective mode, thus, no longer open to
influence or change.

An angry outburst, denial, blaming, lying, excuses, withdrawal, and the like, can provide rushes
of power in the moment — cheap thrills, if you will. Yet these are costly when you consider
their effects on your personal health and relationships.

Take heart. Change is possible. It has everything to do with applying certain Laws of Change
to manage the energies of your heart.

These laws speak to how to best influence the part of the mind that runs all the autonomic
systems of the body, which is also responsible for change — the subconscious mind.

Why influence your subconscious mind?

Your subconscious takes its job of managing the energies of your heart seriously. It speaks a
sensory language of physiological sensations and felt emotional feelings, transmitted throughout
your body’s communication network.

- Its primary directive is your survival.

When it thinks you cannot manage these energies, in other words, cannot handle
disappointment, fear, etc., it takes over. Thus, the first reason you want to be able to influence
your subconscious mind is to actively give it the assurance it needs that you can handle feelings
of vulnerability, without being overwhelmed — an ability that is critical to the formation of
emotional intimacy. If your perceptions tell it you cannot, which is often the case, it
automatically takes charge to put you in protective mode.

- Its second directive is to ensure you thrive.

You’re not designed to merely survive, even more compellingly, you’re driven by inner
motivational forces to thrive.
You are exquisitely hardwired to fulfill a two-fold purpose of connecting in meaningful
ways and being authentically you in the process of relating to others and life around you.

Beneath the surface of a heated discussion on the issue of money, communication, sex, etc., for
example, are inner hardwired drives that compel you to love and connect, to find value and
recognition in relation to those you most love, and life in general.

- The subconscious drives to survive and thrive shape your every behavior.
To thrive, you need to know how to calm and assure your own heart in moments when survival
fears surface, such as rejection, inadequacy or abandonment. If you do not feel safe enough to
love, your body automatically goes into protective mode.

It’s safe to say that the ongoing management of your heart is the most challenging task you face
in life. To succeed, it’s essential to understand how your mind and body work. To start, here are
three of the Laws of Change:

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First Law: Thoughts create your reality — and destiny.

Your subconscious mind is always eavesdropping on your thoughts. In fact, it listens for verbal
and nonverbal instructions.
- As it does no thinking of its own, it relies on your perceptions of events to know how to
interpret life around you.
It wouldn’t know if a tiger is a threat to you or not, for example, without checking your
perceptions. A tiger may seem an obvious threat, however, if you were a lion tamer, you would
likely love getting into the cage with your big cats.

- Thus, it is your thoughts, and not events that cause your painful emotions or
defensiveness.
Your thoughts, and the underlying beliefs that drive them, literally, are the instructions your
subconscious uses to fire the chemical reactions, accordingly. When your perceptions of life –
your thoughts – activate survival fears, they produce a predictable pattern. Limiting beliefs
produce images in your mind that cause fear-based emotions that, in turn, activate your survival
response.

- Limiting beliefs are a set up.

They rob you of happiness by keeping your focus on what you fear most: failing at life.
A common limiting belief, for example, is the notion that others have to power to decide your
self-worth on the basis of whether you perform in accordance to their standards.
If you hold a belief like that, the more you try to impress others, the less likely it is that you
believe in yourself. And no matter how many books you read, classes you take or trainings you
attend, you will continue to feel the pain of never feeling good enough.

You’ve heard it before. Your thoughts become habits that form your character, and shape the
direction of your life. That’s the bottom line.

Second Law: Make conscious the subconscious.

Limiting or otherwise, all beliefs form perceptions that the subconscious depends on to filter
incoming data.
You may have already spent most of your life trying to prove that you’re good enough to live it.
That’s the power of these limiting beliefs. You need to know that:

- Limiting beliefs are lies because they do not serve you or life in you.
They limit rather than free you to be all you are meant to be. By keeping your focus on survival
fears, they merely increase the odds that, for example, you and your partner will use words and
nonverbal gestures that further deepen the painful emotions you likely already feel. This could
even start an argument that lasts for days!

- The power of limiting beliefs rests in that they operate for the most part in secret,
unbeknownst to you, separate from your conscious awareness.
The solution? Identify any limiting beliefs by observing your thoughts. Attending to your
thoughts helps you build conscious awareness.
The challenge is a real one: Are you willing to examine your life by examining your thoughts?

- Unless you are willing to consciously reflect on your thoughts, feelings and actions, you
efforts to make changes will be thwarted by subconscious beliefs.
Chances are, when you are not aware of the energies you bring to a discussion with a loved one,
you will react defensively in certain contexts, and blame them instead. Each time you do,
however, you merely intensify painful emotions you both already feel inside, as loneliness,
rejection or shame.
The unexamined life is not worth living. ~ SOCRATES

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The process of making conscious the subconscious is one of the most important ways of
changing defensive patterns of relating to yourself, and loved ones.

Third Law: Embrace Painful Emotions — Or Be Controlled By Them.

To develop emotional intelligence, become fully emotionally mature, it’s essential that you give
your subconscious mind full permission to allow you to experience the complete range of
emotions of … vulnerability.

There are no shortcuts here.

As a human being, you naturally aspire to feel positive emotions of the heart — love,
enthusiasm, and confidence, among others. That’s grand and fabulously the way it needs to be.
It’s what the heart yearns for, relentlessly.

Rarely is instruction needed for “dealing” with your positive emotions, however!
Work is needed, however, in learning how to remain empathically connected to your
compassion, and the highest strivings of the heart, in moments when you are challenged. It’s
essential to know how to calm your mind and body — so that your survival response does not
take over your ability to consciously think!

You may be wondering, how can feeling painful feelings, allowing them to touch your heart or
disclosing them to others, and the like, possibly strengthen you?

Consider the following:

- It is the painful emotions that teach and stretch your heart to help you more fully love your
self and others, unconditionally.
- It is emotions of vulnerability, the uncomfortable and painful ones, that teach you what
doesn’t work and strengthen your resolve.
- It’s the feelings you want to avoid and push away that, if you would only pause to listen,
inform you of what actions to take or not take to remain firmly connected to your
compassion.
In other words, it’s not painful emotions per se that cause problems. It’s not knowing how to
feel and process them. (Often this is because they are the same ones your parents unwittingly
taught you to feel anxious about [they did too].) More specifically:
- It’s not knowing how to feel and express them without getting stuck or wallowing in their
de-energizing power.
- It’s not knowing how to feel safe enough to remain empathically connected to self and the
other in situations that most challenge you.
- It’s not knowing how to take charge of your emotions so that your survival brain will
release you to freely and fully give and receive love to self and other.

If you believe that your happiness depends on certain events, outcomes or others to give you
that feeling, it’s a set up for emotional suffering.
Regardless how well intentioned, if you “think” you cannot remain fully present to love and
accept yourself and the other in moments when one or both of you are seemingly unlovable,
inadvertently, you are also sending the message that you don’t love the other when they don’t
do what makes you happy. (And, you like know how it feels to receive this message from
others. A very common practice!)

It makes no difference that you do not intend to convey this! It’s just the way the emotional
states of the body work in auto-pilot. Whenever humans do not feel loved or valued in relation
to those they care about, automatically, this triggers scary feelings inside.
You need to know how to protect your happiness, and manage the energies of your heart, in
situations that trigger you. You also need to know what your triggers are.

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When you embrace painful emotions as teachers or action signals, you release yourself to more
fully experience emotions of exuberance — enthusiasm, gratitude and love, courage and
compassion — and the fulfillment you long to feel in your relationships.
It’s a question of being present to your emotional experience of life by developing your capacity
to remain calm, confident, centered regardless what is going on around you.
You have an essential responsibility to protect your happiness — it’s simply a question of
whether you or your fears will control the direction of your life.

Change your life with great thoughts and feelings!

Yes, change is possible. You can directly influence your subconscious mind by keeping these
three Laws of Change in mind.
Defensive reactivity is not healthy for your mind, body or relationships.
You can consciously create a sense of safety for yourself, at will, regardless of the
circumstances around you, and that means doing so in moments that most trigger you.
You can master your inner world of emotions and consciously choose the emotions you want to
create within your self and your partner.
You can learn to think and speak the language of success and possibilities.
Your thoughts are tremendously powerful. They have the power to either create or destroy. You
either make them conscious — or they control you.
The responsibility to protect your happiness, the energies of your heart, is a beautiful one.
Embrace it.
You do so by keeping most of your focus on what you love, while also allowing your fears to
calmly inform your choices in a balanced way.
The choice is up to you.

Athena Staik, Ph.D.

Relationship consultant, author, licensed marriage and family therapist, Dr. Athena Staik motivates
clients to break free of anxiety, emotion reactivity, and other addictive patterns, to awaken
wholehearted relating to self and other. She is currently in private practice in Northern VA.

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