The mind is a complex and powerful thing. It is what has helped us become the number one species on the planet, in terms of mental ability at least. However there is a lot of potential which goes unused.

At a basic level the mind contains the conscious, and the subconscious. The conscious mind is all the things we actively think about, the internal dialogue we have with ourselves when we are thinking things over.

The subconscious mind on the other hand is more subtle. It makes decisions without us realising. It handles all the important things like controlling your breathing, heart rate and so on. You have probably just become aware of your breathing pattern now…it has become a conscious thing for you. A few minutes ago when you started reading this page chances are it was a sub-conscious activity.

The subconscious mind is like the back burner on a hob. You can start thinking about something on the front burner, the conscious mind, then move onto something else, and the initial thoughts move onto the sub conscious mind back burner, where they keep ticking along on their own. At some stage later on, you can re-visit the thing you were thinking about, and it moves magically off the back burner and into full view, returning to your conscious mind.

Marketing campaigns often work in reverse. They plant an idea in your subconscious mind, such as ‘using brand xyz soap will make people smile’ and then next time you think about soap (or buying soap) you automatically think of brand xyz. These marketing strategies often either play to your fears or to your desires.

Next time you see an advertisement (on average we see over fifty every day), look closely at what you see. In particular look for the things which aren’t immediately obvious – for example something in the background out of focus, writing on a glass or ice cube, how the actors always smile when they glance at the product been advertised, etc. These subtle ‘hints’ which we do not usually notice consciously are often seen by our subconscious and play a large part in steering us towards a particular product when we are unable to decide.

It could be argued this is a good thing because it stops us from having to make decisions about trivial things like which cereal to eat, but i’d rather make up my own mind…