How Does the Subconscious Mind Create Reality?

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Law of Success" by Napoleon Hill. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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How does the subconscious mind create reality? How can you train your subconscious mind to work in your favor?

According to Napoleon Hill, the author of The Law of Success, your life experiences are the result of the contents of your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is, in turn, influenced by your conscious, habitual thoughts.

Keep reading to learn how your subconscious mind creates your reality.

How Your Subconscious Mind Creates Experiences

Hill asserts that your subconscious mind creates all of your experiences through its connection to higher consciousness. He explains that the energy of higher consciousness permeates and connects all matter in the universe. Through this connection, higher consciousness orchestrates interactions and governs everything that happens in the world. However, though higher consciousness has a connection to everything—giving it the potential to create any type of experience—your subconscious mind can only connect to and create experiences that reinforce your habitual thoughts.

Example: You habitually fear that you’re not good enough to succeed in your career and you imprint this fear upon your subconscious mind. Even though higher consciousness has the potential to help you achieve career success in numerous ways—for instance, by attracting professional connections or creating opportunities for promotion—your subconscious mind can’t connect to and create these experiences. Instead, it can only create experiences that reinforce your fear of failure—for instance, by limiting your career opportunities to low-paying or unfulfilling positions or causing you to make errors that hinder your chances of promotion.

Deepak Chopra: How Does the Subconscious Mind Create Reality?

Similar to Hill, Deepak Chopra (The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success) argues that all your experiences reflect your thoughts and feelings. He explains that your entire reality springs from an invisible, spiritual world of consciousness. This invisible realm pulses with “thought-energy”—the energy of the trillions of thoughts that ever existed and are yet to exist. The same thought-energy that permeates everything in the universe also flows through you. Each time you think or feel, you shape the nature of the thought-energy that surrounds you and flows through you—thereby contributing to the creation of your reality.

Further, Chopra clarifies that the motivations underlying your thoughts create your reality. Your motivations can be broken down into two parts:

1) Where you’re directing your thought-energy: What you give your attention to directs your thought-energy to specific areas of your life. For example, you think about your job, causing thought-energy to flow to your career.

2) Why you’re directing your thought-energy: Your reasons for thinking about something define the content of your thought-energy and create life experiences that reflect those reasons. For example, you’re thinking about your job because you’re worried about getting fired. This worry shapes the content of your thought-energy and creates work-related experiences that reflect and reinforce your insecurities.

Therefore, Chopra argues that you can transform your experiences by paying attention to what you think and why you think about it. For example, you’re more likely to experience career success if you change your motivation for thinking about work from “fear of getting fired” to “enthusiasm about being promoted.”

How Does the Subconscious Mind Create Reality?