What Can You Do When 95% of Your Actions Are Involuntary?
Letting go of control and changing from the inside out, by reorganizing your inner environment first. Finding the keys to the subconscious.
Last Thursday, I gave a workshop about ‘Fueling Growth Through Food and Nervous System Regulation’ at The Intuitive Writing School. Each time I’m asked to go deep into subjects, space opens up for the next layers of wisdom. This was one of these moments. The post you’re about to read is a follow-up on that.
Being Unaware of Most of Your Actions Can Be Scary
Back in my twenties, when I pursued self-studies aligned with my football coaching, I occasionally came across studies about voluntary and involuntary actions. It was stated clearly that only 5% of our actions are voluntary and 95% are not. I noticed this while practicing for my driver’s license. Within the first lesson, steering and shifting gears went automatically. Followed by using the clutch, then the gas, and the brakes. Over time, the amount of muscle tension and energy needed to do these small actions decreased significantly. Up until the point that driving a car became part of my nature. And successfully, I passed my exams without effort, a couple of months later. The actions needed were automatic, similar to walking or riding a bicycle.
Once I had my first car, I naturally looked for the edge. In terms of speed, driving abilities, and finding shortcuts. Somehow, this was hard-wired in my brain to get to the place of destination fast. It led to scary moments, such as my car taking a spin in the first week. Other moments were nearly crashing into a wall, aquaplaning (causing the back of the car to slip), and dropping speed from 130 km/h to 70 km/h within seconds due to gearbox failure. In all these cases, my reflexes got me through. At the same time, distractions had a hold on me and got me into these situations in the first place. Either in the moment or through a slow build-up of habits over time. I was led by stress, tension, and influences outside of me.
Back then, I didn’t make the links and connections that I see clearly now. Losing presence in my body due to needing to be on time. Out of touch with my body because thoughts were taking hold of me. Racing through the day to keep up with corporate jobs and linear time frames. Going through a loop, day in day out. Leading to moments that scared the shit out of me, caused my stomach to turn, and had me slip through the eye of a needle. Strangely enough, most of the time it wasn’t obvious at all! Something needed to change to come back to my senses. Trying to take control of my actions consciously didn’t work; it took me to where I was instead. It was necessary to go deeper and get my mind out of the way.
Working With the Subconscious Is The Key to Change
Change came most certainly, only in completely different ways than I could ever expect. And they had nothing to do with driving. At the beginning of my thirties, I rediscovered walking in nature, something I did many times as a child. Slowing down my movements to notice all the beauty around me. The birds, the trees, the wind, the flowers, the butterflies, and the dragonflies that swirled around. A sense of wonder was reinstalled, childlike curiosity taking the lead. What happened simultaneously is that my thoughts slowed down. Stress and tension left my body, about the day, work, family, home, and anything else. Presence in the moment took its place, providing the building blocks for inner peace, joy, and abundance. Things I wasn’t aware of then, the accumulation of these aspects followed in the years afterward.
What had started was that the communication between my gut and brain was reactivated. Years later, I learned that 80 to 90% of communication between the brain and the gut goes from the gut to the brain. When the vagus nerve is interrupted or shut off, little to no communication takes place. In simple words, you’re completely unaware of what your body is trying to tell you. Let alone being able to interpret what it means. Going through your day is still possible, but that’s not being alive! Restoring this is the doorway to the subconscious, the autonomous nervous system, and 95% of involuntary actions. There, you’re able to change habits, beliefs, and thought patterns, and to remove old identifications that you’ve left behind. A powerful tool that costs little effort and creates changes in no time.
Besides going into nature, I attended seminars and courses abroad, leaving my home environment. By expanding my horizon, my standards of living went up, and old stuff that was lingering got exposed. Simply put, things that were no longer of value came to the surface naturally. Without any conscious input from my side, choosing MY path and taking actions got me there. Trips abroad, including a football stadium tour, became regular and linked me up with new ways of looking at life. Meeting more new people than ever before was a joy, introducing me to higher standards of living. Something I was yearning for, but didn’t know how to achieve. It was given to me on a silver platter.
How You Start Something Changes Everything
Even more joy and expansion entered my life when I was introduced to an online course in abundance. Despite heavy resistance from my mind, I went for it, curious to see what it was that had the stronger pull. I had never heard about it before and didn’t know what to expect. From the start, it turned my way of thinking and life upside down. Exercises to expose thought patterns, habits, beliefs, and identifications. By looking at the facts through self-observation and being honest with myself. At the same time, giving an alternative viewpoint to life, the lens of abundance, and being resourceful. The course taught me to rewrite the rules of my life’s playbook, from scarcity to having everything I need.
Straight away, things changed inside of me and around me. While cycling to work, I heard the songs of the birds coming over the highway noise. Noticing the awareness of dogs, their non-verbal language, and the subtle but powerful ways they influence their caretakers. And especially looking with a fresh pair of eyes at the people around me. Previously, I followed along with the common narratives, complaints, and negativity included. Now, I took a distance to notice gaps and inconsistencies in their behavior, including what they actually tried to say. For many years, I was going along with the crowd, even though I was well aware that it didn’t work at all. Instead of trying to change the narrative, my subconscious actions pointed in a new direction. My creative and authentic self had taken the lead.
Shortly before starting the course, with my job at that time, I had already noticed things were off. Taking over the responsibilities of colleagues didn’t feel good anymore; I needed to think about myself first. A heart-based decision that changed the course of my life for good. Starting from my conscious mind, which tried to control and steer everything, had led myself into a brick wall. Making the switch to listening to my heart and opening myself up for my body made it possible to build something that lasts. From that moment onward, I skipped the complaints and drama of people around me and focused on bringing my visions alive. Being successful despite challenges along the way prevailed. Abundance, joy, and curiosity became my guiding lines. They had been there all along; I just wasn’t giving them full attention.
How You Can Access the Subconscious and Change Your Involuntary Actions
Let’s talk about the practical side, how to make life-lasting changes for the better. During my first period of change, I went into nature and implemented an abundance mindset. This was fueled by diaphragm breathing1 and increasing my breathing capacity. The diaphragm is like a pump behind your belly and lower ribs, pumping a maximum amount of air into your lungs. You can see this with infants whose bellies rise like a balloon. The left lung is slightly smaller than the right, because of the position of the heart. Stress, tension, and pain accumulate when breathing goes straight to the ribs, due to rushing and ‘running out of time’. Muscles like the neck, shoulders, and lower back react by contracting to compensate for the lower lung capacity. Slow breathing through the belly first activates the diaphragm and the full lung capacity. A slower exhale activates the autonomic nervous system, giving access to the subconscious.
Cleansing the lymphatic system helped me to clear out toxic waste and energy from my body. In the long term, all of these helped me to detect falsehoods, inconsistencies, negativity, and antiresonance (or destructive interference) in my direct environment. Creating resonance in your environment is key, if something or someone isn’t in harmony with you, it drags you down and sucks up your energy. Your lymphatic system2 helps you signal that. Brushing your skin with a skin brush, bouncing, or simply moving frequently helps to activate your lymphatic system. As well as proper hydration. Subsequently, we all have a unique resonant breathing pattern. Breathing at your unique pace creates resonance with others who vibrate on the same wavelength. Anyone who’s below that, sucks you dry. Slowing down your exhale for 30 seconds can bring you back into resonant breathing; it takes over naturally through presence.
Putting my mind in observation mode significantly increased my presence with my body. Simply by slowing down movements3, you can instruct your mind to pay attention to your body. The position of your elbow while chopping vegetables. Noticing which organs respond when you taste during cooking. Picking up on the sounds of nature while you’re working in the kitchen. Feel the touch on your skin when grabbing tools or ingredients. The same with walking, starting by slowing down. Breathing, writing, talking, painting, and other activities where you move your body can be applied as well. From 30 seconds to 5 minutes, or long enough to slow down your thoughts and be present with yourself. When your mind observes4, your body can process old feelings, emotions, traumas, and experiences that were stuck or suppressed before.
Nutrition was the tipping point for me, changing to a plant-based lifestyle. There was zero interest in vegan food or vegan-minded people before I bumped into it. How I would describe now what happened is that my organs started to flow again, and my gut-brain communication got restored. Fruits, vegetables, and leafy greens are known to activate the digestive system and detox organs5. As described earlier, 80 to 90% of communication goes from the gut to the brain. Activating the autonomous nervous system, through which the subconscious can rewire itself. By excluding meat, dairy, alcohol, and processed foods completely, I noticed that things blocking these natural pathways were minimized to almost zero. An activated vagus nerve gets you out of fight-or-flight mode, a program that’s embedded in your biology since the day you were born. Using plant-based foods helps you to get out of that and come into a state of resonance. It activates cellular memory, where all your gifts, talents, and abilities are stored. These are all part of your subconscious, but lie dormant until you activate them.
Cultivating joy6 and creativity are both catalysts to bring flow into your life. From the first moment I implemented changes through small and simple actions, both went through the roof. Up until a level that I only knew from early childhood. Early memories started to come back to me, as well as creative expressions I didn’t know I had within me. Joy and creativity bring you into a state of being where fear & anxiety, worry & confusion, and guilt & shame cannot exist. It’s a different reality that goes faster, while at the same time costing much less effort. Besides that, you enter a state of timelessness more easily, similar to young children up until age 7. Just like when you were young, it’s fully possible to regain these abilities and become limitlessly creative again.
Changing my living environment7 activated an integration process. All the transformations I had made internally started to come to fruition in my external world. Supportive friends, business partnerships, a healthy living environment, and an abundance of colorful fruits and vegetables all around me. See your current environment as a bubble, also known as your comfort zone. It makes you feel at home because your mind is used to it. Changing environments allows you to look at your bubble or comfort zone from the outside in. You’re no longer pulled into automatic behaviors; instead, you need to be creative to find your way. What needs to go comes to the surface, especially things you used to identify yourself with. By switching external environments, you create space to work on your internal environment, the subconscious space where life changes are made. Deciding what your values are and on what terms you want to live your life. Whether you return to the old environment or not, you come out renewed. Your body becomes your home, your temple, the place where you feel safe and secure.
Mastering Uncertainty, the World of The Unseen and Unknown
It’s well-known that the brain consumes the most energy of any organ in the body, around 20%. The brain needs to be efficient in order not to run out of energy and burn out. Creating patterns, beliefs, programs, and habits is a way to accomplish this. Interpreted by the conscious mind as a need for control, understanding, and wanting to know or explain everything. Unfortunately, this already starts in the womb. Meaning that the moment you’re born, there are already conditions and programs running through your subconscious (family lineage, culture, traditions). Besides that, through mimicking the people in your direct environment, you take over their behaviors, habits, beliefs, and thought patterns. Whether you want this or not. So, keep in mind that anything negative or bad coming forth from this is not your fault. However, you’re the only one who can change it; therefore, you need to take responsibility in the form of action.
The scariest parts are often the things unseen and unknown, causing uncertainty. While actually, these are all connected. Spiritual teachings tell us that the whole universe lives inside us, stored in our cells. Anything unseen or unknown points primarily to your inner world. Parts of you that are repressed, stored underneath deep layers of conditioning and programming, or pain and trauma. You don’t know about them and can’t see them because it triggers fear & anxiety, worry & confusion, and guilt & shame. These are things that don’t want to be seen due to a high level of discomfort. Luckily, it’s all stored in your cells, accessible through your subconscious mind, and once it’s healed or processed, it doesn’t come back. Being able to open the doors to the unknown and unseen means facing these fears. Yet, entering this process like that is not a good idea.
I’ve learned something different by reorganizing my inner world first, cultivating joy, creativity, and an abundance mindset, and transforming my life through small actions. Building new standards, expanding my horizon, and changing environments made me feel alive again. Subsequently, anything that wasn’t aligned anymore, including my deepest fears, automatically came up to the surface. Look at how your life is designed right now, from above like an eagle, and simply notice8. Change elements in your life that need an upgrade from the bottom up. Things that you identify yourself with, notice if that’s what you want in the first place. Or if it’s something you’ve carried on your shoulders your whole life. Replace it with a new vision and feel what it’s like, so you can move from that viewpoint. Notice the word ‘from’ and not ‘to’, this is your new starting point, you’re already there. Allow old stuff that’s blocking you to come up naturally, so that you can feel into it and let it go.
Uncertainties are the involuntary actions and behaviors you haven’t mastered yet. Changing my living environment and building a new life from zero scared the shit out of me9. On a mental level, so much old stuff came rushing through. Yet, to my surprise, I was able to keep going. All the patterns that had kept me glued to my old environment had been replaced. This was my new baseline from which I could live. Although my conscious mind tried to gain control by demanding understanding, proof, and certainty, my body was peaceful and calm. Deciding how you want to live your life and building a lifestyle around that makes it possible to create the patterns and habits that bring this into reality. You take away uncertainty by keeping your vision clear and instructing your mind to follow the motions of your body. Your heart will tell you if you’re on track or not. Taking one action at a time is all it takes. You’ve got this.
Getting Out of Your Way By Looking At the Whole Picture
To come back to driving a car, the urge to go as fast as possible was gone. I had given up the need to live up to other people’s standards. Instead, my own inner values had gotten an upgrade and formed a guiding line. A sense of deep calmness took over, no matter the circumstances on the road and what my schedule looked like. For a long time, I was blocking myself by making things outside of me more important than they were. Getting my mind out of the way opened the doors to a new life that far exceeded my expectations. The bigger picture gave clarity and showed me what I needed to work on.
By looking at the bigger picture, the whole trajectory of your life, you’re able to make changes from the ground up. Replacing rotten soil with healthy soil, to let the best come out of you naturally. No matter where you’re at, return to getting an overview as soon as you can. Whether it’s something on the surface level, like it was with rushing while driving for me. Parts of your lifestyle that don’t seem to click. Or areas of your life that need an upgrade. Go back to the beginning, pull the weeds out, and plant healthy seeds. The ones underlying your values, boundaries, and what you want to create in life.
See it as driving into a dead-end street. The only way to get out is to go back to where you took a wrong turn. Even if that means returning to early childhood and changing things that were taught back then. Remember that you’ve got the power in your hands, that anything can be changed, and that it takes action to make things happen. It’s not about whether something was good or bad, it’s about what you want now. Look at your current map from above, decide where you want things to head, and swap the old for something new. Next up, surrender to the journey by being present in your body, feeling the whole experience. Your body will guide you through the transition, despite any challenges along the way. The direction you choose is what you give; the experience is what you receive.
Diaphragm breathing exercise
For treating the lymphatic system, check out lymphatic mojo by Dr. Perry Nickelston
My story about practicing self-awareness and the mind in observation mode
My story about finding joy in the moment
My story about how I found self-love through changing environments
My article with insights on how to obtain an eagle eye perspective
My story about building up life from zero in a new environment
This is such a great and practical piece Wilco!
"80 to 90% of communication between the brain and the gut goes from the gut to the brain. When the vagus nerve is interrupted or shut off, little to no communication takes place."
THIS! There's no intuition here when it's shut off, so what are most people left to do but chase after what everyone else is doing, further outsourcing their intuition to anything possible outside them.