Chapter 05: Autopilots

Your conscious brain can process up to nine seperate bits of info comfortably at any one time. Your five senses are constantly processing loads of info all the time.  The other part of your brain, your unconscious process at any given moment two million bit of information per second.

So what do autopilots have to do with this...

The info revealed tells us that our brain processes masses bits of info whether we are asleep or awake.  Part of its job is to carry out automatic behaviour - blinking, growth of hair and nails etc to even the fact that you are able to balance on two feet.

There is so much happening in your brain  that it has to be selective to what it chooses to focus on and what it leaves you to do automatically.

Bad autopilots for eg.  smoking every time you finish a meal, creep in when you are not looking. 

There was a woman who once said, "I'm hungry for balance...I'm hungry to do something other than work."  The more she worked the more she needed to balance her life with something else.  In her case it was food.  She eventually starting putting on weight and reached 108 kilos.

If you think about her choice of words were HUNGRY for balance.  If you really think about it you can be desperate for balance and hungry for food. Her use of words tells you a lot about what's going on in her mind.  her brain made an unconscious connection with food as a substitute antidote to her work.  Ultimately she understood that eating that bag of crisps would not big good for her but autopilots don't understand logic or reason.

So this woman started dieting.  eventually she got to a comfortable weight again when guess what?  When she was thin enough she slacked off on the dieting and started putting on those pounds all over again.

It was only when she discovered what was really going on inside of her, her mind she began to win with not only her battle with weight but the whole war.

"I'm hungry for balance....I"m hungry to do something other than work."  The result was that she changed her attitude to losing  weight.  She stopped using food as a balance against her work.

This woman is Oprah Winfrey.