11 million bits of information per second.
That's how much data your subconscious can process.
How much can your conscious brain handle in a second?
40 bits.
11 million bits vs. 40 bits
That's why your subconscious often controls your behavior.
On a recent episode of the Banking on Digital podcast, I talked with Melina Palmer about how to use your brain to cope with change.
Melina is the founder and CEO of the Brainy Business and host of the Brainy Business podcast. She says fear propels our subconscious to go into overdrive.
When our conscious brain gets full of ideas about what's going to happen, our subconscious takes over, and it makes silly, irrational choices that help it keep calm and feel good.
We hear something scary about the pandemic, for example, our subconscious tells us to buy up all the toilet paper at Costco.
But your subconscious doesn't make decisions on the exact information that's ahead of you. It doesn't know what's going to work best in the future.
Your subconscious relies on what worked in the past. And we aren't going back there. So we have to develop a new playbook for a new reality.
But how? How can we work with our brains to make change come easier during a crisis?