Our subconscious mind exerts a powerful influence over our lives. It preserves and runs the body. It stores and organizes memories, emotions, and energy. It controls and maintains all of our perceptions. Over 95% of what we do, think, and say comes from old programming in our subconscious mind.

Unless you make a conscious effort to direct the immense power of your subconscious, its robotic and limited programs will run your life. It will sabotage your best intentions. And yet, it's not difficult to work with the subconscious. You just have to know what you're doing.

Here are ten facts you should know about the subconscious mind:

1. Despite its power, the subconscious is a servant of the conscious mind. It follows orders by acting on whatever is fed to it. It cannot distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. It has no sense of humor and takes everything very literally. Your conscious mind is the gate-keeper. For personal power, you must be aware of what you are allowing into the subconscious. And you can intentionally program it to manifest what you want in life.

2. The subconscious mind responds with instinct and habit. As thinking and behavioral patterns deepen, they become habits and they become harder and harder to change.

3. Use repetition, authority, and emotion to program the subconscious. Affirm and visualize often what you desire. Be strong, willful and in command. Draw on your passion and emotional power to affirm what you want, as emotions have a very strong impact on the subconscious mind.

4. The subconscious mind does not process negatives. For this reason, all affirmations and statements must be positive. Do not say, "I will not gain weight." The 'not' is not recorded. The subconscious mind only hears, "I will gain weight."

5. The subconscious represses memories with unresolved negative emotions. The memories will get buried, yet the beliefs and feelings associated with them will still control your reactions. This is why it is important to become aware of and resolve strong guilt, resentment, fears, anger, and depression.

6. The subconscious mind works with symbols and metaphors. Watch your dreams closely for symbols that will offer clues to underlying issues that need to be resolved.

7. It takes everything personally. It keeps a photocopy of everything. Whenever you criticize, resent, judge, and project negative thoughts and feelings onto others, you experience the negativity as your own.

8. The subconscious works on the principle of least effort. It follows the path of least resistance. Without purposeful direction from our conscious mind, it follows the easiest, usually more negative path of our engrained habits.

9. It has a need to be moral. The subconscious mind is also the source of a higher aspect of yourself. This God force, Soul energy, or whatever you want to call it supports your evolution towards love, unity, beauty and truth. Consciously working with the subconscious opens us to higher levels of wisdom and love.

10. It knows only the present time. There is no future or past in the subconscious mind. All stored experiences are processed as NOW. Know that the past affects you NOW, as the subconscious replays past programming in the present. So affirm in the now, not in the future. And understand that you have the power right now to re-write sabotaging programs from the past so you can claim a better future.

When you choose to understand the workings of your own mind and choose to exercise control over the functions and attributes of your own mind, you will be empowered to create your own reality, to be completely self-reliant and totally prosperous. You can have the life you really want.