Critical Factor: The Bodyguard of the Subconscious Mind
What Is the Critical Factor?
The Critical Factor is one of the four essential components of the mind. It sits between the conscious and subconscious areas and acts as a bodyguard - dutifully protecting the beliefs you hold in your subconscious mind.
[Learn more about how the mind functions here].
Why Is the Critical Factor Important?
The critical factor (also known as critical faculty, critical filter, or critical function) is important because it’s a comparing mechanism. It takes the information you’re receiving consciously and compares that new information with the beliefs stored in your subconscious mind.
All information has to pass through the critical factor where it’s determined either to be in alignment with the beliefs you have about that subject in your subconscious OR out of alignment with those beliefs.
If it aligns with your beliefs, the critical function allows this information to go right into your subconscious, strengthening the already existing belief.
If it doesn’t align with your beliefs, the critical function sends this information into an area that’s just a database of information that doesn’t really affect your life.
An Example of the Critical Factor
An example would be if you had deeply held subconscious beliefs about money. You may have grown up with the messages around you being that “there isn’t enough to go around,” or “it’s hard to come by,” or that “money doesn’t grow on trees,” or that “you’re not smart enough to make good money.”
You may not be consciously aware that these are beliefs you have, but let’s pretend you have a hard time making ends meet, you live paycheck to paycheck, and there doesn’t ever seem to be enough even though you work hard and manage your money well.
This would suggest that you may have subconscious programming keeping you in a very limited state financially. You’re unable to see or accept different ways of thinking about or engaging with money because they don’t align with your beliefs.
You need the support of your subconscious mind to do anything effectively. So, if you have scarcity and lack programs running in your subconscious about money, those programs will influence your conscious mind and critical factor.
Consciously you may want to change your relationship with money and have more of it, but without your subconscious programming supporting this desire, you’re going nowhere fast. Your critical factor is going to work to keep those existing limiting beliefs safe and in place as a way to support you because you created those beliefs in the first place (during your formative years of 0-8 years old), and your critical factor wants to protect what’s been in place for so long.
So in our example of scarcity programs around money being firmly in place within your subconscious, if you came across a book, or a speaker, or a class, or some random person who says, “money comes easy, you could make a million dollars this year if you want to, all you have to do is X, Y, Z,” this information is going to be examined by your critical factor. The “information bodyguard” will size up these statements and compare them to the beliefs in your subconscious that you already have around that subject. It’s not going to admit any of this information if it doesn’t line up - it’ll just go into a bin of miscellaneous information that you know about but can’t put to use.
Bringing “money comes easy” into our example where you already have subconscious limiting beliefs and scarcity programs around money in place, your critical factor compares this new information of “money comes easy” to your existing beliefs. “Money is hard to come by,” and “money doesn’t grow on trees” already exist, so your critical factor determines that the new information doesn’t align, and “money comes easy” is not allowed access to affect your subconscious beliefs. It’s put aside as information you’re aware of, but it doesn’t affect you.
The critical factor is what makes change so challenging.
When you consciously decide you want to change your beliefs about money, or you want to lose weight, or eat healthier, or love yourself more, or take more chances, you have to go toe-to-toe with the critical factor in order to take the new desire and information and get it into your subconscious mind where you create your beliefs and habits. Therein lies the rub!
This is why you get excited to make changes to up-level areas of your life, and the new habits you try to adopt don’t stick because the beliefs you already have in your subconscious don’t support the new habits and behaviors you’re trying to create. The critical factor may have you asking why isn’t therapy working for me?
I know what you’re thinking, “Heidi! That sucks! No wonder I haven’t been able to do all the things I want to do!”
Don’t worry! I have the solution!
The Critical Factor & Hypnosis
Hypnosis is how we slip the critical factor a $50, giving us access to the incredible power of the subconscious! Hypnosis is a stealth move, stealth af.
Using hypnosis, whether in the Soul Forward Method program, in The Journey, in a hypnosis audio, or another format, we leave the conscious mind and go down the (metaphorical) stairway. We see the Critical Factor (aka Critical Function) standing guard at the nondescript, underground entrance to the Sub-Conscious (the hot new place that has no sign) and Hypnosis hands the Critical Factor a $50, so the Critical Factor lets us WALK. RIGHT. IN.
And boom, we’re in.
We have access to all of the existing programs, beliefs, habits, and behaviors, and we can make changes. Using hypnosis, we can dismantle the limiting programs in place that no longer serve us, and we can construct new programs, beliefs, and habits right there where they can immediately take effect.
We just have to bypass the critical factor! Easy peasy.
The Soul Forward Method is the most powerful way to not only by pass the Critical Factor, but experience real, soul-aligned change.
Ready to bypass the critical factor and make real changes?