Subliminal

**How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior**

By Leonard Mlodinow

**Estimated Reading Time:** 2 hours 45 minutes

**What You'll Learn**

Why you make decisions you cannot explain. How your brain constructs reality from fragments of data. Why memory is more fiction than fact. What drives your instant judgments of other people. How your social nature shapes nearly everything you do. Why your self-image is both inflated and essential. What science reveals about the hidden forces directing your daily life.

**Who This Book Is For**

Anyone who has ever wondered why they acted against their own intentions. Anyone curious about the gap between what they believe and what they do. Anyone who wants to understand the invisible machinery of the mind that operates below conscious awareness. This book is for people ready to discover that the conscious mind is not the CEO of their life, but rather a spokesperson for decisions made elsewhere.

You believe you know why you do what you do. You believe your decisions are the product of conscious deliberation. You believe your memories are reliable records of the past. You believe your perceptions give you an accurate picture of reality. None of this is true. The conscious mind, the voice in your head that narrates your life, is only a small fraction of what your brain is doing at any given moment. Beneath the surface, an enormous hidden system processes information, shapes your feelings, guides your behavior, and constructs the very reality you experience. This system operates silently, automatically, and with astonishing sophistication. Leonard Mlodinow, a theoretical physicist who has spent his career translating complex science for general readers, turns his attention to the most personal of subjects: the unconscious mind. But this is not the unconscious of Freud, a dark basement of repressed desires and hidden conflicts. This is the unconscious of modern neuroscience and psychology, a remarkable evolutionary achievement that allows us to function in a world of overwhelming complexity. Consider what happens when you walk into a room. You instantly notice whether people are friendly or hostile. You read facial expressions, body language, tone of voice. You sense the emotional temperature of the space. You adjust your behavior accordingly. All of this happens before you have consciously processed any of it. Your unconscious mind has already done the heavy lifting. Or consider the simple act of driving. You can carry on a conversation, listen to music, plan your day, and still navigate traffic, respond to hazards, and arrive at your destination. Your conscious mind is occupied elsewhere, yet the driving happens flawlessly. This is the unconscious at work. The problem is that we have been taught to trust our conscious minds. We believe that…