I have often talked about the conscious and subconscious mind without actually explaining to you what they do and how they work. I know there is nothing worse than sitting in a classroom without having a clue what the teacher is talking about, so I apologize, and here is my explanation for you.

If you are living in the US, then I believe you can start driving a car at the age of 16, whereas in Australia you must wait until you are 18 to drive by yourself. Why I bring this up is that I want to ask you how many times you have driven the same route, hopped in the car, driven there and hopped out of the car and not really remembered any of the drive at all? You pretty much drove on autopilot -- like a plane in the air. Why do you think this a problem?

Your subconscious mind is like a huge storage bank of every event that has ever occurred in your life -- big or small -- good or bad. So now what happens is, that if you go to do a test, your subconscious mind goes back and checks what your past results have been, and it does its very best to reproduce them for you. If you have been getting poor results in the past, then the likelihood is that you will get more of the same. So it is almost impossible to get good grades. It is like your life is on autopilot.

The conscious mind is the gate keeper to your subconscious mind. It is when you do your day to day thinking. It is your responsibility to monitor your conscious thoughts so that they are focused on success - this way these thoughts are passed to your subconscious mind.

By using tools like the affirmations that I have discussed in previous articles you are controlling your conscious thoughts and therefore controlling what enters and is stored in your subconscious mind. The more positive thoughts that are stored in your subconscious mind, the quicker you will turn off the autopilot and change the results that you are producing at high school.

My final comment is that as a teenager, you need to be very careful of the thoughts that you have and ensure that they are positive and focused on success. If you can do this then you will be surprised at how quickly you can get good grades and life results will change.