According to Harvard University professor Daniel Wegner, when we have thoughts that occur just before an action and these thoughts are consistent with the action, we believe we have willed our action. If you think of reading today’s newspaper, pick it up and start reading it, there seems little doubt your consciousness is in charge and guiding your actions. But, in fact, picking up the newspaper is not a simple conscious act; many nonconscious aspects lie beneath. In the words of columnist Biju Dominic, writing on livemint.com: "The fingers we used to pick the newspaper up, the delicate pressure exerted to hold the paper, the angle at which the newspaper was held, the awareness of the language of the newspaper — most of these were not consciously thought through." In the 1980s, Benjamin Libet showed that the nonconscious brain decides about 0.3 seconds before a person is conscious of his or her own decision/action.Sport psychologists have discovered that the minimum time our conscio...

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