In the work of Bruce Lipton, PhD. he speaks of the two states of consciousness, the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. He differentiates them this way. The conscious mind is what we are aware of, the subconscious mind is all the programming we've received over our lifetime on every topic we've ever been exposed to.

Dr. Wayne Dyer PhD. speaks of memes which are thoughts we have, often that we are unaware of, that have been placed in our minds by others, our families, our friends, our culture, the world around us. A meme is something that many of us accept as truth but under further scrutiny it doesn't hold up as truth.

An example of a weight loss meme would be "I need to drink 6-8 glasses of water a day to lose weight". I know every program I've been on to lose weight insisted this was absolutely vital and necessary.

I do agree with one thing, water is important, in fact it's vital for life. However we've made it into a should and shoulds don't hold up under scrutiny. Once we forget or don't drink our water the thought follows "we won't lose weight now". and then we slip into "well we've messed this up". So is it actually true? No, I've lost weight without drinking that much water or even keeping track of my water. What is true is only that water is vital to life. Living creatures cannot live without water. And we've gotten so far removed from our instincts and so programmed for sugar and flavour I've heard people say they don't like the way water tastes. I wonder if a week without water in a dessert would fix their taste for water. But that's a topic for another day.

So I've decided to let go of that meme. I just don't believe it. I'm drinking water daily, with some nice teas, and I fully expect that's a healthy thing to do. I expect to lose weight over time but not because I drank a requisite amount of water but because I just expect that all these healthy habits and deprogramming will allow me to do so.

So, onward I go, recording any thought that I think has been fed to me and holding it up to scrutiny.

The questions I ask of these thoughts are

1. Is this actually true?
2. Is the opposite also possible?
3. Who told me this?
4. And what would I do if this thought weren't possible?

Seek out your memes and debunk them, then reprogram yourself with the opposite thoughts, the truth that is yours, not the one that's been fed you.