A friend of mine showed me an article yesterday indicating that 16% of American adults believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Why? Because we were told that by our parents.
We believe things from authority figures in our lives. We believe things because it makes sense most of the time. Like, eating fat makes your fat. (It doesn’t!) We have the capability of verifying things, yet we don’t. I’ve had more than several posts on Facebook that were refuted by someone who did the research. I didn’t take the time to verify it myself.
When there is a sliver of truth, we tend to believe. It doesn’t make any difference what it is – spiritual, relational, political, health, etc. We accept things based on our history.
That’s the way our subconscious mind works. We feed it data 24/7. It never sleeps. Every thought is filed away. A similar thought is piled on top of older thoughts on the same topic. When that pile of thoughts gets high enough, it is almost impossible for us to believe (or do) something different.
I am reminded of a comic rendition of a large 6 on the floor between two men. One is standing on the top of the 6 and it looks like a 9 to him. Another man is standing at the bottom of the 6 and it looks like a 6 to him. There is no way the man who sees a 6 can convince the man who sees the 9 that the number is really a 6. And, vice versa. We see a lot of that today in our political views.
How many times have you started a diet to lose weight and fail? Each failure was filed away for future use. The next time you want to start a diet to lose weight, your subconscious mind will review your history on that topic and determine that you have failed in the past. It will not allow you to be successful, no matter what you do. The prime directive of your subconscious mind to to protect you from failure and embarrassment.
There are ways to overcome the immense files of incorrect information. Brute force doesn’t work. Changing the way you talk to yourself and adding emotion to your thoughts helps. Understand that your subconscious mind only works in the present, not in the future or in the past. Wanting to start something tomorrow does not compute.
Maybe some of your closely held beliefs on health and wellness are wrong. When would you even know? You might never know. You live your life making decisions based on erroneous data and survive. But, you could have thrived if you had taken the right actions.
We are very flexible. We can live a long time on bad health decisions. We recover and keep going. Until we can’t recover from an illness. Then there is a gradual decline in our health and quality of life. We see this too often in our elderly. They break a hip (for example) and are no longer able to live their life and everything starts to shut down.
Brown cows don’t produce chocolate milk. That is obvious to many. But, what about those other things that have never been challenged in your life?
You are so right about verifying and checking information. The internet is so vast that there is a ton of untruthful information out there. These are great points that you emphasized.