Well, with spring slowly approaching, yes very slowly, worse than snail pace, it's about time to do some spring cleaning. Now, I am not just talking about cleaning out your closet and getting rid of stuff you don't need, even though that it super important and I already did it this year! Yes, I know it feels sooo good to get rid of stuff you don't need anymore and donate to those in need. Well, today I am talking about our influences. What are we feeding our minds? Who are we associating with? What is our environment like? Well, today I am going to touch on what are we feeding our minds?
Well, I have never been the type of person that watches the news, reads the newspaper or a lot of magazines. It's not that I don't care about what goes on in the world, but I always hated how I felt after reading or watching certain things. As we all know, the news is filled with negative, horrible, scary stories. They hardly ever touch on the positive things in the world. I like to think I have a big heart so I would always feel so sad and depressed after watching the news, and so I immediately thought I am not going to do this anymore. I mean who really wants to hear about young kids and families dying in a car crash or randomly getting murdered, etc.... Well, family, friends, co-workers, have always come up to me over the years asking, "have you heard about THIS..??", my answer is always "no, I have not". They proceed to tell me and I sometimes feel ignorant for not knowing, and guilty that I should keep up with the news a little more, ya know? And then I think, if we are constantly filling our minds with
what is wrong and terrible in the world, then our minds are forced to only traffic in the negative, and then we proceed to worry and be fearful. Well, I don't like living that way!
When I was reading the Compound Effect, there was a chapter on influences and Darren Hardy touches on this. He finally made me not feel bad about not watching the news, because he is a hater as well! I finally did not feel alone! He encourages us to go on a media diet. Basically weed out all of the negative stuff that basically just leaves you depressed and unmotivated, and add in all of the inspiring, wonderful beautiful, incredible things that DO happen in this world. Because there really is a lot of GOOD that happens, and we often miss it because the media tends to focus on the negative. We basically have to search for the positive stuff, kinda sad isn't it? Well, start your search! Think about what matters to you, what you want to know about, and subscribe to those instead!
I like what he says in chapter 5, "controlling what our brains consume is especially difficult because so much of what we take in is unconscious...we need an extra level of vigilance to prevent our brains from absorbing irrelevant, counterproductive or downright destructive input". ahhhh so true!
I am sure a lot of us have unconscious habits and routines, especially when it comes to reading and watching the news, we probably don't think twice of it because its what we are used to, or what we grew up doing. Not just the news, anything, music, TV shows, books, etc. I am definitely guilty of it! But do you really like the feeling you're left with afterwards? Probably not.
I think it's important to look and see what we are feeding our minds. Is it something that we can learn from, grow as a person, feel optimistic, positive, feel better on the inside, help us shine a light to others...or does it leave us feeling sad, lonely, depressed, pessimistic, negative, plain unhappy? I know what I need to cut out...what garbage can you get rid of? Do some SPRING CLEANING!!!
