“You are the books you read, the movies you watch, the music you listen to, the people you spend time with, the conversations you engage in. Choose wisely what you feed your mind.”
Well, yes – if this was COMPLETELY true, I would be a certifiable psychopath who murdered at least one person a week (for real, not just in my head when I have PMS). But as for the rest of the quote – I have to agree wholeheartedly. In the same way that my body (sadly) reflects everything that it’s being fed, my overall well-being is a reflection of what I read, talk about, think about and who I spend time with.
I’ve mentioned before what an eyeopener it was for me to take an emotional thermometer reading before and after spending time on Facebook, and realising that 95% of the time, I felt worse than before. The happy moments and memories and photos on my screen are somehow eclipsed by the bad news, sadness and weight of other people’s stuff – so much so, that I went cold turkey for 3 months before slowly easing my way back to a more comfortable once-a-day Visit. Facebook does have enormous value when used properly – something I am still working on. But it just goes to show that what we feed our mind has an enormous impact on our day.
It’s the same with the car radio – I used to have it on permanently. I would angrily flip from one radio station to the next, and back again, annoyed with show hosts who were talking complete and utter twaddle, avoiding the news, rolling my eyes at yet ANOTHER station bleating out “Hellllooooo, it’s me…” Putting on a CD. Realising I was sick of it. Flipping back to the radio. More talking. More Taylor Swift. More more more. And then I’d fetch children and they’d talk non-stop, and we’d get home and there would be dogs and lawn mowers and phones and squabbling and pots boiling and TVs on. It was never ever quiet – I was never alone with my thoughts. It was never quiet enough to think clearly about stuff that mattered, to process things, to plan, to dream. And yet, I squandered those precious quiet moments when I was alone in the car – choosing instead to have the radio on and fill my head with even more stuff.
And so, I turned it off. It was that simple. From that moment on, I would always turn the radio off when I was alone in the car. Or when fetching children from school so that I could concentrate on what they were saying without any distractions. Sometimes, it was just a few moments to breathe, to think about the day, or to run through what I needed to get done. Other times, I would think through a client’s writing brief and play with a few ideas while away from my desk. And sometimes, I thought about absolutely nothing at all – I just enjoyed the silence.
