If you pay attention very well, you can feel some things in people's life and in their time. When you spend hours consuming negative news and you are engaging in toxic online arguments, your mood shifts, then you become a little bit reactive and tense. You can even become cynical or develop a post-traumatic stress disorder.
On the other hand, when you listen to thoughtful podcasts, meaningful books, or time with people who challenge you and support you and can leave you energized and clear-headed, this is not accidental. Your brain processes information similarly to how your body processes food, how it absorbs it and feed how it then reacts to it. Poor quality will bring in poor quality output.
So the statement that garbage in garbage out is true. What you feed your mind is what comes out of it. What makes this idea powerful is that it reframes responsibility.
It is easy to track what you eat because what you eat affects you. It is harder to also notice what you are mentally consuming. It doesn't mean that it has to be direct.
Some of the things that we are consuming when it comes to social media are happening to us passively. Social media feeds are curated for engagement. So also should you create your world too and make sure that what is showing you at every point in time is what will make your life better.
Conversation can drift into negativity without intention. Entertainment can also become background noise rather than being a conscious choice. As time goes on, many of these small unnoticed inputs, they accumulate together and they determine how we react to things all around us.
The people who spend time with you should be the people who bring positive energy at all times. Human beings are deeply social, we should know that, and we mirror attitude, language and aspiration of people from all around our environment. If your environment is filled with too much distraction, complacency and complaint, you will not be able to think right and you will surely act differently among your peers.
But if you are around thoughtful, disciplined and growth-oriented people, those qualities start to feel normal and even expected. When you become so mindful of your total intake, it doesn't mean you are becoming restrictive or cutting out everything that is not productive. It can mean a different thing entirely.
Entertainment, humor and even light content do have their place. The key here is awareness and being intentional. Instead of consuming by default, what you should do is choose what's aligned with you and how you think and feel at every point in time.
There are practical ways to approach this, which is audit your input. It has been said over and over again in many places, especially if you are very complacent with motivational talk or personal development talk, that what you consume or what goes inside of you should be curated. Notice what you watch daily on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and the likes.
Then take time to ask yourself some simple questions. After I've engaged with this content, do I feel better? Am I getting better at what I am doing? Or there is no change at all? As time goes on, whatever you are consuming passively become patterns that helps in how you react or relate with people. It is not only you that determine your own life.
I mean, the entirety of who you are is not by your own doing discipline. There is a lot that goes with it and that is dependent on the environment that you are in.