A twenty nine year old man in Toronto killed his three month old daughter and when I read the headline and the article I became very angry. I started to think about how cruel and ugly our world can be. I thought about my own children and how much I want to protect them from predators, but then, in an out of body experience, I saw what I was doing. I was getting angry and concerned about a man I didn’t know and a young baby I didn’t know, and about a circumstance I could not change.
This reality hit me hard. How many times throughout the day do I let people or circumstances feed my mind, and what is it that I’m eating each and every day? Who am I listening to? Who am I talking up? What am I reading? What am I listening? Who or what am I becoming?
Feeding the mind is important as is depriving it of things that don’t serve us well. And it’s not like we don’t care or anything, it’s just that it has no point, and it gives us indigestion. Mental indigestion. We meet sad and depressed people on a Monday morning, on a cold and rainy day, and by mid morning, we become sad and depressed ourselves. It is impossible to influence the environment and a mass of people. The truth is, they are better equipped and far more capable of influencing us.
For this reason we need to be aware what we let into our minds.
I avoid the news, and don’t spend much time in argument. I avoid people who gossip, are negative, have no self esteem. I love them. Some of them are very close to me, but I choose when and how I interact with them. I have a dream and a life that intend living, and nothing, nobody’s negative thinking and angst is going to prohibit me of making a difference.
Avoiding negative and toxic thoughts is an investment. It pays great dividends in the future and it pays two ways. The more you read great books, watch great programs, and engage people in meaningful conversation, the more do septically negative people leave you the hell alone. They have no choice but to find someone else too infect with their pessimistic sludge. You won’t notice it at first, but the people in your life, large and small, just stop telling you their problems and not because you they think you won’t listen. Far from it, they leave you alone and only come to seek your out, when they want too tell you about the great things in their life.
Yes, avoiding negative thoughts and minds, and feeding your mind with great things on a regular basis, day in and day out produces outstanding results.
The fact is life is hard. Meaningful, beautiful, awesome, but hard. There will be plenty of things that will come up which will rattle us to the core, so why do the rattling when the sun shines brights and we don’t know the man or his child? Why judge? Make assumption? Get angry? Commiserate? What’s the point?
There isn’t one.
Feed your mind instead. Feed it well. Feed it often, and continue living your life.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer Philipp Meeh via unsplash.com
