What We Feed Our Minds
“Don’t let your failures define you. Let them teach you. ”
We are what we feed our minds.
This realization came to me recently through some personal coaching and a book I recently finished. And while I could probably write 1500 words easily on the subject, I want to hammer home some points you might need to hear early on a Monday morning.
You are not your thoughts. Your mind is hardwired for survival, often assessing and seeking out threats, causing anxiety and fear. You are not your emotions. Your emotions should be layered under the surface of the water as fish passing by in a river while you stand on the shores watching patiently, stoically.
What we feed our minds in todays world is so often the problem…between the flurry of text messages, notifications, emails, phone calls, signs, advertisements, songs, things to do, places to go, tasks to complete…..we are not the repercussions from these events. We are what we allow. We are not what comes at us. We are the reactions to it - and the key to a happy, fulfilled, stoic life is to observe these things, even as they tend to knock us off of our tuffet.
We know caffeine increases our anxiety, but the book, ‘Power of Now’ discusses this topic at length….watching the watcher as Eckhart Tolle calls it. He references as if you are in a movie theater watching the images of your subconscious mind play upon the screen. This can so often cause us to shrivel and sink further into the seats of our mind (in the theater).
The concept of watching the watcher references you getting up out of your seat, going out of the theater and up into the cinematographers room to see that it is indeed only a man (your brain) playing these thoughts and emotions onto the screen and the images themselves are not real.
Ultimately, mind exercises like this allow us to recognize that we ourselves are not our minds….we are not our thoughts….we, in fact, do create our own reality with what we think - but our brains so often sling us rocks that can segway and drag us down into some dark places….therefore, realizing from a logical standpoint that you are not your mind, is the key to this whole thing.
As it is….what we feed our mind is super important. Are you watching endless YouTube videos? Tarot videos? Stuff about your ex? Endless scrolling on social media? Watching cooking classes etc.?
Or, are you listening to audiobooks, podcasts and constantly feeding your mind on the ideas, thoughts, and actions you want to be working towards? Things that will advance YOU, your business and your goals.
It is OK to have (as one of my clients says) ‘Nothingbox’ time to decompress. In fact, I recommend about 30-minutes to one hour of this a day, but you need to be the fucking gatekeeper of what you allow into your brain!
Especially before you go to bed….your brain has EIGHT HOURS to monitor what you last put into it. Your brain also doesn’t care if it is good or bad material….your brain will take whatever you put in there and go, ‘Oh, cool…got it….will marinate on this for a while,’ so watch out what you last put into your mind before you nod off to sleep.
Be weary of what you allow with your day. Be conscious of your thoughts - avoid acting emotional on what happens on the day. Remember, life happens for you, not to you. Be your own gatekeeper of your mind, and remember, life is a garden! Dig it! Even though you are supposed to put shit in a garden to help it grow, the same is not with your mind.
Good things in means good things out. Shit in means shit out.
All in laymen’s terms, of course.
Just be conscious of this moving forward….be protective of your time, focus on the now, get your biggest tasks of the day done first and figure out your bulletproof morning routine. That is for you. You cannot be reactive to the day or to things that happen to you. You must be the big boulder on the shores of the beach where no matter what the waves are doing, you are resilient, strong, focused, and intent on doing what you need to do.
You are a train that knows where it’s going. Stop putting shit in the engine and be weary of shit along the tracks.
Go out there and crush your Monday. Comments welcome, as always. Let’s coach you into the next level of your business and in life.
Cheers,
~ Cam // info@ckcollective.co
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