What are you feeding your mind? Advice on lowering anxious thoughts and increasing positivity
You are the books you read, the films 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. ~ Jac Vanec
We are bombarded constantly with reminders to feed our physical bodies with healthy and nutritious food. As important as those reminders are, we need to be mindful of what we are feeding our brains. Many of my clients experience anxieties, worries, fear and stress in their daily lives stemming from the negative things that happen in our society and experiences. These are legitimate reactions to the world around us, however, if all we focus our minds on is the negative, then all we will see is negativity.
What are you consuming?
As Zig Ziglar said, “What you feed your mind determines your appetite.” In other words, what we focus our attention and minds on will only focus our desire to consume more of those things. If we watch soap operas, reality TV, or politically venomous television shows, we will more likely want to consume more and more of them. Our thoughts throughout the day will return to the dramas that we have seen played out on TV and soon we will only see drama surrounding us.
Similarly, the more we read/hear about negative news in the world or gossip, the more we will conjure those things into our daily lives, even if inadvertently or subconsciously. What we lend our attention to is what paints our realities.
Just as eating unhealthy foods can cause our physical health to deteriorate and end up in the gutter, so too can negative thoughts and media. Our brains are great at finding things to worry about and stew over. If we reinforce the thought pathways which activate anxiety and fear we can powerfully alter our own views and realities with the world around us.
These changes can come on slowly but surely and they have the potential to lead us down a path to depression and ill mental health. In contrast, when we focus our thoughts and attention on positive, constructive, creative, and uplifting thoughts, we are likely to experience more joy, peace, happiness, and contentment in our daily lives.
Tips for injecting more positivity into your life
- Take an inventory of your thoughts and time. Pay attention to what you feed your brain. This can establish a good baseline and help build awareness of where your time and energy are going. If the scale of your thoughts leans toward the consumptive and negative, then it may be time to work toward shifting that balance.
- Pay attention to how much of your time goes into consumptive versus creative activities. Are you always consuming media, food, tv, gossip, products, or things that others create versus creating and contributing things that help and benefit others? The more we can focus on giving back to society and others the happier we as humans become.
- Try reading a physical book on a topic that interests you. Reading can help activate positive actions in our lives; it can even activate great conversations with others.
- Write! Writing a letter, a blog post, or even just jotting down something that has happened in your life in a journal can increase the positivity you experience. The act of writing can help you to pull your head away from negatives and toward positives.
- Feed your mind a good podcast. There are some truly great podcasts out there these days. The modern world and its technology has made hearing from different experts and understanding a diverse array of experiences, one of the joys of living. Try it out! Ask Julie for recommendations if you feel stuck in coming up with a good podcaster.
- Watch a documentary! We are all probably guilty of having the habit of watching a lot of tv, myself included. One way that I like to feed my mind is to watch a documentary on something interesting so that I am actually learning while spending time in front of the tv.
- Practice meditating. This involves practicing just sitting still and experiencing the here and now. Working on being present in our daily lives has been proven to quiet the chaos in our minds and reduce the anxieties that we often feel.
- Be curious! Talk to yourself and ask about why you do what you do or why you believe what you believe. The more we can question ourselves and get to know why we do what we do the better able we are to steer ourselves towards positive changes.
- Exercise! Even just a short walk can help our bodies and brains to release stress. This in turn allows our minds to be in a state where they can participate more creatively and productively in our daily lives.
- Help someone else. Helping other people will help our minds to think less about ourselves. Reducing selfishness increases happiness in most cases. Recognizing that we can make a difference in other people’s lives also helps us to keep our life and our problems in perspective. Don’t believe me? Visit a children’s hospital and you will soon realize how blessed you have been in your life and how lucky you are currently. Watching others with tough struggles and in tough situations remain positive can be very inspirational.
- Practice increasing your gratitude! There are always things to be thankful for and giving gratitude returns that energy back to us. Check out my blog on gratitude!
- Don’t compare yourself to others. We are all on this journey of life in our own unique ways. Don’t try to view yourself through the filter that others have built for their own lives. Life is too short to allow ourselves to be shackled by the expectations and lenses of others. Check out my blogs on Letting Others Own Their Stories and Grant Others Their Agency and Journeys.
- Try something new! Eat something new. Try a new recipe. Visit a new place. Meet a stranger. Try a new hobby or sport. Including new things into our lives helps us to stay creative and realize that the world is way bigger than we often perceive. It is easy to get stagnant so add new streams to your “brain pond.”
- Reduce your consumption of brian “junk food” such as trash tv, talk shows, celebrity gossip, etc. Producers of such content are good at making the junk on tv addictive, much like sugary junk food can be to us physically.
- Drink less alcohol. Alcohol can negatively impact our brains both physically and through thought. Alcohol is a depressant so in small doses it may relax us but in larger doses it may also push us toward depression and anxiety.
- Watch who you spend time with. Try to spend time with like minded people who help inspire you to become a better person. Also take an inventory of the people in your life. Are they supportive of you becoming a better person or are they tied to an older version of you that needs to be left behind? Your feelings when you are around these people will be your best guide.
