You know that your Internet pipe can only allow so much traffic through.
A similar thing can be said for your mind. And lots of stuff can clog up the mind and make it not function correctly. When that happens, everything in your life is messed up.
I’m concerned. Concerned that mind bandwidth is dwindling because of poor use of today’s tools. Facebook, email, news, TV, Netflix, texting, and instant message.
On top of the tech tools, you have the food and drink “tools”: alcohol, processed food, sugary cereal, low quality ingredients, full of salt, sugar, and fat foods that so many eat/drink.
Is it possible to think clearly amidst this onslaught of garbage? John Tilden would adamantly say no. In fact, he would add to this list mental blunders: jealousy, anger, gossip, grief, selfishness, ambition of a selfish type, and business worries.
In public, people wear a mask and don’t reveal their true selves.
The gossipy type has much to contribute about the failure of others while hiding the fact that his marriage is falling apart. The person who complains about another’s work is hiding the fact that they spend three hours at work talking to others and wasting their time rather than working.
But the mask is transparent when you look at a person’s results, analyze the way they move, listen closely to the things they say, observe what they eat and drink, and find out even minor details about their personal lives.
That is to say, we all are working through our own various problems, yet instead of being up front about them, we design this carefully created public persona to hide the truth and make things flow seamlessly. This behavior means we live on the surface of life rather than boring in deep and making things really interesting.
There is a dichotomy between thought and action. We have more idealistic notions for how we want to think and behave, yet fail to do so. New Year’s resolutions fall by the wayside. Healthy eating succumbs to poor planning. And positive attitudes depart when the pressure is on.
I suspect that part of this failing harkens back to the three points above: mind diet, physical diet, emotional makeup.
You simply cannot be at your best if your focus is that of a 2 year-old. And I assure you, it is if you find yourself whipping out your smartphone to check the weather and then find yourself checking email, and then find yourself scrolling through Facebook or clicking through links in your email.
You simply cannot be at your best if your diet is full of garbage. Look, you know better. Look yourself in the mirror and be ashamed for what you eat if you are eating garbage. Seriously. Make a better effort.
You simply cannot be at your best if you are making mental/emotional mistakes.
But you’ll never catch your mental/emotional mistakes if you are constantly drowning yourself in media and distraction and you have a poor diet.
Review this post and look for your deviations from the proper way of living and pick one or two and focus on it. Track your deviations. Pay attention. In this way, you will whittle away at your gross errors of living and begin to hone in your more subtle failings. For, rest assured, we all have a lot of growing to do. And there is no point where we can say, “I’ve arrived.” Let’s get serious.