‘Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.’
–Jose Ortega y Gasset
We all know that the food we eat has a huge impact on the state of our physical health.
in fact, what we eat most frequently has the power to make us healthy or ill.
This idea is encapsulated in the popular phrase, ‘You are what you eat.‘
By extension, we understand that we can improve our health, or even reverse illnesses by restricting how much we eat of certain kinds of foods.
Many people cut out refined sugar and processed foods etc. at some point, in order to boost their health.
We refer to this as ‘going on a diet.’
People go on diets to lose weight, build muscle, reverse Type-2 diabetes and so on.
Mental Diet and Happiness
What is less commonly known or understood is that our mental diet, sometimes referred to as our ‘information diet,’ plays an equally influential role in our lives.
The information we consume through watching, reading and listening has a profound effect on our mood, feelings and general outlook on life.
For example, this study found that anxiety and total mood disturbance among participants increased after watching the news for just 15 minutes.
This should make perfect sense to most of us as we’ve all experienced being unsettled after watching, listening to, or reading something distressing.
So the axiom, ‘You are what you eat,’ applies equally at the mental and spiritual/metaphysical level too.
And if you’ve read my posts on how we create reality, you understand that the way we feel has the power to affect what we experience as reality.
As the spiritual teacher Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said:
‘Whatever we put our attention on will grow stronger in our life.’
The Problem
I understand only too well that it is hard to exist, or participate in the modern world without being exposed to negative messaging.
We’re fed a constant diet of fear, anger and misery, whether it is through the songs and stories we’re taught as children; education, religion, the news media and even entertainment.
I’d say entertainment is the worse culprit because most books, movies and songs contain unhealthy amounts of darkness and negativity that slips into our subconscious minds, unnoticed, simply because it’s labelled as ‘entertainment.’
For most people, not watching the news is not even an option as their livelihoods are often tied to being up to date on current events.
So, our mental diet can cause or increase stress, anxiety and depression. And yet, we have to take in a certain amount of negativity just in order to function in society.
What do we do?
Do we run away to the wilderness and cut all ties with society and our current lives? Sadly, this is not something most of us can do right now. But there are other solutions.
The Solutions
If we want to be happy, we can’t just expect to sleepwalk our way through life. We have to make our happiness a priority and work to build and maintain our happiness.
This requires being proactive and exercising discernment in ur day to day lives.
The way I see it, regardless of our job or station in life, we can all do two simple things to help the situation.
The first step is to adopt a more healthy mental diet. The second is to do things to balance out the negativity that we consume in our lives.
Adopting A Healthy Mental Diet
We all have a lot of freedom and leeway about the things we consume and give our attention to. So we can use this to help ourselves.
We can choose to go on a ‘strict diet’ and reduce the amount of negative information we consume to the absolute minimum that is necessary for each of us to function in society.
If our job requires that we watch the news, then we do that. But we watch just the lowest allowable amount, based on our circumstances (perhaps one broadcast per day and no more).
And we can cut out as much of the optional/unnecessary negativity as possible.
This includes not following social media accounts that promote negativity, not watching movies such as thrillers, tragedies and horror shows, or listening to music that contains strong negative themes etc.
Just like people wanting to lose weight will restrict the amount of calories they consume, we can choose to restrict the amount of negativity we consume on a daily basis.
Doing Things to Balance It Out
In addition to limiting the negativity we expose ourselves to, we can actively consume information of a positive and uplifting nature to balance out the negativity.
This is the counterpart to adopting a healthier diet. It’s like exercising or going to the gym–but for the mind.
We actively give our attention to uplifting and positive things to keep our mood up and feel good.
What you do will depend on your personal preference and what works best for you, but it could include:
- Listening to music that is upbeat
- Immersing yourselves in nature
- Watching a comedy (one that has zero dark themes), or Practising gratitude and counting your blessings
Passively coasting through life or indulging in shallow distractions won’t work. It has to be something we actively participate in.
In the same study I referred to above, participants who attended a lecture soon after watching the news didn’t show any improvement in their mood, despite the passage of time and the distraction provided by the lecture.
But the participants who engaged in a process of progressive relaxation after watching the news reported a return to their baseline/pre-news levels of good feelings.
So the key takeaways here are:
- Distractions don’t do a good enough job of countering a negative mental diet.
- Actively doing things to make yourself feel good can help us to return to our normal state.
Concluding Thoughts
As I’ve said before (and will continue to say), happiness is ultimately a choice we make over and over again.
So the next time you feel tempted to give your attention to something that you know is going to make you anything other than happy, stop and ask yourself whether this thing you’re about to do is worth sacrificing your happiness for.
It’s a habit I’m actively working to build right now, because I’ve experienced the alternative for so long now that it’s become unbearable now.
And if you wanted something to pick your spirits up and zap you with some positive energy, have a look and listen to this amazing drum cover to David Bowie’s song, ‘Modern Love!’
