How to Take Control of Brain’s Diet
What you eat becomes a part of you, same applies to brain.
You have two delicious dishes right in front of you. Let’s say one is pizza and the other is salad.
You have to choose one. Let’s assume you choose pizza.
What would enter your body?
It’s obvious. Pizza!
Would you let anything harmful, like poison, enter your body?
No, because you know that the poison would cause serious damage to your entire body. We make sure we are safe. If there is any threat, we do everything to save ourselves.
If we take so good care of our body, why don’t we care about our mind?
We’re always consuming things and feeding the brain.
There are two ways to feed our minds.
- Consciously
- Subconsciously
Conscious Way Of Feeding The Brain
The conscious way of feeding the brain involves any piece of information we willingly consume. It’s things you’ve learned in your school. It is typing stuff in google and finding out about them. It is the book you’re reading.
Basically, anything which you’ve intentionally added to your information.
But the weird truth is, most information we consume is subconscious…
Subconscious Way Of Feeding The Brain
Most of the information we consume is through our subconscious. And, we do that unconsciously.
For example,
What makes a smoker think that he/she should smoke when stressed?
They saw a movie, where an actor took long puffs of cigarettes when stressed. He seemed cool, relaxed, and badass.
Maybe, They saw their friends, colleagues, or parents smoke when they were stressed out. Moreover, What makes them feel good after smoke is the surge of dopamine. Nothing to do with stress hormones. Yet, they do the same thing to relieve stress.
Or, what makes someone afraid of public speaking?
They probably messed it up once when they’re young. They didn’t like the feeling after messing it up. They felt the pain. And, the subconscious picked this up, and now believe they’re not good at publish speaking.
Our subconscious observes and picks on such things as we go.
This happens with news, marketing, stereotyping, and a lot more.
Can We Prevent Negative Information From entering Our Subconscious?
Controlling what will enter our subconscious is not easy.
Your subconscious is active every minute and every second. Even when you sleep.
However, there is a way to escape this trap.
For instance, YouTube wants you to be online all day. They have made the AI do the work of recommending you the best videos, Netflix does that too.
Social Media is designed to get into your habits. They feed you with dopamine and make you addicted.
Media companies and newspapers use click baits and hooks to grab your attention. They want you to respond, and you give in.
We are being controlled by the media and the internet and the things around us without realizing it. Our emotions are controlled too.
What do you think goes wrong when you start to feel disappointed after you scroll your Instagram feed?
We are all persuaded to think making money is easy. Luxury cars and bungalows give us happiness. This info was chosen unconsciously.
If you grab a notebook and write down all the beliefs you have — good or bad. You will realize some of these are irrelevant, limiting, and false.
The Conscious way of feeding the subconscious
In the fast-moving world full of distractions taking control of your thoughts, behavior, and minds is not a cakewalk.
If you want to achieve extraordinary goals, you have to do things that ordinary people don’t.
To be successful you don’t need to do extraordinary things, you just need to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.
- Jim Rohn
The way to escape this trap is to be conscious of what we’re letting into our heads. Right from the news, television, advertising to the various blogs and social networks.
Tim Ferris, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” says, he never watches the news and has never bought a newspaper in years. He urges you to follow the idea of cultivating selective ignorance. If there’s anything important you’ll hear people talk about that.
One easy way to escape the trap of nonsense information cluttering your mind is to go on a one-week media fast. Go cold turkey on this. No social media, newspapers, television, radio, podcasts, blogs, even books.
If you want to engage in any kind of information consumption ask yourself “Will I definitely use this information for something immediate and important?”
If it’s a yes. Go ahead and be okay with consuming the important.