One of the greatest gifts of all humanity and especially the 21st century, is the accessibility we have to other worlds. I am not talking about any alternative worlds or traveling through time, but all the different outlets we can utilize to escape our own reality. We can turn on the news or open up any of our social media’s and catch a glimpse at what’s going on around the world and what other people are doing, in a way that we have never been able to do before. We can easily escape our own reality and fall deep into another world. A world full of opinions, analysis, judgement, and overreactions. These things are meant to be a distraction to us and take the focus away from ourselves. It is certainly not all negative. We can learn so much and develop new skills and perspectives that wouldn’t be possible without these outlets. It is certainly a two way street, positivity and opportunity flowing one way and negativity and judgement flowing another. It really comes down to what you want to see, what you want to pay attention to, and understanding how the information affects you. Perhaps you just want to be informed, so you filter out all the noise and negativity and only focus on the objective opinions and facts of what you are trying to learn about. I understand that is much easier said than done. Sometimes things happen in the world that dominate everyone’s attention and sparks reaction and input from people all over the world. It doesn’t happen very often, but some things have such a mass impact on so many people that we can’t avoid it. There can be so much noise and distractions that we are overwhelmed and stretched thin. We live in a society with information overload. When something negative is going on in the world, that negativity bombards us and is constantly around us. No matter how much we either don’t care or simply unbothered by it, we cannot avoid it and it starts to slowly work into our minds.
Drowning out the noise and distractions is vital in maintaining our inner peace and sanity. Have you ever been in a loud environment where you can’t even hear yourself think? You become absorbed with whatever is happening around you. You lose the connectivity with that inner voice and become reactive to what is going on externally. You let instinct take over and lose the ability to be thoughtful and it becomes easier to go against your core values. If you had to live in a club with the music blasting in your ears constantly, you would eventually go insane. In order to have clarity of thought, you cannot lose touch with the peace and calmness that is inside of you. You must be able to quiet down the noise and focus in on your thoughts to have the ability to think through something in a logical manner. This becomes much more difficult to accomplish if there are external distractions taking you away from finding clarity in thought. Tuning out the noise breeds focus and focus brings on clarity of though. The more clear your thinking, the better decisions you will make and the more effective you become.
We love the news and headlines because they help us stay informed and up to date on everything that is happening around us. Being caught up to speed on the different day to day developments helps us stay relevant. When we are relevant, we become more relatable and identifiable with others. Staying relevant is a necessity not only in business but in any profession. The desire to stay relevant may be important but is it worth the constant exposure to negativity and distractions that are always in front of us?
I will explain how we can stay informed and relevant while maintaining our mental health. Our mental health should never be placed on the back burner and disregarded as unnecessary. We make so decisions with our physical health in mind, things like what to eat and not to eat, whether we should go exercise or watch another episode of our favorite show instead. We need to place that same emphasis on our mental health. We should avoid things we know that take away from our mental health and double down on the things we enjoy and strengthen our mental health. The noise and chaos that comes along with living in a world of overwhelming news, headlines, and distractions is not always good for our state of mind. I keep using the word distraction because while the information that is coming at us may be relevant on a macro level, it may take us away from what is most important and relevant to us, as individuals.
The way we can find the right balance between staying informed and staying at peace with ourselves is by looking internally. It is about knowing when we are spending too much brain power/energy on things that we have no control over. Worry and stress do so many detrimental things to our mental health. Most of the time we worry and stress about things we have no control over. Expending brain energy on worry and stress over things we cannot control causes us to have even bigger problems when it comes to things we can control. When you have control over a decision, you stress because you don’t want to make a mistake and assume responsibility. We fear being wrong or not performing our best so much because there is no one else to blame but ourselves. Relieve this stress and worry today by making a truce with yourself, that nothing is worth the time and energy spent on worrying about something in or out of your control. If it is not in your control, there is nothing you can do about it. Having a bad attitude or stressing over it is pointless because it only makes things worse. It is also distracting you from controlling what you can control. The things that you have control over aren’t worth the stress and worry if you don’t judge yourself too hard and always strive to what is right or best. Managing what is controllable and the things most important to you is a key to maintaining happiness and living out your version of a successful life.
There is a calmness and stillness that lies deep inside all of us. This calmness/stillness may not be frequently tapped into, but is foundational for establishing and up keeping our inner peace. The peace that helps us find understanding in difficult circumstances, be at ease when chaos may surround, focus amid distractions, and reduces our fears and anxiety. These are just a few of the many functions that inner peace performs. When we are distracted by outside noise, this stillness fades away and we become consumed with whatever is going on around us. The stillness/calmness fades deeper and deeper and is replaced with the noise and distractions that consume us. That calmness can only be found and utilized if we quiet down the outside distractions and seek out our inner peace. We cannot find something that we are not looking for. If you don’t make the time and effort to bring out that calmness and stillness that sits in the deepest of depths of our souls, it will stay there unused. The less you use something, the less effective it becomes. Losing touch with that calmness/stillness that sits inside of us is the easiest way to become consumed with negativity that surrounds us. We become so distracted with what is going on around us, that we lose touch with what is going on inside of us. If we don’t feed our soul and give it the proper nourishment, it will become filled with the negativity that can be attached to the all the noise and distractions that circle over our heads. If we think about and let it dominate our mind, it will seep inside of us and take up room deep within our soul. No part of our soul is ever empty, it must always be filled with something. Whatever we open ourselves up to and internalize, is what is going to take up that space.
We are what we think about. So if we think about all the things that are wrong in the world and all the negativity that we are exposed to on a daily basis, we will become negative by nature and develop a pessimistic world view. We have to be aware of what is going on in our world but we don’t have to let that dictate our inner peace and take away from the calmness and stillness that lives inside of us. I have heard some people say that they don’t even pay attention to news or current events because everything is negative and they don’t want to expose themselves to that negativity. I understand this way of thinking, but it may not be the most practical way to live your life, especially in the 21st century. What you don’t know cannot hurt you, so people would rather live in their own little world where they are unconcerned with what is going on around them.
There are certainly things that we are better off just not knowing. Some things don’t add any value to our life and are not impactful in relation to our circumstances. I believe that being in touch with reality is always the best way to go. By understanding the things that go on around us, no matter how negative they may be, we can use that information to become better people. The unknown cannot bother us or take away are happiness, but it can make us ignorant. The less we know then the less we are. If we do not know something than we are useless in helping improve whatever is wrong. There is so much out there that we don’t know. There are also so many things that we are completely unaware of, and if we become aware of them it could threaten our identity and who we are at our core. We shouldn’t always look to avoid the things that threaten who we are and the image we have of ourselves. We should embrace our vulnerabilities and the things that can take us away from ourselves. This is so important in living a life with no fear. If you truly have no fear, you are comfortable with taking risks. Taking risks and putting yourself out there may bring you out of your comfort zone, but that is where the most growth and opportunity lies. In order to do anything, you have to at least try first. If we accept and embrace all the things that could be a threat to us, than we become indestructible. Nothing can affect to us to the point where that stillness/calmness gets disrupted and our inner peace is taken away from us. The noise and the distractions are always going to be there. We control how we react and how we let things affect us. Doing what is best for our mental health should always take precedent, remembering that we can be both relevant and informed while having a deep happiness and inner peace that can never be disturbed.
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