Pick Your Poison

We spend a lot of our lives feeling emotionally and physically drained. At its most basic, this looks like fatigue. Left unchecked and uncorrected for years, it can manifest into illness. It did with me. Years of mindless living eventually manifested into an auto-immune disease.

Doctors and Scientists are starting to talk about how strong the mind-body connection really is. Neglect one and it's only a matter of time until the other falters.

I spent the majority of my adult life ignoring the fact that I had choices when it came to both my physical and emotional energy. After I got sick, I realized that I could expend my energy MINDFULLY by choosing where my energy went and how much I was willing to use.

We get to pick what goes into our body, mind and spirit.

The body is the most obvious. Eat too much sugar, drink too much alcohol, spend time around toxins and your body will respond accordingly and unfavorably.

What we often overlook is that our mental diet is as important as our physical diet.

What we allow to penetrate our psyche affects our mood and health, which then spreads to others. Our energy is contagious!

We are bombarded with noise everywhere we turn. The internet, television, newspapers, and social media are constantly fighting for our attention.

By design, the best way to get our attention is by inducing insecurity, anxiety and fear. These emotions give us a short-term adrenaline rush. The key words there are “short term." While we may get momentarily fired up when we get triggered, the hormone rush quickly subsides, and we're left feeling less energetic than before the trigger.

I'm not suggesting that you give up reading the news or using social media or interacting with people you don't like completely.

What I AM suggesting is making more MINDFUL choices by being conscious of, and deciding what, you will let enter your sacred psyche.

This looks different for each person. Personally, I check the headlines in the morning and evening, but only the headlines. Generally, I won't delve into the details unless there's something imminent that I need to know about immediately (think giant meteor coming to destroy Earth). (And even then, what more do you really need to know?)

In terms of social media, my rule of thumb is, "If I wouldn't invite you into my home, I'm certainly not inviting you into my headspace."

Block and mute will be a better friend to you than Timmy from Junior High ever was.

As I said, this isn't a one size fits all thing. I'm by no means telling you what to do or how to do it. What works for me won't necessarily work for everyone. I'm just encouraging you to start looking at and re-evaluating some of the habits and routines you've had up until now. Just because we've always done something a certain way doesn't mean we have to continue it that way forever. When we keep doing what we've always done, we keep getting what we've always got.

We don't have to be victims of circumstance. We are more powerful than we think. All we need to do is decide and then do it. The choice really is ours.

"I don't want to break these chains. Poison running deep inside my veins. Burning deep inside my brain. Poison. I don't want to break these chains". -Alice Cooper

In next week’s column we'll talk about surrendering to the flow of life.