Health is a big deal in our lives. We toast to it, wish it for each other and spend billions improving it. We know when it’s good: We stand upright, have energy, sleep well and look fit. The building block of fitness is food: So we spend lots of time, energy and technology picking our ingredients. We grow it, buy it, cook it, google it, reserve a seat for it and endlessly share it online.
But as the saying goes, we do not live on bread alone.
I recently got pretty sick. It could have been a stomach virus or maybe food poisoning. I spent a week in bed, unwilling and unable to eat, running low on strength and high on fever. The virus did its worst: sniffles, aches, pains, exhaustion. It even tried to use me to replicate by sharing by sneezes and coughs. It was pernicious, determined and insistent:
On going viral.
When you’re ill, it’s not only your body under attack. Your mind becomes equally disabled, unable to think, read, talk or just watch the tube. You can’t focus. You cancel plans. You become cranky and anxious. If it lasts a long time, you risk becoming dehydrated and listless. Sometimes even days after you’re better, you still have little appetite or energy.
Some viruses are so bad, they leave a mark.
Bad ideas are like that, too. Like a smart virus, they disrupt our current performance and lodge themselves in our systems with long-lingering effects. Contracting a bad idea is pretty easy these days, especially as we gorge ourselves on a non-stop diet of attention-candy. It’s quite possible to get mental poisoning from all-this-online. If we're not careful, we might eat unwashed agendas or drink unfiltered data, stealthily masquerading to invade your mind, overwhelm your focus and spawn tantalizing tweets.
Even headlines can ill.
That’s why it’s important to choose our mental food carefully. It’s vital to consume healthy words, helpful images and smart ideas from people who energize and encourage and create enthusiasm for our growth. Like a victory garden, we must weed out the rotten and filter the streams of screams. We must acquire a taste for timeless wisdom and thoughtful insights baked into those long-form articles and generous podcasts. That's where the hard work of thinking is still done. It's easier than ever to find them and share. Nourishing old recordings from Rohn, Ziglar, Drucker, Friedman - new ones too, from peers and bosses and friends and mentors.
Good ideas, carefully prepared, feed good results.
The next time you go shopping for input online, consider the ingredients before following or feeding.
Check the premises of opinions and predictions and lore.
Cut back on those things that cause excitement now, yet leave us much low later.
It usually takes a few days to recover from a virus. Once our strength returns, we begin eating regularly again. We get back on track and return to normal. But we're careful and cautious, a little more selective, at least for a while.
Why not make it a good habit - for mind and body - to be a little more choosey with what we let into our thoughts? To demand, as the slogan goes, good food fast, not just fast food now.
A little food for thought.
Will it be vital or viral?
The future is at stake.