Information is all around us. We are constantly being bombarded with “current events”. It’s in all our media channels: TV, FB, Twitter, Billboards, radio, magazines, at the movies, on the checkout line in the grocery store, bumper stickers. We see it on the news, on our FB wall, on the cover of Star Magazine while we wait to checkout, on our way to work. All these outlets are hijacking our attention so they can fill our minds with information that is mostly garbage (unessential to us), and/or lies.

At the very least, letting ourselves be exposed to all this garbage information is robbing us of our time, and brain power. But beyond that, it is robbing us of our mental real estate. So much of all this information we are exposed to, we actually DO absorb. Every time we hear about some new piece of Hollywood gossip it becomes a small little form that we put in a file which we load into a file cabinet in the memory warehouse of our mind; and the warehouse does not have unlimited space. Just another small piece of useless information that is deviating us from our focus.

Mental clutter is no different than physical clutter, other than the fact that mental clutter is so much easier to accumulate. We accumulate it without even realizing.

So how do we limit our mental clutter? Easy. Limit our exposure to it’s channels. Now I’m not suggesting we isolate ourselves from media altogether (live off the wire, or grid). Far from it. Because the truth is that we DO need many of these channels to in fact stay informed and current on information that IS valuable to us. BUT, we do need to filter this exposure.

 

There are many ways one can do this, so I have listed some ways that have helped me below:

• Limit our TV time. In fact, schedule it. Four hours a week (or whatever we can handle). Or, abandon TV altogether. I, for one, do not get cable service (just internet).
• Do the same for our computer and mobile media outlets. Allot only a very limited amount of time per day to allow ourselves to be exposed to these channels.
• I do not however recommend that we abandon these media outlets altogether, as most of these outlets are ideally suited to keep us up on current events. And unlike TV, we have far more control over what we allow ourselves to be exposed to. We can custom tailor our FB, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and any other channels settings to allow only those information sources that are valuable to us and we trust to come through our feed. It is important though that we severely scrutinize what we allow to come through our feed, and that we occasionally revisit these settings.

We must do a periodic exploring an purging of the pages and people we “like” in our social media. Remove the “empty calorie” entertainment. Remove the toxic elements and hate from our feed. Let in the positivity and the current relevant information from unbiased trustworthy sources (gonna have to do some homework for that).

We humans have very limited ability to weed out much of the garbage information that the powers are exposing us to, from being absorbed in to our minds. Otherwise advertisers would not spend millions of dollars on Ad space during the Super Bowl. So we must kill the flow of information at our source ….. turn off the tube.

I have noticed that over the course of time, as medical science has progressed, people have developed this habit of separating the concept of their health into separate areas. This all started with separating mental, physical, and spiritual health (but it sure didn’t stop there).  As if all three of these types are somehow completely separated. Doing this has allowed people to compartmentalize their ailments, and in doing so divert their self diagnosed cause for such ailments into something they themselves cannot be blamed for, or control. This is a source of comfort for many people, as the only thing harder than learning that they have disease, is having to admit to themselves that they may have caused it.

The medical community for the most part caters to this mentality (even though they know it is totally false), because as long as people are not accepting responsibility and living a healthier life, they stand to turn a higher profit by pumping people full of drugs and having them invest in future invasive (and expensive) surgeries. Lets face it, how many physicians say “You need to lose 30 lbs and exercise 30min every day.” anymore? How many would rather just pump us full of cholesterol medication instead. The main focus of the medical business is the same as the main focus of any other business ……. to make money.

 

The truth is:

Unless we have a PHD to practice medicine, we are not qualified to even separate our mental, physical, and spiritual health into those three categories. Even those that do practice medicine professionally don’t know everything. The medical community (the honest medical community) itself, will be the first to admit that there is still more about the human body (and especially the mind) that they don’t know, than they do know.

 

Here is a short list of some of the excuses I have heard before that reflect this separation people make:

• “My cancer has nothing to do with my diet.”
• “I have diabetes, there is nothing I can do, or could have done about it.”
• “Exercise will do nothing for me, its genetic.”

 

The answer of “genetics” is my favorite. It’s the biggest cop out of all of them. While some people are genetically more prone to some ailments than others, this does not alleviate them from their responsibility to themselves to do what they can to prevent/fight it. Because believe it or not, there have been many times when people have fought through and defeated diseases naturally, that were previously believed to be genetic. But somehow so many people seem far more comfortable with accepting sickness and death, than accepting responsibility.

In the end, the only thing we really know for sure regarding health is this: To be healthy in every way, one must lead a mentally and physically active lifestyle with a natural and proper diet. Eat healthy food, exercise, engage in cooperative problem solving projects, and drink lots and lots of water. That’s it. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s the way it will always be. The best cure, remedy, and preventative we have for every ailment in existence is just to follow this simple set of rules. We have no reason to believe otherwise. All we have is theories and excuses.

We, as a society, have to see our health as one idea. There is no separation of heart, liver, lungs, pancreas, brain, nervous system, circulatory system, respiratory system, and digestive system. These are all part of the same system. If anything happens to one of them (good or bad), it effects ALL OF THEM. The same goes for mental, physical, and spiritual health. These are all one in the same. A separation only needs to be made in the practice of medicine.

If we change our mentality to think of health as one all encompassing concept (like we once did), then we are forced to realize that we have to live a healthy all around lifestyle to prevent/fight any potential ailment. I.E. we must narrow (or minimize) our views of our health, because every part of our health is too closely linked to warrant separation for the purposes of best lifestyle practices.

The more we focus on our health as a whole, the less likely we will be in a circumstance where our doctors have to focus on any specific area of our health for a cure/remedy when we are the 11th hour of a disease.