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Hey, my friends. As a coach thought work is my bread and butter. In my world, managing your mind is the key to success and happiness in everything. Today, though, I want to talk about something I feel is important as a support for mind management, which is input control. Controlling your inputs, or what you are exposing yourself to, can make mind management much easier. Like how it is easier to not eat chips when you don't have chips in the house. You can not eat chips, even if there are chips in the house, but it takes more effort, more self control, than if there just weren't any chips available. And I think controlling our inputs can be like making sure there are no metaphorical chips in our minds. Inputs can be what media you consume: what you read and listen to and watch. Are you consuming things that help you feel the way that you want to feel? During the time of COVID, I kept getting push notifications on my phone about COVID News, and then I would feel compelled to read it. And I was reading about it all the time and feeling really anxious about it and having panic attacks over it. So at one point, I decided to just remove the news app off of my phone so there were no more notifications of the news. No more easy access. This source of fear mongering was gone, and it helped me feel so much better. It was one of those things where it was easy to pretend like I needed to be informed, but honestly, unless I was in charge of making public policy decisions, there was no need for me to consume the news like that. And my mental health improved dramatically when I stopped. It made it easier not to give in to anxiety spirals. Where if I had kept consuming the news, to achieve that same level of mental peace, I would have had to be doing a fuck ton of thought work constantly. It was definitely the path of least resistance to just cut the news out. To this day, I don't watch or consume news. And I still know what is going on, because people tell me. But I'm not getting the fear mongering that happens with watching the news. Because they have to make it dramatic and exciting for the ratings, and that shit just isn't healthy for people like me who have anxiety disorders. Like we just do not need any help with being worried about shit. Like that is the one thing I'm really good at. So it's been really good for me to not have that as an input. When I'm working on body image with clients, I have them do a media audit, where they go through all the media they consume and evaluate how it makes them feel about themselves and their bodies. I find that a lot of time what we consume might be something that triggers bad feelings. You can follow all of these influencer accounts on Instagram, but if every time you view their content, you end up comparing yourself badly or feeling bad about yourself or your life, that is a good sign that it isn't an account that is going to be helpful for you. And the shitty thing is that sometimes we get value from these accounts. They are funny or entertaining, but if it prompts other stuff to come up that you struggle with, it might not be worth keeping it around. It might be much easier just to remove it as an input. Other people are also in input. The people you spend the most time around can have a significant impact on how you're thinking. If you're around someone who complains all the time, but you want to have a more positive outlook, you're going to have to fight really hard internally to have that positive outlook while being around someone who probably ,unintentionally, is undermining those efforts. It's a lot easier to maintain a positive outlook when you're around people who are trying to do the same thing. It's so much less work. I think it is not enough to remove unhelpful inputs. I think is just as helpful to be intentional with adding inputs. I think it is good to deliberately seek out inputs that support your life goals or your well being goals. In the body image audit that I do with clients, they don't just remove accounts that prompt them to feel bad about themselves. I also have them intentionally add in accounts of people who look like them or help them to feel positive about themselves. These deliberate supportive inputs can act as springboards for your desired thought work. All inputs will either be in support of or acting against the thought work you are trying to do in your life, and it is well worth the effort to cultivate an environment of inputs that supports where you want to be mentally. It makes life so much easier. It reduces so much friction. It takes so much less energy. It is a worthwhile investment, for sure. So that's what I want to leave you with this week, my friends. I encourage you to audit your own inputs and decide what inputs to remove and what inputs to add in that will be the most supportive of your mental health goals. And as always, if you feel like you're getting stuck on this exercise, you can use the link in the show notes to book a session with me. All right, my friends, until next time, Be well.
