Your Brains RSS Feed: How to Know What Your Subscribing to

With advancements in communication and technology many are able to have an endless stream of subscribed to news and events displayed in intelligently filtered and easily ingestible headline thumbnails at their fingertips. In seconds, we can scour bits of information across multiple categories devouring content at fabulous speeds.  If an article isn’t interesting or useful, we simply close out, and refresh. This hopscotching our way across the stream of information is our way of controlling what we intake and what we don’t. It’s very masterful when looked at from a distance beyond the scope of your device.

In a very similar way, each and every one of us has a mental feed that is always on even at a subconscious level. However, unlike our Instagram or Twitter feeds, we are sometimes not consciously being selective about the content we’re ingesting.  By in large we are unaware and therefore held captive by our mental feed, only noticing its effects after they’ve materialized as an emotional state. At this point you’re left with emotional and mental states that may or may not be serving your work, relationships, and overall wellbeing.

Since there is no unsubscribe button within our evolutionary derived mental feed, how do we learn to co-exist and even thrive alongside them? Is it possible to place smart filters on our own thoughts? A possible answer is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a state of being that promotes expanded inner awareness and acceptance of streams of thought within the mind. Fascinating research within the scientific field of positive psychology and mindfulness has yielded some useful steps that anyone can implement immediately into their daily routine. With some rigor and consistancy, playing with even one of these techniques will have you more skillful at consciously being fed by your mental feed.

Diagram Curtesy of Shaktihimalaya