We often focus on the physical aspects of mindful eating, choosing nutritious foods to nourish our bodies. But have you considered the "food" we consume through our senses, the invisible yet potent impact it has on our mental and physical well-being? It's time to expand our definition of mindful eating to encompass this unseen source of nourishment. Whenever we say be mindful of what you eat, we instantly think of choosing the right food that we eat. But have we ever wondered, when it comes to being mindful of eating there could be different type of food that we don’t eat through mouth, but we consume it using something else that can not only affect our mental health but also our physical health. Just like mindful food choices nourish our bodies, being mindful of what we see and hear nourishes our mental and physical well-being.
What we see and hear feeds our minds just as surely as food feeds our bodies. Every image, every sound, leaves an imprint, shaping our thoughts and emotions. Imagine your mind as a fertile field; negative information becomes unwanted weeds, while positive content sows the seeds of well-being. Just like tending a garden, choosing what we "consume" through our senses determines the harvest of our thoughts. We do not realise but what we see and hear does affect our mental and physical health. How does it happen? Whatever we see or hear gets imprinted on our mind. Once that is imprinted on our mind our mind then recalls those images or sounds/voices every now and then. Then the thoughts our mind creates are based on those imprinted images or sounds on our mind. The more negative information gets imprinted on the mind the more negative our thoughts will be, and more positive information gets imprinted on our mind the more positive our thoughts will be. Consider your mind as an earthen pot. If we put dirty water inside the pot what kind of water comes out of its tap? Dirty right…But if we put clean water then? We will get clean water. Here the water that comes out of the pot is our thoughts. So, if we be mindful when it comes to putting dirty or clean water inside the pot the outcome will change. Consume positive content our thoughts will become positive and if we engage in consuming negative content our thoughts will start getting negative. We don’t realise the difference instantly but over time the quality of thoughts creates a huge impact on not just or emotional state and mental health but also our physical health. How? Let’s find out.
Image Generated with AI - April 23, 2024 at 10:25 PM
Talking about our emotional state and mental health, our emotional state or in general terms our mood over time determines our mental health. The happier and more peaceful our mood will be, our mental health will be fine but what if we mostly remain tensed, unhappy, angry, or full any negative emotions? Our mental health will suffer right. But have you ever considered what determines our emotional state? Yes, that’s right it is our thoughts that determines our mood. Consider this, you watched a crime show last night. Now you woke up got ready and went to office and started working. But in your mind, you are still recalling the show you watched last night. Thinking about its characters and plot you remembered a negative character for whom you developed hatred instantly while watching the show. While you were thinking about how bad that character was you suddenly remembered your colleague who particularly has same behaviour as that character and voila you started creating negative thoughts which kept getting piled up in your mind throughout the day. At the end of the day what your mood will be like? It definitely won’t be a happy or peaceful mood right. Ever happened after coming how from work, you remembered an incident happened that day and said, “why did I get angry? There was no point of getting angry.” Why that happened, maybe because our mood was angry and because of that we reacted angrily without analysing the situation. And that angry reaction could be an outcome of what was going on in our mind at that time. But on the contrary let’s say you watched something spiritual or anything positive that showed love and compassion for others. You woke up next day, went to the office still remembering what you learnt and seen about love and compassion for everyone throughout the day. While remembering those scenes from last night you remembered a person with whom you have a very good relationship, you remember a charity you did that brought a wide smile on someone’s face: all these thoughts your mind kept creating throughout the day. How your mood will be at the end of the day now? Happy and peaceful right. And if your everyday looks like this over time then how your overall mental health will be? Good right. And how you would have responded throughout the day? You would have responded peacefully and happily in even during difficult situations right.
Just like our thoughts decide what our mood will be, our thoughts also affect our physical health. How? Each kind of thought we create has different physical effect. Consider you created thoughts of anger, stress, or frustration. Have you ever notices what you feel physically while you are angry or stressed. If we pay attention to what we feel physically, we might notice that we feel heat running through our body, we might get headache, our body might start shaking if these thoughts of anger are extreme. But when we are creating happy, peaceful, or compassionate thoughts, we feel energetic and vibrant physically. Most of us have had times where at the end of the day after coming home from work we would have said I had a stressful day at work and now my head hurts and I feel exhausted. All of us have said this at some point but have we ever tries to find out what made us feel stressful and what kind thoughts we created during the day? If we try to recall what thoughts we created we might find out what is causing us those headaches, tiredness, uneasiness etc. in our bodies. If we dig in further and try to look at what is responsible for the kind of thoughts we created, we might notice it is the content we consumed throughout the day. And if we keep consuming negative content and keep creating negative thoughts over a prolonged period, it might result in many illnesses both physical and mental.
In conclusion, remember: your eyes and ears are powerful gateways to your well-being. We may not be able to control every external stimulus, but we can consciously choose what resonates within. Let this be a call to cultivate a mindful media diet, one that celebrates beauty, kindness, and the inherent positivity of the world. By feeding our minds with light, we illuminate not only our own paths but also the way for others. Be the change you wish to see, consume consciously, and let your inner light shine.
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