Listen to the Right Voices and Boost Your ‘Tude

Want to feel better about yourself? Want a better outlook on life? Then maybe you need to reconsider what voices you’re listening to, because the messages you allow to fill your head will affect everything you do and think.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how noises, lighting and other environmental factors affect your productivity and stress levels. In a similar way, the information, opinions, and other messages we surround ourselves with affect us. I’ll call it the input environment.

Are you aware of your input environment?

There’s an old programming saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Like a computer, our thoughts are fed by the inputs we supply. The more “garbage” we allow into our heads, the more likely we are to have skewed, unhealthy thinking.

Which leads to unhealthy attitudes and unhealthy actions.

So, if we want to boost our attitude, self-confidence, or ability to achieve then we should start by considering what we can do to improve our mental input environment.

 Consider all the mental inputs you experience. Things like:

• Social media
• TV, movies and videos
• Magazines and newspapers
• Advertisements
• Books
• Music lyrics
• The friends we hang out with
• The groups/meetings/organizations we regularly attend
• Our home and family members
• Our coworkers

We don’t have full control over the people and voices that surround us, but we can control a large portion of what we allow into our heads. Therefore, we can intentionally choose to allow more positive voices and helpful information into our lives, and we can intentionally choose to limit the amount of negative voices and unhelpful messages.

Change your inputs and boost your attitude

Years ago, my husband decided to stop reading Dilbert cartoons, because it was giving him a cynical attitude about his workplace. That’s an example of changing an input to improve an attitude. Another example is our decision to never watch TV news. Those broadcasts are a skewed portrayal of humanity, focusing on stories of violence and injustice that feed negative thoughts like anxiety, fear, and depression. We don’t need to listen to that particular voice.

Similarly, I consider my mental and emotional state when selecting books to read. I recently quit reading a perfectly good mystery novel because I realized it was too heavy and emotional a story for my mental well-being while I was dealing with my ailing father. I might try it again while vacationing at the beach, but at that moment it would have been detrimental to my mental health.

Unfortunately, we often pay little attention to the inputs we’re allowing into our lives, and give even less thought to how those messages are affecting our mood, attitude, self-image, and beliefs. So my challenge to you this week is to pay attention. Take an objective look at the various inputs in your environment and question whether those inputs are feeding your head with helpful thoughts. Or not.

Next decide what you can do to limit the unhelpful messages and increase better ones. Is their a particular coworker whose acid remarks turn your thoughts cynical? Or perhaps you’ve been watching too many shows that feed envy, jealousy, or low body-image. Do you need to spend more time listening to worship music and less time listening to a band that fills your head with angst or anger? And don’t forget those friends who always encourage you or spur you on to try harder. Controlling your inputs is as much about what you want more of as it is limiting problem areas.

What about the inner voices?

How do we control that inner voice that fills our heads with unhelpful thoughts? We can’t stop our inner voice from sounding off, but we can limit the harm it does. First of all, by altering your inputs, you can reduce the negative ammunition that pesky inner voice has to work with. Secondly, you can learn not to believe all the inner voice tells you.

And that last concept goes for all the messages that fill our world. If we’re paying attention, we can notice messages we know are false and remind ourselves of what is true instead. Even when we can’t avoid certain people, like a never-satisfied boss or an ever-complaining aunt, we don’t have to agree with all they say.

And when others speak condemning or shaming words at us, we don’t have to accept them as truth. We can disagree. Just remember that we only have so much resistance to toxic messages. We must do all we can to limit our exposure to those environments so we aren’t dragged down by hurtful messages.

Are you ready to boost your attitude?

So this week, I challenge you to identify an unhelpful input and take steps to limit that input.

And if you found this post helpful, don’t forget to share it.