Meditate on these things

 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. 9 The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you. Phil 4:8

The first thing I noticed after 911 was the multiple streams of news banners playing simultaneously across the screen.  You used to have one thing you were listening to and seeing. Now you have many. How can you blip around reading 10 different things at once while also listening to someone who is showing you video? I knew that the news had catapulted itself into every potential thought in the human mind. If you are juggling 10 pieces of information, you can't ever really get to the bottom of any of them. You go into a stress cycle and go around in circles. 

It gave me insomnia, so I started listening to talk radio at night. That made it so much worse. Noise noise noise 24/7. I became addicted to whatever they would tell me next. It has been a long journey out. 

I noticed I didn't spend any time with my own thoughts anymore. I noticed I spent more time listening to what was coming out of someone else's head and never my own. I stopped choosing my reading material in an intentional way, and just grabbed things from the news cycle. I stopped learning about other era's in history.  I stopped listening to music. 

Then, I decided to number my days and thoughts. If you have a spending problem, you account for where all your money went, and make decisions about how you spent your money. Getting pizza every Friday may be a fun habit, but at the end of the month you may be shocked to know you spend 250$ on pizza that wasn't even very good. It was just there. It was easy. It became a happy ritual.  I remember doing this years ago when we were struggling. Once I had organized money spent on the different needs, this stood out to me.  I saw that I didn't like that. I made a change. Things got better.

The info highway is the same. All of those words flowing into you are like food you are eating. Some of it is healthy for you, some not so much. 

There is a season in the Jewish calendar that is considered a time of pruning.  You go through your orchard and evaluate the fruitfulness of what you are cultivating. Some things you spend lots of time and energy on, and all you get are thorns and irritation. I had some raspberry canes like this once. They had come with the property we bought and after years of studying and pruning and feeding all I got was bloody hands and messy briars that never produced one berry to eat. One year I yanked them all out except for one. I was willing to observe and try again on that one. But not a whole patch of them. I planted something I knew how to grow to fruition. So think about fruition.

When you take time to re-evaluate what you are giving your time to, you want to be honest about the fruit it is bringing. (Or not bringing) Much of what's on your phone is a time sucker. If it connects you to real relationships, or information you will put into practice to bring real things into the world it may be worth it to you. If you listen passively for hours on end to news bytes that stress you but have no corresponding action to take, you are over saturating yourself. Much of it is redundant.

I began deleting podcasts left and right. I went into a time of total quiet. I only read one thing at a time. Afterwards I evaluated what it did to me. After a week of never having time to play my guitar or talk to a friend, I had to admit that I was passively listening to strangers that I didn't even know. Even the personalities I really liked could be very different than they present themselves as. Charisma is all it takes to draw me in, and they have teams to prepare their material for them. They are like the master of ceremonies who has had all his jokes written for him by some other guy. There is something un genuine about it, and then you find you are a passive content digester with nothing genuine to offer yourself.

I had wondered what happened to all of my creativity, and now I know. I stopped creating. I stopped walking in the trees, or talking to the neighbor kids, or writing my own songs. When I cut off too many voices and too many evaluations of evaluations things cleared up for me and I felt my own flow coming back.

Do yourself a favor. Take a week and shut off the noise. Be honest about your time and emotional investment. IF you want positive to come out of you, start putting positive in. Be intentional about your mental diet. Take time and decide what you will consume in advance, not just what is streamed or fed to you by the network.  Because, they don't care about you. They are just making a buck and slinging whatever will get a hit. You don't need to hear something 100 times a day.

To be inspired by noble ideas, brave people, overcomers of adversity, those who found ways to improve themselves and others, you have to get out of passive mode and be intentional about your diet of ideas.  Anything no matter how small that you can take action on is better than a hundred things that take up space in your head and emotions and bring no spark of inspiration.

Understand this: The bad things give you a bump of adrenalin, and set up a craving for more. Bad news will have a stronger pull on you than reflecting on good things. You will need to make a decision about this in advance rather than letting the networks decide this for you.