The Content You Consume Becomes Your Reality

by Steven Maxwell, Contributor | Waking Times

“A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.” — James Allen, As A Man Thinketh

I’m a ravenous consumer of content. I bet you are, too. If we are what we eat, for better or worse, the content we consume becomes our reality. It becomes the story we tell ourselves, the principles we believe in, and it may even determine our health. Some content is detrimental and some is beneficial. Because we’re bombarded with information from every direction, it’s never been more important to carefully curate what we consume.

Practically everything we observe and experience now seems to be “content.” From music, movies, books, news, politics, gossip, work, friend feeds and texts, even to our immediate surroundings like how our homes are decorated.  Sometimes the noise and choices can get overwhelming. This overload is like decision fatigue.

Steve Jobs popularized the idea of “decision fatigue” when he chose to wear the same outfit of clothing every day to eliminate wardrobe decisions from his daily decision bank.  Decision fatigue describes when we make too many decisions in too short a time, we significantly reduce our decision-making ability.

The video below is an excellent explanation of decision fatigue and its potential effects:

Some common effects from decision fatigue are losing self-control over things you normally refrain from doing, decision paralysis, or beginning to avoid making decisions altogether. Significantly, life starts happening to you instead of for you. High performers like Steve Jobs require life to happen for them, not to them.

Often we’re tempted by the emotional clickbait headlineswithout considering the consequences on our psyche. There are some things we cannot unsee or unhear. Words and images affect us. They mold our reality. We have to ask ourselves if we really want to manufacture more rage in our lives. Rarely do we stop to deliberately protect ourselves from the content we consume.

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