Our minds absorb what is in our environment, but what do you allow in? When Rhonda was listening to Pandora the other day, she noticed that she was hearing negative ads. She could recite all of the silent heart attack warnings for women, and then she realized that Pandora Internet Radio had her demographic information and targeted the advertising to her age and gender. When she made herself 25 years old, the ads were more upbeat. This is simply one experience, but had Rhonda continued to listen to the symptoms of a heart attack over and over again, guess what? She would have the idea burned into her consciousness, and she might have actually suffered from some of the symptoms on the list. To rid herself of such negativity, all she had to do was change her preferences. And you can change your preferences in real life too.
We can all make adjustments in our external environment. We can turn off the television when the news comes on, and meditate instead. We can turn the volume on the phone down, and actually not answer it if we don’t feel like talking. We can say no to invitations if we don’t want to be around certain people. And we can skip the horror flick if it makes us physically sick. But we can say yes to what we want to do most, even if it is out of our comfort zone. Allowing things in that we want, and creating boundaries around things we don’t, is key to a successful life.
The point is that if we just go with the flow, and not make conscious decisions, they are made for us. We let things—audio, video, people– into our experience that do not soothe our souls. Then we experience stress at the end of the day because of our lack of participation in life. In part, saying no to what we don’t want to let into our experience, and saying yes to what we do want, can go a long way to a happy and healthy life.
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