Turn It Off

9/6/2015

Over the past few weeks I have constantly had one simple thought: We are bombarded by literally thousands of thoughts each day, consciously or sub-consciously, but we don't need to act upon them all.

Most of us would agree that we cannot choose all of our thoughts, especially in the sub-conscious. Now I'm not going to try and go into a medical or psychological explanation of thought patterns because I'm simply not qualified to do so. All I aim to do here is to give my opinion on something I have come to realize through personal experience.

I have realized that while we may be bombarded by thousands of thoughts each day, if we are mentally healthy, we can choose what we accept and what we don't accept. We can also choose what we take in and what we don't. For example: on something like Facebook and Twitter, you don't need to read every single thing posted. I used to do that and it drove me nuts. Some things on social media are just plain stupid, let's be fair. And like I heard in a podcast recently, you really don't need to know the news that's happening on the other side of the world when it's 2 am in your local area. At 2 am, you need to go to sleep because in the words of Ted Moseby, nothing good happens after 2 am. If you find yourself reading, watching or hearing something and it's bothering your mental health, there's nothing wrong with simply turning it off.

In the last few weeks, I've watched enough news reports to know what's going on generally, but that's all. I don't read newspapers at all, mainly because I find them rather inaccurate. Also my time on social media has significantly declined. There is still definitely a positive to social media, especially for someone like me who struggles to leave the house at the moment and that is to keep in contact with humans, especially those humans I know who live outside of my city.

What I am trying to get at here is to encourage you to learn to sift through everything thrown at you and not take it all in personally because that will only hurt your mental/emotional health. However, don't turn it all off and use it as an excuse to be ignorant. Self-care for your mental health is good, ignorance is not. But that's a whole different angle and probably a blog for another day ...

Giving up is not an option,

Perry.