Evaluate your input. What does this even mean? Unlike all the other healing practices which invite you to add something to your life, this practice is more of a discipline in that it's asking you to monitor and likely detract something from your daily life. Evaluating your input simply means asking yourself, what am I giving my attention to that may be causing me more anxiety, fear, sadness, and hopelessness? Here I will outline the general concepts of this practice, areas of your life to evaluate, ways you can pivot and shift your input, and ways to make this a habit.
General Concepts
Pulling from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, there is a concept that the things we think about impacts the way we feel which impacts how we behave. You can think of it as a triangle with each corner (thoughts--feelings--behavior) impacting the other two corners and vice versa. Some examples of this triangle.
Example 1: I listen to the sad breakup song (behavior), which makes me think about all the terrible relationships I've been in (thoughts), which makes me feel sad and defeated (feelings).
Example 2: I watch the nightly news going on and on about the decline in the economy (behavior), which makes me think about the stability of my own job (thoughts), which makes me feel anxious and worried (feelings).
Example 3: I see on Facebook that my friend is out with her kids and they are all laughing and smiling eating ice-cream (behavior), which makes me think about how my own kids would be throwing a tantrum if I ever took them out and our family never seems to have fun anymore (thoughts), which makes me feel sad and irritable (feelings).
Now, out of these three corners our feelings are the one corner we cannot control. I don't know anyone who can just decide they won't feel sad or angry anymore.
Our thoughts on the other hand are a bit easier to monitor and challenge (CBT thought challenging).
However, if you want to make real change, the power comes in the behavior. I'll show you how referencing the examples above.
Example 1: I recognize that listening to sad music makes me feel more sad, so therefore I challenge myself to listen to only positive and uplifting music for 2 weeks instead and notice how I feel after the 2 weeks.
Example 2: I recognize the nightly news makes me highly anxious, so therefore I challenge myself to watch standup comedy instead of the nightly news.
Example 3: I recognize social media tends to make me feel sad about my own life, so therefore I challenge myself to get off social media for a month to see if it makes a difference in my happiness.
Each of these examples are behavior changes.
Areas of Input to Evaluate:
-News: How long do I spend watching the news? How do I feel after hearing a news story?
-Social Media: How long am I spending on social media? Am I comparing myself to the people I follow on social media?
-Negative Relationships: How do the people in my life make me feel? Do I feel more encouraged after an interaction with this person? If not, why?
-Music: Notice the words in your music -- are they generally negative or positive?
-TV/Movies: What is the general genre of TV/Movies I am consuming? Is this the lens I want to view my own life from? What belief systems am I forming about my own life based on what I am consuming?
The point here isn't to live under a rock. Keeping up with what is happening in the world (news) is important. Keeping up with friends in today's world is valuable (social media). Relationships, even the hard ones, are necessary...we are social beings, and relationships inevitably have conflict (conflict is actually important for growth). Music is a healing and beautiful form of processing. TV/Movies are entertaining and enjoyable and give us glimpse into other ways of being.
The point is to notice. Observe. How long am I spending consuming negativity? How do these areas make me feel? Can my system tolerate this right now? If I listen/watch/take this in, will it help me process or give me a benefit? Or will it send me into a spiral of negative thoughts and feelings that will be hard for me to shake? Do I need a break? A reset? Do I need to set boundaries?
How to Pivot:
-Delete your news app and ask a friend to inform you if anything major and important has happened that you should know about.
-Delete your social media profiles OR set a time limit on your phone to limit how long you can be on social media apps each day.
-Set boundaries with friends/family and seek out new relationships if needed.
-Try listening to positive or uplifting music, worship music, spiritual music, or instrumental music
-Know yourself and know if you can handle the TV show or movie before watching.
Make it a Habit:
-Make it Easy/Difficult: Recruit the help of technology. Many phones have settings you can use to limit how long you can be on certain apps. Delete apps if needed.
-Make it Satisfying: Start a 2 week or 30 day challenge and create a calendar to check off each day you've successfully cut out certain inputs. Notice at the end of the challenge how you feel compared to when you started. Ex: I'm going to avoid the news completely for 2 weeks as a "reset".
-Make it Difficult: Increase the friction between you and the input habit you're trying to break. Ex: I hide my TV remote in the upper pantry in the kitchen so that I have to go out of my way to watch TV.
-Make it Unsatisfying: Get an accountability partner or announce your habit change so that others can hold you accountable. Ex: I announce on social media that I am taking a month-long hiatus. Or I recruit my partner to ask me every other day how my goal of being off social media is going.
-Make it Obvious/Invisible: Prepare for a shift in the music you listen to by creating a playlist or saving playlists of positive music so that it's easy to access during the times you typically listen to music. Or unfollow playlists that you know you typically "go-to" so that they are harder to access.
Overall, the "input" we are receiving (news, social media, friends/family, music, TV/movies) shape our thoughts which impacts our feelings. What we consume forms our beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. While the daily interactions and consumption of input appears so small on the surface, we can see how the buildup can have a rather profound impact on our lives. This is worth assessing.
As always, the skills outlined here are not a substitute for therapy. They are powerful tools at your disposal and if you need additional help with your mental health, give me a call. Therapy can help.