Have you ever calculated the quantum of information that your mind gathers and processes each day? If you do this small exercise, you would discover some surprising facts.
Let us look into the activity of crossing a busy road which almost all of us do each day. What are the things that you would normally note while crossing? Look for traffic both sides and try to swiftly cross, when the traffic is lean. Just that? Definitely not. See the list of things that we note while crossing the road.
Processing info
A girl in her teens for example would note the following: An attractive new Ad banner of some mobile service provider on display in the bus shelter opposite to her, the writing on the T Shirt that the girl crossing in a stylish moped was wearing (and also the colour match between the moped and T Shirt), the unattended handkerchief lying in the road over which some tyres are making designs, the broken stone in the median., the over crowded bus with guys hanging in the steps, the irritating sound of the horn from some vehicle, and the trendy or rather funny hairstyle of a youngster speeding in his customised bike. All these within eight seconds of crossing a road!
Along with this, if there is a call or an SMS alert in between, she would also make a point to attend that. And, an eye on traffic flow for safe crossing. Crossed the road safely? Ok. Now let's analyse this event. The original intention here was to just cross the road. But, the information that we gather in the process was more than what was actually needed to finish the activity.
Some of this unintentional bits of information were interesting and cheering, while the others were trying to spoil our mood. We find that our mood each day is determined by the type and strength of information that we had handled till that time of the day. The sweeter the information, the better would be our mood and vice versa.
Filtering the negatives
Now, the next question is ‘can we control our mood by selective screening of information that we gather?' Of course, yes. Every morning as we wake up, our mind is like a bowl of fresh warm milk in our hands, which we carry all through the day. (Incidentally, milk is also the first processed item in our kitchen.) Our mood is equivalent to the quality of milk in the bowl. It's generally neutral at the start of the day. As we progress through the day, we keep adding lots of additives (Information) to this bowl of milk depending on the events that takes place. Hearing bad news is like adding a drop of lime to this bowl of milk. Sweet news adds sugar to the milk bowl. All the untoward incidents like failures, irritation, etc., add few impurities and at the end of the day the mood looks like a bowl of fowl smelling spoiled milk.
Here, the effect of the added sweet if any gets overridden. Instead, let's close our bowl for bad things and open it to allow only the good things to be added to it. A smiling baby can add a drop of rose essence to the milk. Work appreciation and good results may add a spoon of sugar to your bowl. Add a scoop of ice cubes, when your friend appreciates your dressing sense or your styling. Now, at the end of the day, the same bowl would be carrying chilled rose milk, which you can in turn serve to your environment.
As you know, life is always a mix of the good and the bad. If we learn on what to take in and cherish and what else to learn and just ignore, then we can keep our mind refreshed all through the life.
The author is an advisor and corporate trainer.
E-mail the author at: mbagopal@gmail.com or call: 9884533674
