We are bombarded with thoughts, feelings, images, voices (our own and others) and tons of other sensory information every second of our waking hours. When I was an elementary school counselor, I taught several lessons to students about the Reticular Activating System (RAS), the part of the brain that sits at the brain stem and connects with many other parts of the brain. The RAS takes in all of the information from our senses and decides which information to send to the other parts of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex (the wise leader), the amygdala (the security guard), the hippocampus (memory saver) or other areas. The RAS filters out everything it deems unnecessary or unwanted and it does this unconsciously, yet we can use our power of choice to be intentional about what and how much our RAS has to filter/prioritize.
The past few years I've worked on carefully choosing the energy I allow into my life - that means I'm choosey about the shows I watch, the people I spend time with, the books I read and the social media I participate in. Being choosey also means that sometimes I read trash mags (People, US Weekly), watch rom coms and mindlessly scroll through Pinterest. I just don't do it with all of my free time because I want to invest in myself. A friend sent me this quote AS I was writing this post. Her timing is brilliant...
"To be healthy, functioning individuals, we need to feel good about ourselves. To feel good about ourselves, we need to feel that our time and energy is spent meaningfully. Meaning is the fuel of our minds. When you run out of it, everything else stops working." - Mark Manson
The kicker is that how I choose to spend my time probably looks different than the next person. The point is to find YOUR secret sauce, your magic formula. What gives you energy? What is an energy sucker? Can you unfollow some accounts? Hide some feeds? Invest in a book that will shake things up like The Untethered Soul, Burnout, Expectation Hangover, My Grandmother’s Hands or Braving the Wilderness? Can you spend more time outside? Which ever way you choose, you are making meaning out of your life. These are all acts of self-compassion, something every human needs more of. Are you figuring out what your secret sauce is? What are you choosing these days?