Food  for  thought? or Thought  for  Food?       

By Tim Braff

Published in the Lake Minnetonka Navigator  o2-06

This month we are diverting from our normal exploration of nutrition for the body, and for the next few months we will be looking at the nutrition of the mind. 'You are what you eat' with the body. 'You become what you consume' with the mind. It's pretty obvious that this is true. But isn't interesting that we usually ignore this rule? When it comes to the mind, it wants to be fed compulsively 'More'. More information, more drama, more excitement, more violence, more knowledge, more sex, the absolute latest breaking news… as if it would make a difference in the world if we heard about it 2 hours earlier. This blind and ravenous consumption of media has made our minds heavy with the obesity that what is going on 'out there' is more important than the what is right in front of you 'right now'.

The highly processed messages we consume are clogging up the digestive system of the mind, making it nearly impossible to extract what little nutrition is hidden there.  A high-fat diet of traumatic television, nasty newsprint and pathological periodicals contributes to the 'heart' disease of the mind, keeping us internally in conflict and judgment, leading to an emotional cardiac arrest and a heartless world. Mental nutrition high with the cholesterol of conflict, conspiracy and creative consumerism, hardens up the arteries of freethinking. Mind-foods full of behavioral preservatives subversively sell us everything from chocolate-chip cookies, to national propaganda, to what a human being is supposed to look like and behave like, thus cementing unasked for belief systems to an unaware consumer. These are just a few of the external hazards of this kind of mental nutrition. Another major source of mental junk-food is the conversations going on in your mind. Conversations centered around worry, lack, anger, fear, effect the future you will experience and your entire physical being. The ground swell of proof for the mind-body connection is still slow to sink in through the excess layers of mental fat we have comfortably grown accustomed to. And, unfortunately, most of us will just wait until we get a medical diagnosis that compels us to change.

A diet for change?

Most diets require you to observe and write down every last detail of what is put in ones mouth and people are usually shocked, if they are honest, by how much is on the list. If you want to lean-out your mind, you will no doubt be equally shocked if you honestly observe all the input from the outside and all the dramas of internal thoughts. This is not easy to do. But there is help. Next month we will discuss 'The Spyware of the Mind' and give you key words and language that will help you towards the high performance, six-pack-abs of your mind. In the meantime, try just cutting back a little on the IQ-reduction-box and see what happens. If you get bored, ask yourself, "what is boredom?" and "how is it possible to ever be bored, what is the mechanism?" remembering that you always have the constant yammering of thought to amuse and keep you company.