Everyone is doing the best they can with the body, mind, and spirit they have.
Our best performance depends on how healthy our body is, how healthy our mind is, and how healthy our spirit is. The nourishment we give each of these parts will determine how well we can perform.
What are we feeding them?
We can nourish our mind with either good food for bad food. Bad food includes negative rants on social media, exaggerated news, negative or obsessive thinking, blame, shame, and guilt. These cause your mind to be weak and unhealthy.
Here are four tips on how to nourish your mind so you can perform at your best
Engage with others
We are social beings. Introverts and extroverts alike need to connect with others to be mentally healthy. Interactions with other people are a way to nourish your mind as you feed off the ideas you hear, process concepts, and enjoy other’s company.
You further nourish your mind as you establish and maintain personal boundaries. Defining what is you and what is not you fuels your internal capacity for relationship. It’s also food that increases your emotional intelligence. Boundaries allow us to see other people’s emotions, attitudes, values, and choices, as separate from our own.
The people you hang out with influence your life more than you are probably aware. A Harvard study showed that we are influenced by our friends, our friends friends, and even our friend’s friend’s friends. When you spend time with people who have a positive influence on your life, you feast on good mind food.
Choose wisely
Eliminate negative thinking
One of the downfalls of our mental health is negative thinking. Negative thinking is anything that makes you feel sad, mad, anxious, fearful, agitated, unworthy, frustrated, or unproductive. Negative thoughts are like drinking poison for your mind.
It’s important to nourish your mind with anything but negative thoughts. Repeating platitudes that you don’t believe is not the answer but getting your negative thoughts under control is. Work to replace your negative thoughts with the truth.
Challenge Your Mind
The third way to nourish your mind is to continue to learn. Take up new hobbies, read, listen to podcasts, and discuss ideas with others. Just like building new muscles which make your body stronger, challenging your mind makes it stronger too.
When you nourish your mind by feeding it new ideas, you expand its capability. This is the concept of neuroplasticity which means our brains can respond to new information and continue to grow throughout our lifetime. Challenging our minds helps keep us interesting, is fun, and may ward off dementia.
Stay in the present
Worry and fearful anticipation are not good meals for your mind. Learning to stay in the moment and dealing with the reality of what is instead of ruminating on the past or fearing the future, is a healthy spread for your mind.
You may have heard that this moment is all we have. It’s also the only moment we can control. When we stay in the space of managing what we can, we eliminate undue stress about the past or future. A healthy diet of dealing with the present is nourishing your mind.
So, nourish your mind by engaging with others, addressing negative thinking, challenging your mind, and staying in the present. These will nourish your mental health and allow you to perform at your best.