#005 | Fri 7 Sep | Being influenced
Have you ever looked a bright light, either a lightbulb or out a bright window while inside a dark room?
When you look away, the light source is still imprinted in the middle of your vision and you can’t see properly for a few seconds.
Sometimes it takes longer to fade away and get your proper vision back.
Sometimes it takes so long that you may have actually damaged your eyesight by looking too long.
In that case, it was probably either the sun or some sort of flashbang grenade — which I hope you never encounter.
We’ve learned though that looking at bright lights for too long can impair your vision to some degree and we all know not to stare at the sun because that will end your vision once and for all.
We know this because our eyes are not indestructible and the affect of damage on them is immediately obvious, in the case of becoming visually impaired temporarily, and can have life-changing repercussions if the damage becomes permanent.
It’s an easy concept to grasp: don’t damage your eyesight because then you can’t see things which will make your life much harder. Not impossible but definitely harder.
So why is it we don’t treat every potentially damaging stimulus on ourselves as harmful that needs to be avoided?
Most people live reactionary lives. They will only do something if it happens to them and forces them to take action.
Got a headache? Take a pill.
Caught with major hunger pangs? Better smash some Doritos quickly.
Phone pinging with emails and messages? Stop everything including walking normally and talking with someone to address it.
Very little preventative measures are in place to reduce the risks of the future, be it in health, career, relationships or otherwise.
Very little effort is put into the daily monitoring of the potential risks that may or may not manifest themselves down the line.
Staying hydrated, staying satiated, excising regularly etc.
And most importantly: monitoring all incoming stimuli that could leave an impression on you.
Your environment, the people around you, the words you read from the authors you chose, the TV images that flash into you brain — all of these leave an impression on your psyche, just like a bright light does to your eyesight.
The thing is, it’s a lot less obvious that a big bright splotch in the middle of your vision is.
Your psyche is the underlying element of who you are and who you become.
If you leave the gates to the party open for everyone to come inside, you’re going to get one crazy, messy, uncontrollable party.
If you don’t monitor every piece of information that comes into your brain via your eyes and ears, your world and your future will take a shape that you may not be happy with.
Goals and ambitions require you to sacrifice some things to gain other things, which means by default you have specified what you want.
In tandem, you must then specify the information and stimulus you want to receive into your mind to allow that goal to manifest itself in your life.
And more importantly, to cut out with a hot blade the information you do not need in your life and that does not benefit you in any way.
Now you might be thinking, ‘oh but I like watching this bullshit TV because I can switch my brain off and allow myself to unwind’.
Cool, that’s fine. As long as you don’t complain about where your life is and where it’s going, enjoy the bullshit TV.
Just remember, it’s leaving some of the poorest-grade material into your mind.
You’re effectively allowing all the trashiest people you went to school with who have done zero with their lives into your party, simply because they’re easy to talk to and won’t challenge you in anyway.
But if you want to build and have the life you want, whatever that may be, you must expose yourself to books, authors, documentaries (to some degree), biographies and philosophies of people and ideas much greater than yourself.
You must treat your body well, you must treat your heart and your mind well and remember that everything that touches any part of these will leave an impression.
Tell the bouncer at your party to be super strict and only let the beneficial people in.
You want your party to be filled with so many smart people, you will feel like the dumbest person in the room.
And that’s good because firstly, it’s a metaphor, and secondly, it’s in your own mind.
You can make yourself smarter. It’s simple. Not easy but simple.
So next time you go for that pack of biscuits or next time you go for a mindless swipe through your Instragam feed or watching that shitty reality TV show, think to yourself:
‘Who am I letting into the party if I do this?’
Which really is a question of, ‘who do I want to be?’
