The Movement of Ideas
Every thought, every idea, every feeling and everything that makes us who we are, is chemistry in motion. The combining of hundreds of chemicals is what powers us through our day and determines how we feel about it. Mahatma Gandhi wrote that “man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks, he becomes”. He was absolutely right.
Each emotion and idea that we are exposed to creates a response in our chemical makeup. Negative, abusive, violent ideas create fear, worry and aggression in us. While positive, supportive, encouraging and compassionate ideas create joy, serenity and confidence in us. This means that the environment of ideas through which we walk every day leaves an impression in our subconscious mind that will then determine the direction of our future. On the series Criminal Minds, actor Mandy Patinkin said that what drove him to leave the show was the destructive effect on his soul that he experienced recreating the horror of serial killers for television. It would not only follow him home each day, but it began to change how he thought and who he was.
Nightly news is no longer informative, it is sensational. It has become something that doesn’t explain an issue, it magnifies it, illustrates it, it creates drama … it creates emotion in the viewer. Adding all that emotion to our often overwhelming daily emotions has caused many in our society to fall into depression, chronic anxiety, debilitating insomnia and emotional paralysis.
We need to detoxify our bodies and minds from the impact of external ideas that do not create positive energy. By subjecting ourselves and our children to daily negativity we are creating a future that is devoid of joy, that is obsessed with sensational imagery and that is not content with the mundane day to day. We are teaching an entire generation of children to never unplug, to read screens instead of books, to run for the television as soon as they are home from school and to not even be able to write in cursive.
This repeated exposure to sensationalism bombards our subconscious mind which changes how we see things and how we interpret things. It is what drives our thoughts and ideas about our life and the world we live in. We need to create variability in our thought patterns and our activities to prevent these hyper-dramatic concepts from stagnating in the deeper recesses of our mind. Otherwise we will find ourselves becoming unhappy with our lives, disenchanted with our relationships and distrustful of people who think differently from ourselves. Negative thoughts and ideas, particularly crime and violence, create divisions between people and push the boundaries of what is acceptable, appropriate or justifiable. This pushes the ego concept and lessens our desire to “do unto others”.
The most recent research into Alzheimer’s and dementia has shown that exploring new skills, learning new things and investigating new ideas is the key to long-term memory health. It is the movement of ideas, thoughts and emotions through our minds and our bodies that allows for renewed interest in things and fresh outlooks on our lives and our world. It is vital that we control what we allow ourselves to be exposed to and mitigate the effects of whatever negativity we encounter. Simply by reading the news instead of watching it, allows you to control what you see, what you choose to read more about, what ideas will follow you.
The ideas of the present are the actions of the future. Create a positive future by moving out the ideas that do not serve you. Focus on your life, not emotionally investing in the drama that unfolds around you daily. When the weather becomes eagerly waiting for the next big storm, then you are missing the beauty of today.