“You are what you eat”
Not only does this constitute your unique physique, but this holds true to almost every mental health metaphorical illustration as well.
In the second RLT podcast episode, Marno and Lehan discusses the concept of input equals output and summarizes the concept with some valuable examples.
Marno opened the discussion with: “Watch your thoughts, they become words; Watch your words, they become actions; Watch your actions, they become habits; Watch your habits, they become character; and watch your character for it becomes your destiny.".
According to Lehan: “it's quite a long quote so it's more of a paragraph, but it really holds true and it has a lot of value to that because if you think about it, it is really about "you are what you eat" so, you know, what you put in is what you're going to put out, and if you put toxic stuff in you're going to put toxic stuff out. If you're going to put good stuff in, you're going to produce good”. He continues to say that: “living in countries such as Southern Africa and being around such a lot of negativity - you really do find yourself, always and constantly in the wrong mind space, and if you don't try and control that, you really start putting out that negativity out into the world. If you really want to be remembered one day or you want to leave something behind and some sort of legacy, you don't want to be remembered for the person that was negative all the time. You want to be remembered for some good that you put back into the life or into the world – that you changed some lives and you attempted to make something good out of whatever situation you were in”
what you put in is what you're going to put out, and if you put toxic stuff in you're going to put toxic stuff out. If you're going to put good stuff in. You're going to produce good
So much in this world is negative, that we tend to veer off the path and get influenced by all the negative things going on in the world. This is not even really our fault. The media itself is designed to feed our minds with all that is wrong in the world, completely neglecting the positive developments around us. No one wants to hear about the family that started a herb garden in their neighborhood, when they can hear about the civil unrest in the Middle East, or how the nurses at the hospital have worked 100 hour weeks to save lives during the Covid-19 pandemic, when they can write about the horrific impact that the pandemic has on world economics. Our minds are programmed to enjoy and respond to sensationalist material, hence the media feeds this notion, so that they can sell more copies of their content. During this negative feedback loop that we traverse, we need to find a way to take in what affects you positively, but then try to only note and discard the negative bits so you can leave space for growth and positivity. Marno states that: “we've got so many things coming into our minds on a daily basis, that we don't really understand or realize what an impact that has on our lives and the person that you become. So a very simple example of that is just watch whatever you consume, watch whatever information you read, I mean we live in this day and age once again that, you know, we've got access to Facebook, we've got access to Twitter, to Instagram. So we're watching so much content on a daily basis, shows on Netflix, YouTube videos. I mean that is the new norm.”
Our minds are programmed to enjoy and respond to sensationalist material, hence the media feeds this notion, so that they can sell more copies of their content.
It boils down to controlling your thoughts. Everything that passes you by during your day, will either incite thought or get passed on. Once you start actively thinking about something, that thought will find its way into action. Hence the whole concept of input equals output. The messages that you consume, can be trapped into thought. Fostering thoughts, will result in an outward action into the world. “everything starts with thoughts. So if you could control that. Or at least, to try and retrain your mind to accept good thoughts and kind of get rid of the rest, or just shrug it off. So if something negative comes into your mind bite on it. Don't chew on it. So just give it that small amount of time, notice it and then shrug it off. It's not going to serve you any good, it's not going to help your day it's not going to make you more money it's not going to make you successful, it's only going to bring you down and by bringing you down, you're going to hold the person responsible for the bad thoughts accountable, and you'll probably take them down in flames with you”
Another way that thoughts can manifest itself, is into words. Words can be very powerful. Especially words fueled by a long thought process. Our words are usually uttered to those closest around us and it is thus easy to conclude that negative thoughts, manifesting into a negative message, heard by a listening ear, could then spawn more negative thought in the recipient. This starts an endless loop of negativity that could then influence an entire family, work space, community or even country. “words, first and foremost are extremely strong, and you cannot really retract words you know once you've spat them out. They actually genuinely start making an impact on the recipient or the person that's hearing this, and now if you start taking your words into action. That's actually the very next step of just really taking it a little bit too far that's where you've now lost complete control of what started as a thought process. So, as soon as you started using your thoughts, getting them to words and then moving that into actionable actions that when it becomes a physical thing that your body is doing. This is where you can't really turn that back around anymore”
Obviously the issue is that repeated actions become habitual. For example if you have a thought of sleeping late at night allows you more time to get things done. This thought will become an action of going to bed late once, then twice etc. Sooner or later, you will find yourself in habit of sleeping late, due to a mostly false idea of getting more done. Science has proven that when you sleep less, with the objective to achieve more, you actually end up achieving less due to your impaired ability to function at an optimum level.
All habitual behaviour starts to form ones character at the end of the day. This is a prolonged display of certain habits that becomes “a part of who you are”. This is why it is so important to take notice of what we consume, as we’ve now explained, this is the starting point of what, way down the line, could have impact on ones character. “Your character is something that you developed over years and years and years of habits. So, you have to form habits, as we've now mentioned come from actions, that were initially from words and thoughts.” But if you take the early, early risers - they start their mornings with a combination of whatever works for them. It's either doing gratuity lists where they take the time to appreciate and acknowledge things they are grateful for every morning. They write that down with pen and paper. Then they'll start by reading a little bit of material or books or articles or newspapers. They might do some meditation and spend some time with their choice of faith. By repeating these habits they actually create such a strong Character.
All habitual behaviour starts to form ones character at the end of the day. This is a prolonged display of certain habits that becomes “a part of who you are”.
It is an easy conclusion then that, thoughts can eventually depict your destiny. See, people that are successful spiritually, financially, health wise and relationship wise, all have some good solid habits and character. It is through year of carefully selecting the correct combination of habits that work for them and aids them that positivity eventually just births. For this reason, it is then worth all our while to start being more conscience of our thoughts and more intentional with our actions, bearing in mind that repeated behaviour will change your habits and character, that will later determine our success.
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