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Fola Daniel Adelesi: Protect your Mental Health by Sifting the News you Consume
We seem to have come into a time of global negativity; everywhere you turn, there’s some form of bad news in the corner. When you turn on the television, there isn’t much good news making the headlines and this continues on a daily basis. For more than a year, we’ve been seeing and reading about people dropping dead, companies cutting costs, and laying off people or companies filing for bankruptcy. There are too many businesses struggling and there are too many individuals who have come to a point where they have no idea what to do anymore.
On the local scene, there’s killing, kidnapping, raping, ethnic clashes, police brutality, and much more. On the global scene, there’s COVID-19 killing people, terrible weather causing untimely deaths, and the police killing those they are meant to protect.
While the news keeps flying around about everything that can possibly go wrong, there’s greater havoc that many seem to be unaware of: the worst thing isn’t the bad things happening, the news or how it’s broken to you, the worst thing is the avalanche of bad news that you aren’t sifting. When you allow too much negativity into you, there is no way it wouldn’t have a negative impact on you.
The bad news may continue and it certainly will but you have the responsibility of protecting your mind. It is your obligation to determine what you allow into your space before we even begin to talk about your mind. When anything and everything makes it into your space, you start losing your calm. When everything – both good and bad – is allowed into your mind, you will eventually lose your sanity. Some people slip into depression.
You need to start the process of gatekeeping. You need to start sifting what is permitted into your mind and ensure at least eighty percent of what gets into your mind is what you have allowed. I will have to admit that it can be hard in some cases to keep all the bad news away but this is one of the ways to keep your mind intact. This is how to ensure you still know who you are at the end of the day.
There are a number of things I do from time to time to make sure I keep bad news at bay or clean up my mind from negativity:
- Music
- Inspirational podcasts
- Sermons
- Good company
Good songs work like magic and can be soothing to the soul. Sometimes when I can’t hold it together internally, I turn to a few good songs that play repeatedly on my phone. These carefully selected songs can play for hours, days, or weeks. You made a way by Travis Greene has been top on the list for a few years.
I recently turned to podcasts especially when I decided to start my own podcast. I checked out a few other great speakers who own their podcasts and I listen from time to time to keep the soul encouraged. I can tell that it is always refreshing to listen to some of these podcasts.
There are some really good sermons I’ve listened to more than a hundred times. It wasn’t the entire sermon in most cases. Sometimes it was a few lines that struck the cord for me. At other times, the speaker hit the right notes here and there so I had to turn to them in certain periods.
A good company isn’t something to joke with. You cannot afford to stay around people who carry so much negativity. There are some who have a problem with every solution, if these people are around you, you either send them packing or find your way out of that circle/friendship. The most important thing is to ensure that negative people are far away from you.
A deliberate effort must be made to ensure you’re walking away from negativity if you don’t want to be drowned by all the bad news or slip into depression. I’ve shared five of my gatekeeping process with you. You can choose to adopt them or find other measures to keep your mind positive. Whatever works for you, make sure you have measures in place to censor the kind of news that makes it into your mind all the time. This may not look like much but it is certainly about your mind and soul, and anything that competes for the attention of your soul and mind can either build or damage you.
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