Do you calculate how much of carbs or proteins you take every day ? Are you cautious about the quantity of water you drink each day ? Good, but why ? We all know the importance of physical fitness and how, what we feed into the body shapes our fitness & health. Similarly what we feed our mind and soul is extremely important for the fitness of soul and mental health. So what are the ingredients to feed our mind? The words we hear, words we talk, body language we exchange, people we surround ourselves with, point of views in which we look at critical situations both at work and home : all of these contribute to what we feed into our soul. The society and community we live, where we bring up our family also contributes. Example : Australia and Sweden are top happiest countries in the world, the collective mindset of the society feeds positive vibes to the soul where as there are countries with high crime rate and criticism as a culture. Now, the purpose of this blog is to introspect on your mental diet like I did so myself. If needed start the right diet to have balance nutrition that feeds your soul to be healthy and positive.
I have taken the top 3 nutrients and mapped them to different types of energies you can surround yourself with.
- Fats : any kind of gossip, negative talk, discouraging mindset, repeated discussions on trauma etc are exactly the junk food that created unhealthy fat in our mental health. There are 2 types of fat. These are easy to pile up on but very hard to lose back. Sometimes social media scrolls, and people who constantly make fun of you or finding fault in everything around pile up. Just like some healthy fat, sometimes there are people and situations that will reflect the risks in front of you, they will show you what might go wrong with examples from other failures. So a limited intake is okay.
- Carbohydrates : Rice, potatoes, bananas,wheat – the food that’s basic, tasty and part of daily main course : these are the right advices you hear to channelize your mind. But with the world overwhelming with advices and philosophies around, it is important to choose the source you want to feed. Do you seek that friend who guides you towards bringing your best or do you seek the neighbour who makes you feel worse by highlighting how great his life is. With carbs, either is quite possible and it is the way you choose your meal, else beware of the belly you would develop in mind which creates discomfort.
- Proteins : Love ! Yes, our soul survives with love, it finds purpose and belongingness with love. Spending time with your family, your tribe, exchanging love with social services, practicing art of gratitude adoring love for nature all of these are essential for soul to exist meaningfully. Talking to your mom is the best form of feeding love to the soul. List down who are those proteins in your life and how much you connect with them daily. We live in a digital media filled society, political networking around, transactional conversations day to day – so it is extremely important to increase the little moments of kindness, love and feel good factor and people around you for a better mental health.
- Water : we all know water is elixir of life. So is the self talk. What do you tell yourself most of the times ? “You have a new pimple again, oh, the weight gain? Uff, not a great presentation, I don’t think I can do it right” or “you can do it, it is possible, don’t give and push hard to reach perfection”, or “you are beautiful, you are talented, this is amazing what you did today”. What you tell yourself makes you life travel towards the route. So be conscious and kind to yourself. I had once allowed myself to be vulnerable into self-doubts and it was hard to get back to track. Later I realised it was not about others, self doubt happens when you feed negative self talk in your mind. I had to take careful steps to make myself believe that I am worth it and feel good about being me. It is the best water quenching the thirst of our soul.
- Fruits & nuts : Fruits make our skin glow. Fruits provides all nutrients like vitamins minerals etc. Nuts provide energy and help us stay active. That’s why those set of friends who motivate you, who just know your wavelength, who recharge you are the fruits. Definitely they can bring the crazy and fun side of you recharging your energy like the nuts. I am blessed with a lots of fruit and nuts in my life and they have shaped who I am. They have given me daily energy to complete a blog or my book or a training or a trip : it’s not compilicated but motivational. Best quote is my friend Nithya, those were days when we would constantly bring best of each other. Each text or conversation we have will be so refreshing and when we sign off chatting we will go back to exploring new ideas or putting our ideas into action.
We can map each types of people and the energy they create with different nutrients. I loved this space of introspection to plan a balanced mental diet. Now I know how much to feed my mind to nourish it right. I have to admit, it’s not a too flowery sweet moment that led me to write this article. I was feeling low and negative for quite sometime in life and conscious efforts realising who and what I am surrounding myself with, I am now able to see things better. Hope, purpose, progress are things that makes life interesting. Every quality introspection leaves you with these elements. Hope this article helps you to have an interesting introspection too !
