How To Automate Success In Your Life
You might not have thought of it this way, but pretty much every advertisement you see or hear is trying to sell you some version of your best life. While Coke wants you to buy their soft drink and Ford wants you to buy their F150, they know that something deeper is going on inside the human mind. And it's this trigger mechanism they target to increase sales and improve mindshare about their products.
So what does this have to do with automating success in your life? Simple. In order to become who we were created to be, we need to understand the concept of feeding our minds and our spirits, and grasp the impact that it has.
Most Americans eat meals 2-3 times per day, and many snack in between meals as well. I personally LOVE Hostess and Little Debbie snack cakes and donuts, so I'm not throwing any shade here. Whatever you eat and how much you eat isn't really that vital in our discussion. It's actually the frequency of how consistently we eat that I want us to notice. Unless you're doing a religious or health-focused fast, you probable ate today and will eat again. That's great because your body needs a certain amount of calories per day to function well.
What if I told you that your spirit and mind need to be fed too? You see, we are 3-part beings: body, soul, and spirit. We feed the body multiple times per day and week, but most people feed their minds and spirits one day a week at Church, or worse, feed them good information for a few minutes each morning only. Remember those advertisements? They're not feeding your body, they are feeding your mind and your spirit. Our minds are the ways we bring information into our spirits. What we think about, listen to, read, and watch are all part of what our minds and spirits feed upon.
The dilemma in life is that our thoughts also feed our spirits. With information constantly bombarding our minds, it's like our spirits are eating junk food all day long. Yes, we're feeding our minds, but the information coming in is not helpful, and in many ways may be incredibly detrimental. Let me illustrate.
Imagine you're watching TV and a commercial for a prescription drug comes on. You watch the ad, even though you don't have the symptoms of the condition the drug is designed to treat. Harmless right? Not really. What we focus on, what we take in through our eyes, our ears, and our experiences, goes into our brains, and therefore into our thoughts and our minds. From there, it's a short trip into our spirits. By watching the ad, you may never develop the condition mentioned, but you are focusing your mind during that time on disease, sickness, and infirmity. So what's wrong with this? I mean, we're surrounded by this messaging everywhere, so is it really all that bad?
Here is the principle we all need to understand. What you focus on expands. Did you get that? Read it again. What you focus on expands. So if we focus our minds on lack, negativity, sickness, and disease, those things will expand in our spirits and in our lives.
Did you ever buy something and then begin to see that thing everywhere you go? I recently bought an older boat to restore, and the funny thing is I now see others just like it everywhere! So what's happening? Did everyone else suddenly get the same type of boat as mine? Nope. It's just a simple byproduct of me focusing on my boat so much that I now see how many are actually out there.
In the same way, what we focus on expands in our reality, and what we focus on regularly and consistently will expand all the more. The advertisements, what we watch, what we listen to, what we read, and what we think about all feed our mind and our spirit. So the question is in this world where we are surrounded by negative messaging, how do we counteract that and feed on good things?
Shut off the junk. Become aware of what you watch, listen to, read, or think about. Turn off the negative news. Avoid political, crime-related, and other negative conduits.
Input good messages. There will always be evil things in this world. They don't change because we focus on them. So focus on inspiring stories, listen to music and podcasts that encourage you, and begin thinking about all the good things you already have in your life. Write out the top 10 things you are thankful for every morning.
Pray. Talking to God is an activity done with the mind, but the actual connection is from the spirit. When we pray, we connect with God in our spirits, and the very act of praying has purifying and positively influencing effect. We begin to forget the evil, self-focused messaging and thoughts and move our minds to a place of faith and victory in Him.
Feed your mind good things. Begin studying your Bible. Consume content about good things rather than evil things. Create playlists of music and listen to be encouraged. Hang out with people who encourage and enlighten you and avoid those who bring you down.
You are what you eat, so if you want to change the trajectory of your life, commit today to turn off the negative thoughts and messages and begin replacing them with positive, faith-filled thoughts and information. In 30 days you will see your life going in a direction you never imagined.