Fill your mind with good things

As the father of a 18 month old, it’s been fascinating to try and understand how her little mind works.  Currently she is getting quite good at classification: car, cheese, door, dog. Everything she sees is echoed back.

At this early stage in development it’s easy to see that what you say and do have immediate impacts with what she learns and how she behaves.

This doesn’t stop just because we get older and become adults.  Our minds are flexible and always changing – forming new memories, changing opinions, learning new things.  All these new growths in the mind are a result of the external and internal stimulus we give it.

It has been said that reading is the most effective form of mind control.  When you read, the words on the pages leave an impression. The concepts give your mind something to spin on until the books ideas merge with your own.

On the other hand. Feeding your mind with the wrong stuff can have unfortunate consequences. In an effort to teach Watson (IBMs Jeopardy winning AI) pop culture and slang, they fed it with the content from urbandictionary.com.  Unfortunately it had the effect of turning Watson into a potty mouth.  With an AI they were able to simply undo that.  Human minds don’t have an undo function.

Do yourself a favour and be picky about the information and ideas that you feed your mind. Be mindful of the internal thought processes that develop your opinions. It will dramatically impact your future.