It is no secret the misery that was brought along with the Coronavirus, AKA COVID-19. Thousands upon thousands of innocent people dying every day, along with ridiculous news stories and a shift in societal differences. With all of this negative influence surrounding us every second of every day, it is no wonder why people are starting to “not feel like themselves.” It makes sense, though, because how COULD you be yourself with all this negative energy surrounding you. How COULD you be yourself when the environment that you were so used to…is gone?
COVID-19 has been called many names: Coronavirus, The Virus, COVID, ‘Rona, etc., but a name that was never stressed was “negative” This was surprising to me because COVID-19 was not just flashy names, uncertainty, and heartache. Yes, COVID-19 brought about a positive societal shift (social equality), exposure of political parties (terrible leadership), and a discovery about the treatment of employees (unacceptable working conditions). Moreso, however, COVID-19 brought about a constant bombardment of negativity to our environment, life, and mind.
A constant flow of sad, depressing, upsetting, and just flat out tiring negative influences. Day in…and day out… So if you feel like you have not been yourself lately, there is no need to worry (too much).
It is important to remember that as humans, we are greatly influenced by everything around us. The smell of coffee, advertisements on social media, others’ choice of words, and even our own thoughts. There are internal influences (i.e. thoughts and judgments) and external influences (i.e. the world around us), and it is the external influences that deserve our special attention. The reason we want to focus on external influences is because they compose a good majority of how we feel throughout the day. We are very impressionable by external influences—this simply means that we have a brain that takes in a lot of information.
Information is soaked-in while we live our life, so much so that we can dream about subconscious disturbances that are not apparent to us. (Fun fact, we can only dream about people that we have actually seen in our lifetime). When we are presented with an advertisement, for example, we are not JUST looking at the advertisement. Our conscious mind is gathering the basic information about the ad—the colors, the verbiage, the pictures, the overall appeal, etc. Our conscious mind does that, but our subconscious mind gathers a more impressive amount of “data.” (Fun fact #2, our brain produces electricity).
When we see anything in our lifetime, our subconscious mind acts like a toxic personality trait and “runs with it.” Meaning, our subconscious mind is using and elevating all the information that the conscious mind understands. Our subconscious mind takes us to the “next level.” Subconsciously, we are receiving how the ad makes us feel, what it reminds us of, any triggers we may have, and so, so, SO much more. Why? Because our brains are the most incredible piece of “machinery” on the planet.
Our brains are the fastest living computer on Earth. It is not the smartest (per se) but it definitely is the fastest, which means that our brains are computing information that we do and do not think about. Our subconscious mind analyzes everything imaginable, then tries to relay any discovered messages to our conscious mind. This helps us mature, gain wisdom and knowledge, and helps us gain enlightenment/peace in our life.
“Why do we care about how our brain works?” Well, if you think about ALL of the influences around you and the process of our brain, then we can defend our mind when it comes to negativity. We can say, “the news is not really helping out my mental health today, let me turn it off,” or “wow, all of these Instagram models look so perfect, but I should not let them affect my self-esteem.” By acknowledging the influences around us, and actively staying conscious to our own life, we can take care of our mind much better than we did yesterday.
Think about it, how do you feel when you watch Trump speak? (I am not taking a side, just using it as an example). How do you feel when you eat one thing as opposed to another? How do you feel when you see constant advertisements for “Sarah’s Discovery” (weight loss program) and how does it effect your self-image? “How?” and “Why?” have always been great questions to ask yourself when something might not be feeling “normal.” That feeling of “not normal” is our subconscious (and maybe even our conscious) mind trying to tell us something. It is that “gut feeling” you get when something is not quite right.
Internal and external influences will never change, but what can change is the way we perceive them. What can change is our ability to acknowledge, recognize, and analyze our feelings towards an external influence. What can change is our own strength to reject those influences so that we can have a healthier and happier mind. What can change is us, because even though we may not be the smartest “thing” on the planet, we are the fastest, which tells me that we can learn pretty quickly.
Actively Aware,
E.
#coronavirus #covid-19 #rona #influences #negativity #consciousness #acknowledgement #conscious #subconscious #psychology #philosophy #Trump
thEEsmilE 