What are you feeding your mind?

It doesn’t take long after meeting me to discover my love for James Allen and his writings on thought and mindset.

Whether you’ve known me for a month or for 10 years, you’ll know that I quote James Allen and his book As A Man Thinketh quite frequently. This book, after all, has been such a huge component of my growth.

And today, I want to share a short excerpt from As A Man Thinketh that I was reading over the weekend.

“A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”

I encourage you to read this a couple of times to clearly process what it’s saying…

Here’s my summarized version: we have the ability to 1) let our minds run wild with whatever thoughts pop into our heads, (which, by default, are weeds). Or 2) we can take the helm of thought and fill our minds with the right type of thoughts and plant seeds that blossom and allow us to move forward and get us to where we want to be.

Think about that. You, as a human being, have the power to control your thoughts.

If you’re focusing on the negative; if you’re focusing on everything that’s going wrong; if you’re focusing on the feelings you’re experiencing as a result, you’re in an endless cycle of planting weed seeds, like James Allen talks about.

But when you cultivate your mind with the right thoughts; when you plant that beautiful garden and cut out the weeds before they infest your garden, you can live in harmony.

But here’s the thing… if we don’t choose to purposefully feed our mind with the right things; if we don’t plant those seeds and cultivate the garden that is our mind, weeds will grow. They won’t just grow if we focus on the negative. They’ll grow if we decide to do nothing.

“An abundance of weeds will take over and continue to produce.”

Isn’t that a powerful concept to grasp?

So either we take the helm of thought and produce a garden, or we focus on the wrong things and the weeds grow. Or we do nothing and the weeds grow.

Our best option is to take the helm of thought and to cultivate the garden that is our mind.

Here’s what I took away from it. What am I feeding my mind? Because ultimately, whatever I’m feeding my mind will influence and create my thoughts. Seeds will be planted.

And my thoughts, in turn, will influence my mindset, my perspective, my attitude, and my actions.

Where do you want to be? Are you feeding your mind with the right things and tending to the garden that is your mind?

Just some food for thought.