Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt. — Francis Bacon
I know some people (guys) who spend quite a lot of time watching the talk and opinion shows on Fox. I am sure there are people who are the same watching MSNBC, I just don’t know any of them.
These shows are designed to get their audience all fired up so that they will keep watching. They fill minds with negativity, aggression, us vs. them divisions. The guys I know then spend the rest of the day grumpy and argumentative.
Francis Bacon wrote several hundred years ago. But he echoed wisdom from the Bible of a couple of thousand years before him. A couple of decades ago, Earl Nightengale wrote that he searched for years to find the secret of a successful life. He concluded, “You become what you think about.”
These are powerful thoughts. We have the power to choose how we become. We choose what to fill our minds with. In so doing, we choose what we become.
Do we become loving, considerate, strong and confident? Or do we become argumentative, self-absorbed, ungrateful? It’s the result of the choices we make when we fill our minds.
I guess the next time I choose whether to watch a mindless TV show or read a good book, I need to consider the outcomes. Oh, it’s OK to kick back and relax once in a while. But we need to watch what we do when we relax–and be careful that “relaxing” doesn’t become our normal lifestyle.
Tags: disciplines, lifestyle, maturity
Faith Venture 
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