Mental Nutrition – How To Feed Your Brain for Success – Episode 137

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

[00:01] Welcome to the prosperity podcast fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street Here’s your host best-selling author Kim DH Butler and no BS money guy Todd Strobel Hey everybody. Welcome to another edition of the prosperity podcast. This is an OBS money guy Todd Strobel. Once again We have best-selling financial author Kim Butler and today we’re going to be talking about your news Diet certainly we’ve worry a lot about the quality of the air that we breathe and using a good purification system and Having smoke detectors and ozone detectors and whatever else in our house to make sure that the air we breathe is quality And we’ve also come to realize that our diet is very important and we watch what we feed our bodies

[00:55] well today we’re going to be focusing on what we feed our minds and Some sources that we’re going to recommend nothing that we’re compensated for but some Ideas on how you can find the best mental nutrition areas to feed your mind if you will. Welcome Kim Mental nutrition that is a to die for a line. Where’d you come up with that? It just came Love it. Yes mental nutrition, you know, we were gonna call this nude news diet But I think we should actually call it mental nutrition. That’s fabulous So where do we get this? Nutrition for our brains such a perfect way to say it and you know, the new thing with diets these days is Especially food diets people talk about them. Oh, you know, this isn’t a diet. It’s a lifestyle

[01:46] Well, we believe very very strongly that your approach to what you feed your mind Should just be as lifestyle oriented as what you feed your body because we all know that going on binge diets from a food standpoint is not as effective and My typical recommendation which is to go on a news diet i.e. Stop listening watching and reading the typical news that comes out of the main news sources is now going to be converted to Watch what you’re doing for mental nutrition. That is just a great way to look at it Awesome. So what are some of the some of your Top things you would suggest Well, the first part that I want to talk about is what I don’t do and I indicated it already But it’s truly just to stay away from

[02:41] watching listening or reading News from things like CNN, which I think stands for constant negative news and other types of broad media sources and Instead to make sure that I’m watching listening and reading Things that support my knowledge about what’s going on because we can’t be ostriches and bury our heads in the sand But at the same time really presents the good that is going on in our human world on a daily basis So there’s a very small number of sources that I look at and I’ll share those here as we progress But the thing that I want to say is that I’ve been focusing on this news diet idea literally for over 20 years Meaning I rarely look at any of the typical news and it’s never affected me

[03:40] it’s never been a situation where I was harmed or missed out or Lost in some area because I wasn’t reading or listening or watching the typical news and I just think about most people’s habits and what they do is either first thing in the morning the TV goes on or Last thing at night the TV goes on and of course every time they’re in their car the radio is on and the bulk of that information is negative news and That is not good nutrition. It’s bad for your brain And so I really am going to encourage people to seek other sources for inspiration Now, of course that means that it’s not always news and somebody might say oh well You know, I listen to Fox News and that’s more positive than CNN. Okay. Yes, you can argue that

[04:31] But there’s still a lot of information coming out of those major media sources That is negative and impacts our minds negatively And so my suggestion is shut the radio off My additional suggestion is don’t turn the TV on in the morning. My additional suggestion is Absolutely. Do not watch TV before you go to bed I can’t imagine going to bed with the negative information that comes across either the major media’s news sources or worse the typical TV ads And I realize people have their shows and all that so fine. I personally choose not to watch any TV But you don’t have to go that far. You just have to be really careful of what you’re feeding your brains So I want to suggest one source and then Todd I know you’ve got some I want you to suggest and

[05:29] Then I’ve got another one and I need to look one up because I know we shared it in our blog but I don’t want to misquote it so my first source is the Christian Science Monitor and This is a daily news website CS monitor dot com and it has nothing to do with the religion Christian science. It’s just a very unbiased website source of news and they also have a weekly magazine that I like a lot and Then they also have some daily sources that I don’t turn to as much But that’s my first one. What’s one for you? And I’m sure you’ve got some thoughts on the subject as well I would say the first one for me and since we are on a podcast, I’m an extremely audible person I mean, I would rather even if I’m watching TV most the time

[06:17] I’ll close my eyes listen to the TV and paint my own pictures in my head so audible calm has been a Fantastic source for me that instead of watching TV or you know What I’m washing dishes or whatever else the things that you have to do I’m constantly able to listen to some of the best books I mean I get to choose the books and I believe if you go to audible calm your first book is free and I Would encourage you to try that and most of our cars these days come equipped where our phone or our iPod They don’t know if they even make an iPod anymore. I think it’s just building your phone will play right through your car speakers, too Well, you’re so wise to bring up the fact that you’ve figured out about how you learn and

[07:05] engage with material the best Because I am very very much of a reader as opposed to a listener and I would Read as opposed to listen and then I guess I would have to say I would listen as opposed to watch You know with the videos that are out these days people always want to turn to video turn to video I will not play a video people can email me video all day long and I just resist going to it I will read almost anything anybody sends me and how interesting that you choose to listen So yeah, that’s a great one to bring up And then speaking of podcasts, like you said since we’re on podcasts right now I have a podcast that I want to share with everybody that I just became aware of And I have not listened to it myself, but I was very intrigued at the introduction and it’s called the kind world

[07:59] Podcast and I think it’s so important that no matter what you’re choosing to do And you said it well about your books you’re choosing the books Choose your news sources and one of the things that I think we should do is Choose some kind of positive input and so the kind world podcast from WB you are So the source is W B as in boy you are dot org slash kind world And it’s gonna make your day a little brighter It says tells stories about people who have been affected in a positive way by others And it has specific real recent and short Stories of people that were affected in a positive way Everybody can use a little bit of this in their life. Even if you choose to stay with your other sources Again back to that mental nutrition idea

[08:56] Look at the quality of content that your brain is consuming and pay attention to it I would also challenge you that it doesn’t all have to be Nonfiction either Sometimes letting your brain relax by going into something Nonfiction can spur ideas that wouldn’t come from living in the real world Going into a fantasy world for a little while does not hurt Absolutely. Yep, and you can really get some good ideas from that world The other one that I had to look up quickly is called the good news Network and it’s something that we wrote about in our email to our clients that if you are on our website you get an email from us once a week with some additional material that’s not public on the blog and

[09:45] that was the good news network and of course we want to include all of our podcast listeners in that because it is a printed source that has information and stories and examples of sharing good news and something that I also am very very conscious and is just pulling the good out of things pulling the Silver lining in the cloud pulling, you know, the the flowers out of the poop pile, which was a picture that Circulated a little bit on our Facebook page recently because it just amazes me where flowers grow sometimes But you can always always find the good and this is what we’re trying to help you So you got another one? Yes Not everybody can participate in this for I think they start this at age 49

[10:31] aarp.org I just before we went on this podcast read the histories of five people who started an entrepreneurial career after the age of 50 and are now multimillionaires I love it. That’s fabulous well and I think we’ve shared before my love of the book that came out from the head of aarp and How amazing that was and I was not interested in reading it and then kind of Just fell into it and ended up hating it the first sentence loving it the second sentence and from every sentence They’re on it was a fabulous book Joanne Jenkins is the author of the aarp book and I’ll dig out the title here in a minute Another one popped into my head Oh Growing bolder growing bolder calm is a Fabulous list of stories of people that are doing things in their 70s 80s 90s even over age 100

[11:36] And I think we’ve talked about it in the podcast as well There’s a like a hundred and nine year old financial advisor that’s still going to work every day. I just think that’s fabulous Awesome. Well, what about I know we’ve talked about websites and things like that I think maybe one of the other things that would count in there would be also staying active in your community as well I think you have to be engaged to really kind of get stimulation from other people not just Resources Absolutely. And again, it depends on yourself and this is an area of self-knowledge that people need to seek out Because I think more introvert quiet oriented people another great book by the way called quiet That are very content and really get a lot of energy of being in nature or being on their own

[12:27] Don’t necessarily need the high social interaction that others do And so again some self-knowledge will help you in this area. If you are a very socially oriented outgoing Extrovert person then yes you need to be engaged in your community if you’re not you you really get your energy from being by yourself and Being in nature and being quiet then maybe you don’t I think the jury might still be out on that I just want to circle back to the Joanne Jenkins book it’s disrupt aging a bold new path to living your best life at every age by Joanne Jenkins and then Back to you Todd on on the community. Do you have any specific ideas and I’ll look up the author of quiet No, I wouldn’t say it has to be anybody specific

[13:15] but I would say that you know you have to guard yourself from the people that you interact with was more as what I Was saying is that you know, there are a lot of people who like to bring up You know to see who can come up with the most depressing news and it’s almost a contest when a group of people get Together that maybe those might be a group’s worth avoiding Got it, right, right. I totally agree I think I may have shared this recently But I’m a friend of mine kind of a friend of friend quit smoking and The they were talking about well, how’d you do it in the and this friend of a friend said I had to quit hanging Out with my friends because they all were smoking and that led me back to that habit

[13:55] Which is all that conversations are all that our mental nutrition is all that our physical nutrition is just habits And so you really are always going to be wanting to ask yourself are your current set of habits? Serving you well and if they are great keep at them And if they aren’t then that’s time to take a look at those set of habits The quiet book that I loved is the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking And it’s by Susan Cain ca in so a great suggestion on being conscious of who you’re hanging out with and Are they having the kinds of conversations that you want to feed your brain? Super well, I think we have done a great job of opening the door to this conversation of mental nutrition

[14:47] And I have a feeling that there’s probably somebody listening to this right now that has some ideas to contribute to this So I would encourage you to send those to hello at partners the number for Com and we will get your ideas your resources the things that have worked with you to create a Positive outlook and to keep positive in your life. We’ll be glad to share them with the rest of our listeners right Kim Absolutely thrilled to do that. There’s one additional source as we wrap up here I want to share and it’s a book called the gap or sometimes it’s called staying out of the gap and It is by Dan Sullivan and he talks about Measuring your progress Backwards, so you always want to be looking at your progress from history rather than constantly measuring

[15:40] yourself By the progress that you want to make and when you measure your progress backwards It enables you to stay in a more positive mind frame and when you’re in a more positive mind frame You can get more done. You’re more confident. You’re more helpful to others, etc So agreed I really really want people’s ideas on how to do this It’s super important in this era when there is so much negative news That we help each other that we watch our thinking that we look at our habits And if anybody’s got some great suggestions on things to look at watch read listen to do Take advantage of etc. We would love to hear it again. That’s hello at partners number for prosperity comm super Well, thanks so much to Kim Butler. Thank you so much to our listeners

[16:26] This is no BS money guy for part for the prosperity podcast. Take care everybody Thank you for listening to the prosperity podcast to take control of your money and have it work for you Visit us at partners for prosperity comm if you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review