HOW TO GET THE RIGHT "FIBER" IN YOUR DIET
(not what you think!)
Article by Cinthia Singleton
How to Get the Right "Fiber" in Your Diet
Everyone needs a little fiber in their diet. It’s normal but now it’s becoming more vital. Think about it. We look to Facebook and Twitter for our news now. It comes at us at rapid fire and we know it’s coming at us fast. Oh, by diet we don’t mean meals and by fiber we don’t mean a bran muffin; we’re talking about how we consume and seek out news, information, data, opinion and inspiration, and process it.
Time to get more fiber in your life… newspapers, magazines, books. Fiber, as old-fashioned and slow a medium as it now seems, is just what we need to SLOW down. You and Twitter can keep being Baes but once in a while lift the screen from between you and technological data.
Enjoy the ‘drip feed’ of taking in those words and ideas slowly, letting them, in their own unique way, speak to you.
Reading from a page, rather than screen skimming is a process that allows one to feel through the information. No comments section to distract. Just you and the page, face to face, up close and personal.
With it, you hold concepts closer and think more creatively. Screens have re-wired all our brains to try and keep up, take it all in.
Granted, today’s events ARE coming at as harder and faster than ever before. Why, just a hundred years ago we learned of them by way of a telegraph and then the morning newspaper. Now? The feeds are coming at our brains at an assaultive pace really.
Time to consciously take a moment to re-wire back to a more thoughtful, deliberate way of taking in information. Consider it a type of ‘information meditation.’ Or a simple reboot, similar to when the computer or phone is shut down for the night or flight.
Without balance, we lose the facility to analyze what we take in and develop our own opinions. Or…
Pause
Ponder
Question
Get perspective
React
Create
And get out of your head and into another’s
That’s empathy. From an empathetic place, not the feedback section on, say, Daily Kos, we tap into Humanity.
So consider this: for a few minutes every day, pick up a [newspaper, magazine, book]. If you don’t have one, and many don’t now thanks to Chrome or Kindle, get one. Surely, you have a favorite topic about which you want to know more.
Gardening. Cooking. A certain political or historical event. A place that, for some reason, resonates with you. Find PHYSICAL materials about said topic at the library or bookstore.
‘Fiber’ in hand, READ, and as you do:
Imagine yourself in that situation
Ask questions to yourself
Jot down the questions so you can research later
Draw up a plan
Make notes
THEN go back to the surfing. Plenty out there in the Inter-webs but as we become so device heavy, we risk being consumed by the same tools we enlist to assist, and it becomes increasingly more difficult to keep out heads from ringing with all the media.
Get a little fiber in your diet, each and every day. Newspapers, magazines, books. Physical materials. Let’s get physical. lol It will keep your mind fresh, balanced (regular, if you will… lol) in a world full of TECHNOLOGY.
