The Importance of Good Inputs

The great Zig Ziglar was fond of saying that if you owned a valuable racehorse, you would only feed it the best food.  He would probably have said you would also make sure it had the best trainers and the best medical care as well. 

In other words, we would have good inputs so that the horse would create good “outputs.”

The question is, are you treating yourself in a similar fashion?

“You Can’t Outrun a Cheeseburger”

Personal trainers and phys. ed. teachers are fond of saying that you can’t out train a poor diet.  No matter now much you exercise, you can’t get into good shape if you eat poorly.  Yet many people eat foods that are not nutritious and may be harmful if they are high in fat, sodium and a host of other ingredients.

The same could be said for your mind.  You can’t out train a poor mental diet either.  You will find it much easier to function if you feed your mind mostly positive thoughts and constructive ideas.  Naturally, there are going to be times when that is not easy but doing your best to keep negative thoughts the minority is a good goal.

In the case of most athletes, the majority of their diet is probably nutritious foods but even they have “cheat meals” where they can eat foods that they like that may not necessarily be healthy.  This keeps them from bingeing on those foods by satisfying their cravings.

We can do the same, not only with food but with our minds.  The majority of our mental diet should be good thoughts and ideas, but it is fine to have some negative thoughts.  It is also fine to do things that we don’t have to think much about, whether that is surfing the internet, watching our favorites shows or looking at social media.  That way we satisfy our mental cravings as well.

We don’t need to be perfect all the time, just the majority of the time.

If we use good inputs into our bodies and our minds, our “outputs” will be of much higher quality.