Do you nourish your brain with a good environment?

Napoleon Hill wrote, “We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted."

When I first read that quote, a couple of weeks ago, I immediately knew I wanted to use it in a blog about self motivation. In the self motivation model, environment is the third factor, along with vision and successability. One of the ways we increase our motivation is by working on our environment. We can mold our environment to enhance our motivation. So I copied the quote into a Word document along with other quotes that I have saved. As I sat down at my computer to write this posting, a couple of weeks later, I copied the quote into a clean document, reread the quote and couldn’t figure it out. I wrote right below it, “What the heck is a mental feeding ground?"

But as I reflected on the quote, it slowly started to make sense, and I could see why I had saved it. As I read it, Napoleon Hill is telling us that your environment is where you get your knowledge, your wisdom, your attitudes …… all the things that nourish your brain. So you better choose it carefully. If, for example, you surround yourself with people who are nay sayers, people who see nothing but the bad things, people who tell you your dreams are impossible, you will be nourishing your brain with these negative messages.

At first I wanted to write malnourish, but I think Napoleon Hill is right. Even though the results of this nourishment are bad, it will nourish your brain. Your brain will grow, just not in a very good way.

We always want to be aware of our social environment. We want to surround ourselves with smart people, with people who think we are special, with people who think they are special. We want to seek out people who will help us grow, people from whom we can learn the skills we need to manifest our vision.

What are some of the things that you need to manifest your vision? Are there skills you need? Do you need to find a person or group of people with whom you can safely share your dreams, and know they will not make fun of you? Do you need to find somewhere to learn those needed skills?

I’d like to share with you a strategy to help you make sure your environment is nourishing your brain in a positive, life affirming way. Take out a piece of paper and draw two lines, from the top to the bottom, dividing the paper into three equal columns. In the left most column, make a list of the things you need, emotional support, skill improvement, whatever you need to assure that you will be successful in manifesting your vision. In the middle column, next to each need, write down something already in your personal environment, or something that you can add to your personal environment, that will serve as a source for that need. In the right most column write down the steps you need to take to utilize that which is already in your environment, or that which you need to add to your environment.

And then go do it.

Your environment is going to nourish your brain, whether the food is healthy or not. Be intentional man or woman and make sure it is healthy.