Garbage In, Garbage Out! (Expanding on PPP #8)

Foreign. Hi, everybody, it's Sandy Boucher here once again. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Seine river first nation in Northern Ontario Treaty 3 territory. And I'm here once again to explore, expand on principle number eight. Just to bring you up to speed and remind you of what we're discussing. Here it is, one more time. Learn from mistakes. Practice praxis. Constantly and continuously. Reflection. And action. Now, last week I shared a flashback video with you and we talked about being. Being master detectives. Well, this time I'm going to introduce you to another trick or game you can use. This time we're talking about garbage in, garbage out. I was originally introduced to this idea in accounting terms, as you can well imagine. If you handed your bookkeeper a whole bunch of fake entries and a bunch of garbage, basically the financial statements they would be able to produce would be equally as useless. Now, we're going to take that principle and apply it to our existence. Basically, what you take in is what you give out. And once again, I have a flashback video to share with you. Here it is.

So this exercise is fairly easy. Fairly easy to understand. What I want you to do is consider how it would affect you if this scenario happened. So to explain the first one, we might as well jump right into this. And once again, I have my handy dandy index cards. How would it affect you if you watch the news all day, every day for a straight month? So again, how would it affect you if you watch the news all day, every day for a straight month? Now, I'd be willing to bet some things have come to mind, especially if you're watching this in the time period of COVID 19 pandemic and self isolation. Because I think a lot of us have learned this lesson firsthand. Now, most of the time when I did this at live events, the first thing that people would say is, oh, my God, you would be so depressed. You would feel so negative. And I agree. Keep in mind that the news isn't sharing everything that happens, it's sharing the negative, the challenges that have happened. So you don't hear a lot about the happy stories and the neighborhood watch and all of that stuff. And on top of that, you're hearing news from around the world, not just your neighborhood. So, yeah, in the course of 24 hours, a lot of things negative happen in the world. A lot of good things happen, too. So I think it really skews your interpretation and your view of the world. It changes the lens that you look through to a very negative light. You would also be very informed and we have to acknowledge that. I mean, you would be up to date on whatever's going on. You'd be able to speak to that. You'd have a very educated voice. You might be able to develop an opinion on different things, especially if the news story has been ongoing. But I would be seriously concerned about what it does to your mental health. I just can't see how you could stay in a positive frame of mind, constantly hearing that on a regular basis. You might end up. Another thing that has come up very often is, is scared that you'd be afraid to leave your house. You'd be afraid to send your kids to school, you'd be afraid to go to the store because, I mean, you'd be afraid someone's going to grab your kids or you're going to be in the middle of a bank robbery or, you know, you're going to be involved in a fatal car accident. If you drive out of the driveway, it very much skews your view.

I hope you enjoyed that flashback video as much as I did. It is really freaky seeing yourself a year later. For those of you on my email list, there's a workbook to help you really internalize this teaching. It's an important one. It really keeps you aware of what you're taking in. Until next week. I love you. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.