Last year I ran a successful year-long program called Powered by Hope. The intent of the program is to help you follow your creative dreams by powering your spirit with hope! I am glad the program was so well received. This year, in addition to new posts, I will also be sharing a few of the best posts from the program. From now until the end of 2015, you will receive a minimum of two posts a month focused on hope. I hope you will enjoy them and that they will inspire you to follow your dreams!

FILTER

When I was in engineering college, we studied the concept of GIGO: Garbage In/Garbage Out. Basically what it taught us was that the computer wasn’t capable of distinguishing bad input from good input; it would process it all and if the input was illogical/silly/useless, the output would be useless as well.

I find this concept works well with life as well. I used to work with the TV running in the background, mostly on the news channel. By the end of the day, I would find myself really cranky and, frankly, very depressed. I realized that while I was not consciously listening to the TV, some part of my brain was taking in all the bad news constantly. Same applied for what I read—I was reading gossip sections of magazines, newspapers filled with news of every disaster known to man. And watching the nightly news broadcasting all that was bad in the world. Now, I am not saying that we should not watch the news or consume information; all I am saying is that I had to be careful what I was consuming and how much. I was taking in all bad and nothing good. There was no balance.

Now I try to listen to classical music as I work. It makes the room and my brain feel more at peace. I watch the news but only once a day. I read the papers but try not to go into the details of gory murder stories. And each night, I end my day with reading something inspiring, something that fills my mind with possibilities, something that informs rather than scares. After all: garbage in, garbage out.

How do you handle all the information coming your way? How do you filter it?

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