You are building an anxious beast. It’s up to you. Learn to sing more. Learn to play more.

Let’s face it, we’re all too busy, to distracted, and too self-focused to pay much attention to our consumption of media and social scrolling. BUT, those data sources are feeding bullshit into your L3M (large living language model).

>> Listen to the AI Deep Dive Podcast of this article.<<

Most Americans never pick up a single book after high school. (One political party thinks that’s great. They want to eliminate the Department of Education. Um, how would that help anything? Oh right, they don’t want smart citizens, they want sheep.)

Sorry for the digression. This is an amazing time.

Here’s a hack to getting better and richer results from your L3M.

1. Turn off your television set (news, shows, reality bs, sports)
2. Turn off your phone for hours at a time (no games, no texts)
3. Listen to the ideas still bouncing around in your L3M. Pay attention to what your mind is trying to transform.
4. Spend time in silence and learn to meditate. (1 minute a day is 100% better than zero minutes)
5. Cultivate better feeds for your mind.
   1. Better entertainment
   2. Better self-directed education and training
   3. Evolve your own transformers to seek and find things that make you smile, cry, hope, feel for others.
6. Load new data libraries as often as possible.
   1. Read a great book.
   2. Immerse yourself in a great movie
   3. See live music (under the stars)
   4. Learn birdcalls of birds surrounding you
   5. Nurture a garden (trees, plans, lawn, flowers, butterflies)
   6. Write down the streams of consciousness each day
   7. Communicate love to your friends on the path
   8. Continuously seek a deeper understanding of yourself and your spiritual tethers
7. The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness
   1. Protect your sleep.
   2. Eliminate distractions
   3. Identify your short and long-term goals
   4. Map and evolve your aspirational goal of life

The “Why Am I Here Question” stumps all humans. All of us. Even the ones not tuned into much beyond work and tv, are questioning their own existence. Perhaps fearing death or the death of their loved ones. Feel that. But don’t sink into the loss, use this empathy and emotional connection as a fuel for your continued exploration of YOUR INNER SPACE.

The L3M you live with is you. Your soul. The transformers you are training cannot make sense of TikToks or shopping carts. Those entertainments are energy vampires. Learn what gives you energy and hope: do more of that. Learn what robs you of joy: lessen the impact of those influences.

Only though an active cultivation of your mind do you have the potential to reach a state of joy that does not waiver. You may not be happy all the time, but you will know how much love you are feeling, giving, and sharing with the people around you. Love fully completely.

This is about your thoughts.

What you think is your reality. To lessen anxiety and fear, learn what activities, people, or inputs are causing you to freak out. For me, 9-11 taught me that visual images, tv news, was toxic for my mind. I will never get the moment out of my mind. I can reduce the drain on my creative energy when I limit exposure to the harsher realities of life around me.

I can pay most attention to those things I have some agency over. My vote. My health. My exercise, diet, and sleep habits. Then, I have to make choices of what I do with the precious hours of each day. As you begin a new conversation with yourself, ask things like, “Is this the best use of my time?” “How does this support my goal or my kid’s goal?”

Learn the harsh reality of how your mind makes mistakes, holds grudges, continues to dip into harmful behaviors. It’s your thinking. It’s the conversation or lack of conversation your’re having with your own thoughts. It’s the words running through you right now. If those words are silly dance videos, they may make you laugh, cry, feel. But those images and sounds are not yours, they are not calling you toward you own goals and plans.

Listen to the conversation you are having with yourself during the day. That’s your life. That’s your reality. Now, learn to give it some boundaries, some rules, some new tranformers, and most importantly, NEW PROMPTS.

We need to write better prompts for our own L3Ms. Many of us are asking our minds to seek and follow trivial and even toxic inputs. Let’s cut those off. Begin giving your mind some quiet cycles.

Here’s what happens: you begin to hear your inner voice. You can even start a conversation with your own consciousness.

Here’s an example from my early days working at an advertising agency with some major ethics issues. On my way to work, I’d begin catastrophising my workday. When I learned to say, “Wow, those are some really fucked up thoughts my mind is spinning on,” I could begin to disconnect from the disinformation of my own mind. I fed in the bullshit, my L3M is doing it’s best to transform the data into desirable outcomes,

but

if you are not

• giving your mind
• healthy data
• good goal-specific prompts
• down cycle for defragmentation

You are building an anxious beast. It’s up to you. If a person or activity produces more anxiety in you, begin to limit and move away from that source. When you find something that makes you want to sing, don’t wait, sing. Learn to sing more. Learn to play more.

John McElhenney — LinkedIn