Garbage In - Garbage Out

I find most demotivational posters funny.  They keep the humor simple, accessible, and pertinent to current trends.  Barney from How I Met Your Mother decorates his office with demotivational posters (what does he do for a living anyway?), keeping anyone who enters his office grounded.  Recently, I found one on Facebook I thought particularly funny.  Under a picture of a hoverboard from Back to the Future II the caption declares “Scientists: You have 3 years.”

I always appreciated the power source for the futurized Delorean - trash.  2015 technology takes garbage and turns it into fuel for flying cars.  Wow!  Somehow, in the next two years, we are going to be surprised with rapid development in antigravity technology and a reimagination of our roadways.

I think many of us believe our bodies work the same way as the Delorean.  We fill our bellies with heavy, unhealthy food, yet we expect to be fit and trim, full of energy.  Somehow, our bodies are supposed to take garbage and turn it into fuel to fly.  I am not sure biology works that way.  Most of us know this, yet we do it anyway.

We treat our mental health the same way.  When we input rubbish, we output rubbish.  Garbage In - Garbage Out.  We are not futuristic Deloreans.  Dr. Brown has not been tinkering under our hood.  We should not expect miracle results after filling our minds with trash.

Please allow me to clarify exactly what I mean by trash.  I am talking about people and situations that pull us down.  How many of us have a friend who chooses to dump on us every time we see them?  That person fills our minds with trash, weighing us down, and eventually bringing us to a place where we are even with them.  Ever heard the phrase “misery loves company?”  Well, it does.  When misery goes in, misery comes out.

The same goes for what you read, listen to, watch on television and in movies.  All the stimulus found in our environments does one of two things - it lifts us up or it brings us down.  Think about your experience.  Do you fill your universe with garbage elements or with uplifting elements?  Do you wake up to a series of demotivational posters, constantly describing how much you suck?  Or is your life filled with the opposite - positive messages, stocking your soul with energy and life?

Garbage In - Garbage Out is true, but so is the opposite.  Surround yourself with people who beam with positivity.  Find friends who always build you up.  Fill yourself with abundance instead of emptiness.  Demotivational posters are fun, but your life should not read like one.

While a Delorean that flies using only garbage is fun to think about, our spirit does not work that way.  The only way we are able to fly is to fill it full of positive energy, freeing us to float high above negative influences.

Frank Chambers

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