Do you monitor your psychological diet?

Most of us are very conscious of the food we consume and try to monitor our diet based on our age, health goals, or doctor's recommendations. We know that the type of food we consume has a direct effect on our physical health. The origin of many serious diseases can be traced to our dietary habits, this forces us to be a responsible consumer of food. But how many of us pay equal attention to our psychological diet? How many of us are even conscious about the type of food we feed to our minds? It should not come as a shock to anyone that the type of content we feed to our brain directly affects our thinking and in turn affects our behavior. Our personal and social life is affected by what we think and hence our psychological diet matters a lot in determining our social health. So, why don't we pay attention to our psychological diet, and if we want how we can monitor our psychological diet?

The first problem is that we can't see or feel thoughts like we feel other tangible things like the food we consume or gadgets we buy. When we eat food we can smell it, feel it, taste it and these factors can dictate whether we like that food or not. It is true that information also comes in different flavors, we do reject or accept some information or thoughts just based on their source, but such behavior is normally associated with some strong religious or cultural emotions. But in today's era, we are bombarded with information, it is continuously fed to us through different outlets like social media, online news, and other traditional sources (like books and print media). We hardly get any time to scrutinize them before consuming them as we receive them on our newly "acquired organ" called a cellphone. This is where lies the rub. On one hand, it is great that if we want we can receive a lot of information from different sources, but at the same time, these platforms guess our habits, likes, and dislikes and can channel only particular types of information toward us (welcome to the world of Artificial Intelligence). Most of the information we receive, especially on social networks, we have no clue from where it is coming or how authentic it is.

When we know that the type of information we consume shapes our thinking shouldn't we be more careful to verify the content or check the reliability of the source of that information before allowing it to become part of our intellect and sharing it with others? Getting to know every side of any issue is necessary and getting information from different sources may help us to look at the same issue with many different angles. But unfortunately, this is not what people are doing. These social media networks and groups are designed in such a way that people receive the same type of information from many unverified and unreliable sources. When this information gets validated by their idols (politicians, celebrities) who also get that information from the same unverified sources, it becomes a fact for that group. So, the lies not only get perpetuated openly but also go unchecked and get consumed as facts. It seems every group, political leader, or political party has its own set of facts, the same way as every religion has their own set of facts about its own book or messiahs. This is not a very healthy situation for any society.

When people stop caring about the quality of their personal diet society suffers from a serious public health crisis. In the same way, when people are careless about their psychological diet society starts suffering from various social and intellectual issues like political and racial polarization. If you are interested in preserving the good psychological health of your community, monitor the quality of your psychological diet, verify the information before you consume it, and see the effect. Our mental health is as important as our physical health. Remember, responsibility always starts with us, be responsible and share the information responsibly.    

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Guilt is an effective weapon used against women for centuries

A feeling of guilt is not a good feeling. It makes us feel bad for whatever we did or failed to do in the past. It makes us feel responsible for whatever bad is happening around us. This feeling is necessary many times to make us realize our mistakes and take corrective actions, but this feeling can also hurt our progress if we feel guilty for no reason, or for doing things that we were supposed to do but which were against the established social norms of that time. The feeling of guilt has been used against women for centuries to make them fulfill stereotyped roles. Overcoming this imposed feeling of guilt is an integral part of every woman's struggle to break the shackles of unreasonable stereotyped restrictions. Women are successful to overcome this feeling and achieve substantial progress to prove that they are no less capable of achieving success in every field, but even after all these years, I read posts on social media where a woman feels guilty for not doing enough for their families by prioritizing their careers. They feel or are made feel guilty for not paying enough attention to their in-laws or kids at the cost of their flourishing careers. They are blamed more for neglecting their familial duties compared to their male counterparts. In contrast, I rarely see any such posts by men, where they regret focussing on their professional lives at the cost of not paying enough attention to their family members, especially young kids.

So, why career-oriented women are selectively targeted for not being involved enough with their families? Because many times this strategy works, many times society becomes successful in imposing that feeling of guilt in women's minds. This weapon of guilt has been used for centuries against women and it is still one of the most potent weapons used against them. Victim shaming also comes in the same category where the motive and behavior of the victim of sexual crime is criticized instead of a blatant act of harassment or assault by the perpetrator. It is not easy to deal with such attacks. As human beings, we are sensitive to our surroundings and have a tendency to fit in. Both women and men are targetted by outdated and rigid social norms to fill in certain types of roles and whenever they try to break those boundaries they are targetted for not being real men or women. We as a society need to fight this mentality if we want each and every member of the community to contribute to the welfare of our society to the best of their capabilities. In an era where a lot of professional help and care is available, it is unreasonable to expect only a particular gender to fulfill particular responsibilities. There is nothing wrong with being a career-oriented person for a man or a woman. Partners can help each other to fulfill their career aspirations and achieve professional as well as personal success. Without support from each other, men and women will fail to achieve their aims no matter what those aims are. 

Hilary Moore, a lawyer who decided to leave law to look after her family wrote in her article, "A real freedom is freedom from condemnation, no matter what choices we make. A woman's place is where she pleases. In a truly egalitarian society, a woman's value will not be measured by her ability to reach the traditional male definition of success." Make your own choices, go through the struggles and hardships that come with it, and reap the rewards. If the imposed feeling of guilt is only used to deter you from breaking stereotyped roles, just ignore it, we need to diffuse this weapon as it has been used for quite some time to frustrate the efforts of brave women. 

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.