The Power of the Mental Diet

Books Referenced

Range - David Epstein

The Anxious Generation - Jonathan Haidt

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What we read and watch has a massive impact on our thoughts, well-being, and performance.

We all have heard the saying, “you are what you eat.”

And this is literally true. Our bodies are built from the foods we consume.

Did you know our minds operate under a similar principle?

Our thoughts are produced from what we mentally consume.

Just as our nutritional diet impacts our physical health, our mental diet impacts our mental health.

Check this out: did you hear what the word of the year is?

Did you know that was even a thing?

Well, according to the Oxford Dictionary, 2024’s “Word of the Year” is:

“Brain Rot”

Brain rot is defined as the “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.”

Have you ever stopped a session of mindlessly scrolling only to think, “holy smokes, I will never get that 30 minutes of my life back.”

Just consider the impact of this over time (I shudder just thinking of my own scrolling habits).

Brain rot is what happens to your mind over time after scrolling through mindless content.

In this article, we are going to learn about content consumption and how your mental diet impacts performance.

If we want to level up our performance, we must create a mental diet the supports our energy, attention, and execution.

And not all mental content is created equal.

So, buckle up and let’s dig in.

What is a mental diet?

I am going to draw a lot of analogies between our mental and nutritional diets, so be prepared.

Our nutritional diet consists of everything that goes in our mouth.

Our mental diet consists of things we consume through our senses.

Our senses take in a lot of information, and our brain is responsible for processing it all.

Words. Images. Sounds. Sensations.

The mental diet includes the things we intentionally and unintentionally consume for brain processing.

Things like books, videos, pictures, songs, and experiences.

We take in the information from our sensory receptors and our brains process them to create meaning and therefore learning.

For example, let’s say you are in the kitchen as a kid and your mom turns on the gas stove. You reach out. You feel the heat of fire… you may even burn yourself. Ouch! Your brain processes that experience and labels it as “Painful. Avoid it.” And voila, learning has happened.

You hear a song that you like. You have a food that tastes good, or a food that tastes rotten. You see a beautiful person whom you are attracted to.

We are always taking in information, processing it, noticing, and learning.

The above examples are part of the mental diet which occurs during our daily actions, but there is more.

The books we read, videos we watch, pictures we scroll through… all of these are also part of our mental diet.

To summarize this, our mental diet is comprised of all the inputs from our outside world. NOT outputs of our mind.

Our thoughts are outputs and therefore are not part of our mental diet. At least, not until we start consuming our own thoughts. More on this later.

Now that we understand what a mental diet is, let’s talk about why it is important.

Why the diet matters

There is a saying: you can only cook with what’s in the kitchen.

If I asked you to go into the kitchen and fry me an egg, could you do it?

I bet you could so long as your kitchen was stocked and you have a pan, some oil, and an egg.

But what if I asked you to make me cordon bleu. Could you do that? Do you even know what that is?

To know how to make cordon bleu, you would first need to know what it is, then know how to make it, and then have all the tools and ingredients to complete it.

For a chef, the kitchen must have all the ingredients.

You are like a chef. But instead of cooking meals, you are a chef of performance.

• You achieve things
• You take action
• You make decisions
• You solve problems
• You speak words

Just like a chef can only cook with what’s in the kitchen, we can only use what is inside our minds.

Problems we solve, ideas we think, reactions we have… all are limited (or expanded) by what ingredients are in our mind.

We can highlight how this works with a simple example:

Think of a color of paint. More specifically, think of any color similar to yellow.

What did you think of?

If you were a painter, you may have thought of yellow ochre, sunrise yellow, or lemon.

But if you have never heard of these colors, then the information is not within your mind to access. They are not in your mental kitchen. So, there is no way to think of them when given the opportunity.

You can only cook with what is in the kitchen.

We could play this game forever.

Think of a city that begins with the letter C.

Of all the cities you can think of, did you consider Cappadocia?

Information that we consume and learn serve as ingredients to think with at a later time.

So why does this matter?

At the end of the day, the one thing that sets us apart from every other animal is our mind. It is the only thing we can use to solve problems, be creative, and make decisions.

If our minds dictate how we perform in the world, and the content within our minds serve as ingredients for decision making, then one would think that the better the ingredients, the better decisions we can make.

Let’s explore this a bit more by looking at specific ways we use our minds to take action in the world.

Let’s start with how we take existing information and create new ideas: creativity.

Creativity

Where do ideas come from?

We often think that they arise spontaneously out of nothing, but that is not true. At least, that is not what happens most of the time.

David Epstein wrote a book called Range, which describes how generalists can thrive in a world of specialists. He writes a lot about how generalization strengthens creativity, because creative ideas come from the intersection of diverse experiences, broad learning, and the ability to draw connections across seemingly unrelated fields.

For example, the fields of cycling and aeronautics are seemingly unrelated. But the Wright brothers leveraged their experience as bike mechanics to build stabilization systems into their plane at Kitty Hawk. While other engineers were striving to nail the propulsion challenges, the Wright brothers understood that balance and stabilization was also important. They learned this from cycling.

They did not just come up with an idea out of nothing. They took existing knowledge (within their mental kitchen) and found a new way to apply it.

By the way, this is what Epstein calls “Analogical Thinking,” where we consider solutions from one domain and work to apply them in another.

We cannot leverage analogical thinking unless we have other lived experiences to create analogies from… Unless we have a mind kitchen full of mental ingredients.

Epstein has other impactful principles in his book too:

• T-Shaped thinking
• Flexible thinking
• Importance of experimentation

Range is a good book and worth having on your shelf.

But just to reiterate, creativity comes from connecting, expanding, or reframing ideas and knowledge that already exists within our minds.

The better-quality ideas and knowledge we learn, the better ingredients our creative minds have to work with.

But our mental diet doesn’t only impact creativity. It impact’s our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. And these have a huge impact not only on our performance, but on how we see the world.

Our mental diet impacts out performance through two means: framing and priming.

Framing and Priming

All of the content and information we consume contribute to our beliefs and perceptions.

Let’s cover each in turn.

A frame refers to the context through which we interpret information. It is kind of like a picture frame. A portrait set in a gilded frame will look better than if in a lousy frame. Our mental frame is obviously not made of gilded wood, but of expectations and beliefs.

When we see something happen, we interpret its meaning through a set of past experiences, expectations, and learnings.

If you look up into the sky and see some interesting clouds, your past experience (or frame) will dictate your response.

If you grew up in the pacific northwest, you might think, “Oh look, clouds! It might rain. I better grab an umbrella.”

But if you grew up in Oklahoma, you might think, “Uh oh, a tornado is coming.”

The response you have is dependent upon your experiences and expectations.

The only way we can create expectations is through learning and experience. We see a cloud and then experience rain. We see a different type of cloud and don’t experience rain.

Priming is a little different. This is where we have an idea in our mind and it shapes our behavior and decisions.

As an example, there was a famous psychological study by John Bargh in 1996.

Participants were asked to unscramble sentences that contained either neutral words or words associated with old age (e.g., wrinkle, Florida, bingo, gray).

Guess what happened:

Those who were exposed to the "old age" words walked more slowly when leaving the experiment than those who weren’t.

This occurred even though they weren’t explicitly told to think about aging.

The study demonstrated the impact of implicit priming, where subtle exposure to certain words influences behavior unconsciously.

While Bargh’s experiment used implicit priming, we can use explicit priming to guide out behavior.

When you write down your goals or create a vision board, and you look at it every day, you prime your mind to think about your goals.

This mental diet (of your goals) gets your brain to notice opportunities an act in close alignment to your goals.

This is one reason why writing down your goals is such common advice in the self-help world.

This is not magic. There is science behind why this works. And its name is “Priming.”

Thoughts and Attention

Let’s look at one other way we use our minds to enhance our performance.

There are sayings you may have heard before:

“Where attention goes, energy flows.”

“You become what you think about.”

There are many versions of this statement shared by many wise people through history.

The fact is, our thoughts dictate our actions, and our thoughts are often a reflection of our beliefs.

While many of our beliefs are shaped by our experience, they can also be shaped by the content we consume… by out mental diet.

If you find yourself scrolling social media and you see a ton of news articles about how bad things are in the world, you may very well develop the belief that things are indeed bad in the world.

Even though this is statistically the best time to be living on this planet, a steady diet of doom-and-gloom news can shift your beliefs into thinking the entire world has gone to hell in a handbasket.

Given this belief, how might this effect your actions? Your attitude? Your outlook on certain events?

On the other hand, if you consume a regular mental diet of positive news, personal development information, and content that makes you feel good, then you are more likely to hold a positive outlook on current events.

And as positive psychology research shows us, a positive brain works better than a negative or neutral brain.

So where are we currently running into issues with our mental diet?

Here we have another similarity to nutrition.

In the world of nutrition, there are a number of “healthy” diets you can choose from. And all of them deviate from the standard diet that tends to get people sick.

This is called the SAD… the Standard American Diet.

And we have a SAD mental diet too.

Standard American Mental Diet

I jumped into Chat GPT and asked a few questions about American content consumption. In particular, I was curious to how much social media time we Americans spend on these sites each day.

Check out this response:

Average Daily Screen Time in the U.S.:

• Total Screen Time: Americans spend approximately 7 hours and 3 minutes per day on screens.
• Social Media Usage: Out of this, about 2 hours and 18 minutes are dedicated to social media platforms, accounting for roughly 32.6% of the total daily screen time.

Age-Specific Social Media Usage:

• Teens (Ages 12–17): On average, U.S. teenagers spend 4.8 hours daily on social media.
• Young Adults (Ages 18–24): This group engages with social media for approximately 3 hours and 6 minutes each day.
• Adults (Ages 25–34): Daily social media usage averages around 2 hours and 20 minutes.
• Older Adults (Ages 65+): Individuals in this bracket spend about 1 hour and 42 minutes per day on social media.

Wow. That is a LOT of time.

Now… I am no outlier, and I am embarrassed to admit I have been well within these numbers in the past.

If you look at any of your social feeds, how much would you say is positive, uplifting, or developmentally supportive?

If you are like most people, the content you scroll through is simply mind candy.

It is not good for anything except quick hits of entertainment.

While this might feel like a needed mental escape, there are repercussions from this kind of consumption.

Jonathan Haidt writes about the impact of social media on kids in his book The Anxious Generation.

He notes that the data show that kids who pick up social media during their pubescent and pre-pubescent years are at increased risk for depression, anxiety, and even suicide.

Holy sh*t.

For us adults, I know plenty of people who have been radicalized to either side of the political spectrum because of their content consumption on social media.

Let me ask you this:

Is this helping you get closer to your goals?

Is the content you consume helping prime your brain for performance?

Personally, I had a wake up call when I checked my screen time one day and saw that I had amassed 2.5 hours of scrolling on Instagram in a single day.

A SINGLE freaking day.

I will never get that time back.

I could have ran a half marathon.

I could have started a new book.

I could have made a video.

I could have written an article to help you get unstuck.

But no… I watched videos about gym routines, online skits, and other worthless things.

Now… I am not saying that social media is worthless.

On the other hand, I think it can actually be helpful, but only IF you know how to use it.

That is what we will talk about next.

How can we curate a mental diet that helps us achieve more?

Curating a Mental Diet

To build a physical nutrition plan we look at macronutrients:

• Carbohydrates
• Fats
• Proteins

We look at target numbers for each of these and build a meal plan to fit within your macros.

A mental diet is similar, but the macronutrients are different. The mental macros I like to use are:

• Education
• Inspiration
• Affirmation

While you can get some of these from social media, I do not recommend we start there. First, we start with education.

What do you want to learn? What do you need to learn?

Whatever the topic is, find at least 3 books to read on your topic and go get them… now.

If you set aside 15 minutes of reading per day, you should be able to finish these three books in about 6 weeks. That is reading 15 pages a day and your books are just shy of 250 pages.

Reading will keep a steady stream of new information flowing to your brain.

Leaders are readers.

Learners are earners.

You get the picture… so get some books.

Then we come to the mental macro of inspiration.

This is a place where you can leverage social media to get you pumped.

Here is what worked for me:

Look of 10 people who you admire because they are crushing it doing the things you want to do. Go follow them. And go “like” a bunch of their posts as you find them.

Whatever social media outlet you are on, this will prompt the algorithm to start showing you their posts.

Even better, skip the scrolling all together. Create a cheat sheet of links to their pages. Check their pages once every few days and engage with their content.

This will cut down on your social screen time AND will get you pumped about what is possible for your life.

This method alone has dropped my screen time by a lot. And I still feel connected to the people and topics I care about.

The third mental macro is affirmations.

This is not something you need social media for.

But you do need a pen and paper.

To build a list of affirmations, start by writing down your goals.

Then imagine you have already achieved those goals. What kind of person do you need to be to have achieved them? If you already achieved them, how would you be showing up today as a different person?

Write these down as a list of “I am” statements.

My list includes things like:

• I am thoughtful
• I am courageous
• I am helpful to others
• I inspire people

Once you have your list, keep it handy and read it often. At least once per day, preferably more.

As you read your list of affirmations, allow yourself to embody that future version of yourself. Feel what it feels like to BE all the awesome things you say about yourself.

This will build a mental habit in your brain to think of yourself in a more positive light.

And again… a positive brain outperforms a negative or neutral brain.

Just like a new diet may require you to clean out your pantry and stock your fridge with healthy foods, give yourself a screen audit and clean your social media of anyone who is not adding value to your mental diet.

The Wrap Up

Just like our nutritional diet impats our physical health, out mental diet impacts our mental health and performance.

To upgrade your mental diet, consider the mental macronutrients or education, inspiration, and affirmations.

• Pick up 3 books on a topic you want to learn and block 15 minutes of reading each day
• Curate your social feeds so your are following people who inspire you. Then trade the scrolling for intentional engagement.
• Create a list of affirmations that are aligned with your goals and ideal future self.

With these efforts in place, you will be on track to upgrade your mental diet, and therefore enhance your mindset, your outlook, and your performance.

Thanks for reading!

I hope you go out there and crush it!

Clark